Most ad blockers will become useless when you switch to Manifest V3. Google is constantly working on a new extension platform, Manifest V3, for Chrome. A date has now been set for its release. The company may start turning off support for Manifest V2 on Canary, Dev and Beta channels starting with Chrome 112 in January 2023. After that, Chrome 115 (in June) will begin testing removing the stability of the support channel.
All Manifest V2 extensions in the Chrome Web Store will be closed to migrate the stable channel to Chrome 3. Finally, in the first month of 2024, all remaining V2 extensions will be decommissioned.
However, this change is not without criticism. Although Google claims that many of the changes made in Manifest V3 are for privacy and security, the changes that would affect ad blockers have received the most criticism. If that happens, they won’t be able to function in their current capacity, effectively rendering them useless.
These days, ad blockers such as uBlock Origin and AdGuard use Chrome’s “webRequest” API to prevent certain types of HTTP requests. However, this approach can increase page load and display times, something Google would prefer to avoid. In its place, Manifest V3 requires the use of “declarativeNetRequest,” which effectively requires the use of a blocking list of specific URLs. The problem is that the maximum number of “rules” in a list is 30,000. Ad blocking lists can have hundreds of thousands of members.
A bit of good news for business users: Manifest V2 extensions will be supported until January 2024.
Even though the new Chrome extension platform will launch in 2023, Google is facing criticism for its decision. Even the release of Google’s latest extension platform, Manifest V3 for Chrome, is scheduled. In Chrome 112, scheduled for release in January 2023, Manifest V2 will no longer be supported in Canary, Dev or Beta.
