Google resumes deprecation of Manifest V2, plans to limit future ad blockers in Chrome move forward

Google has announced that it will end Manifest V2, the extension specification, in June 2024 and move to the latest version, Manifest V3. This migration process was suspended in December 2022 due to criticism, but on November 16, 2023 it was announced on the official blog that the deprecation of Manifest V2 would be resumed with improvements to Manifest V3. It was announced in

Resuming the transition to Manifest V3 - Chrome for Developers
https://developer.chrome.com/blog/resuming-the-transition-to-mv3/

Google Chrome will limit ad blockers starting June 2024 | Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/google-chrome-will-limit-ad-blockers-starting-june-2024/

Chrome pushes forward with plans to limit ad blockers in the future | Malwarebytes
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/11/chrome-pushes-forward-with-plans-to-limit-ad-blockers-in-the-future

Manifest V3 is officially supported starting with Chrome 88, released in January 2021.

Google Chrome 88 official release, new extension specification 'Manifest v3' finally arrives - GIGAZINE

Google announced a migration roadmap to Manifest V3 in October 2022, turning off support for Manifest V2 in the Canary, Dev, and Beta channels from Chrome 112 in January 2023, and stable from Chrome 115. I was expecting to turn off Manifest V2 for all channels including editions.

Announcement of migration schedule for the infamous Chrome extension new specification 'Manifest V3', how will ad blockers and competing browsers respond? -GIGAZINE

However, this Manifest V3 has been criticized as significantly limiting the performance of extensions because it reduces the exchange of data between extensions and websites and the flexibility that extensions can have. In particular, ad blockers were greatly affected and received great criticism.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticizes the new Chrome extension specification ``Manifest V3'' as extremely harmful - GIGAZINE

Therefore, Google temporarily froze the originally drawn roadmap in December 2022 and made the following changes to Manifest V3.

・Introduction of ' Offscreen Document ' which provides access to DOM for extension functions used for audio playback etc.
・Better control of service worker lifetime
・Addition of new user script API
- Improved support for content filtering by relaxing restrictions on static rulesets and dynamic rules in the declarativeNetRequest API
- Addition of features such as sidePanel API and Reading List API currently in beta testing

However, security firm MalwarebytesLabs says, ``Even though Manifest V3 doesn't specifically target ad blockers, it's still a significant change that reduces the flexibility of block requests that many ad blockers will eventually use.'' APIs will be limited and replaced with less capable APIs.'

ArsTechnica, an IT news site, argues that there is no justification for arbitrarily restricting filtering rules, saying that to use ad blockers as usual, you will need to switch to another unrestricted browser such as Firefox. It states that there is.

Please note that Firefox has enabled Manifest V3 by default starting from version 109 for cross-browser compatibility, but it continues to support Manifest V2.

'Firefox 109' official release, Manifest V3 enabled by default - GIGAZINE