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 was pretty sure manifest v3 had already happened - but when I knew it was coming, I went ahead and switched ahead of time. Came with the extra bonus that now I’m ad free on mobile too! Mobile websites are absolutely filthy with popovers and 2 sentence paragraphs with an ad between every paragraph. I’m sick of it. And unfortunately I spend so much more time browsing the web from my phone these days than my desktop - so when I swapped on pc to Firefox, it was such a relief to have browser extensions on my phone now too.