Clearly, Google is serious about trying to oust ad blockers from its browser, or at least those extensions with fuller (V2) levels of functionality. One of the crucial twists with V3 is that it prevents the use of remotely hosted code – as a security measure – but this also means ad blockers can’t update their filter lists without going through Google’s review process. What does that mean? Way slower updates for said filters, which hampers the ability of the ad-blocking extension to keep up with the necessary changes to stay effective.
(This isn’t just about browsers, either, as the war on advert dodgers extends to YouTube, too, as we’ve seen in recent months).
At any rate, Google is playing with fire here somewhat – or Firefox, perhaps we should say – as this may be the shove some folks need to get them considering another of the best web browsers out there aside from Chrome. Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has vowed to maintain support for V2 extensions, while introducing support for V3 alongside to give folks a choice (now there’s a radical idea).
I’ve fully switched to Firefox everywhere. The only thing I’m missing is a lightweight browser which is not based on chromium for my potato tablet. jQuarks viewer is a good one but can be dumb sometimes, it opens image instead of the link for eg.
Not sure if they’re still round, but I used to use opera.
Opera ditched their browser engine. They use chromium now.
And now there is a need to ditch chromium on the grounds of what Google is doing to enshittify Manifest v3.
You could always try Firefox Focus to see if that will run on your potato tablet and is lightweight enough for you.