[HN Gopher] Google postpones MV2 shutoff in Chrome stable to Jun...
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Google postpones MV2 shutoff in Chrome stable to June 2023
Author : ghostwords
Score : 96 points
Date : 2022-09-28 19:21 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (developer.chrome.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (developer.chrome.com)
| olso wrote:
| Great! Proxy extensions live to see another day
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32899846
| mccorrinall wrote:
| I never liked chrome because it required me to set a proxy via
| command line arguments or system wide. Never understood why
| they don't give me an option like firefox within the settings
| to set a proxy, but at the same time chrome allowed
| *extensions* to set proxies.
| jupp0r wrote:
| So I was actually trying out uBlock Origin Lite [1] (the MV3
| compatible version) as my daily driver for the past week and I
| must say it's not that bad. I had to manually enable content
| access for a handful of sites but doing so on an opt-in basis and
| getting more performant experience on 98% of other sites is
| actually something I'm going to use going forward even if MV2
| compatibility gets pushed further into the future.
|
| I wonder how long things will stay that way though, when sites
| will tailor their tracking/ad annoyances to exploit the MV3
| limitations. I really wouldn't want to opt into every single site
| I visit.
|
| [1]
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases/tag/uBOLite_0.1.2...
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| It's really validating to see someone post their actual
| experience with MV3 adblocking, because the constant stream of
| misleading headlines saying "Google is banning adblocking" on
| low-expertise places like reddit has become a pet peeve of
| mine. Almost no one involved in those discussions actually know
| how adblockers work, and are just copying and pasting sub-par
| reporting, which itself is just poorly-informed fluff around
| attempts to rephrase comments from gorhill.
|
| MV3 adblockers are still going to, broadly, work fine, if
| slightly worse than before. There's slightly more concern over
| privacy blockers, but as usual it gets more clicks to mislead
| users about something they care about (adblocking) rather than
| get them to really care about privacy.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| I tried the "lite" Ublock on my work laptop, on the
| relatively uninformed opinion that MV3 really is safer than
| MV2 in terms of a rogue extension being able to reach in and
| steal your secrets (am I wrong?)
|
| An immediate test with Youtube gave pre-roll ads. Oh well.
| But a later Youtube visit, and all since, have been like
| Ublock Origin - ads gone, preroll, superimposed and in-video
| ad breaks. I have no idea how all this works and frankly am
| glad I don't have to. But yes, of course, Youtube may change
| in the future to precisely sidestep the MV3 limitations of ad
| blockers.
| twhb wrote:
| Don't mistake this for victory. Google's standard playbook when
| forcing things people don't like is to spread the action out over
| a longer timeframe, exhausting the media and keeping the final
| blow mostly out of the news, and exhausting our individual
| outrage and will to keep fighting. It works every time, and it'll
| work again if we become complacent again. Until and unless Google
| meaningfully commits to _never_ neuter ad blockers, it's still
| critical and urgent that we switch to Firefox.
| MikeYasnev007 wrote:
| lapcat wrote:
| The postponement was practically inevitable. Manifest v3 is a
| slow moving train wreck. Extension developers know it isn't ready
| and won't be ready by January.
|
| Happy holidays to me, I can kick this can down the road too.
|
| Look at some of the known issues:
| https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/known-issue...
|
| Userscript managers support
|
| Estimated timeline: Canary support around October, 2022.
|
| Service workers are not started in response to webRequest events
|
| Estimated timeline: Targeting Canary support before October,
| 2022.
|
| No way they were going to be ready to disable v2 in January for
| the stable channel.
| alooPotato wrote:
| Deadline is still January if you want the featured badge or if
| you want to work in all the channels of Chrome. Seems like for
| most developers the deadline is the same.
| ghostwords wrote:
| Does having the Featured badge actually change anything
| meaningfully for your extension?
| alooPotato wrote:
| I think its more about not having customers ask why we _don
| 't_ have the badge. We primarily have business users so
| trust is super important.
| metadat wrote:
| What is "all the channels of Chrome"? What channels are
| there?
| nightpool wrote:
| They mean nightly and beta builds.
| lapcat wrote:
| https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/9027636
|
| "Chrome browser provides 5 channels: Stable, Extended
| stable, Beta, Dev, and Canary."
| barkingcat wrote:
| very easily googleable -
| https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/9027636?hl=en
| metadat wrote:
| Thanks for the dv punishment check, @Barkingcat. You
| could've done a drive-by downvote, but you at least also
| left a comment, which I appreciate.
|
| I was about to hop in the car and didn't have time to
| Google it, and pre-cognitvely figured others might also
| like to know without needing to also actively search it
| 100x, collectively.
|
| Looking at my comment history, it's clear I frequently do
| research things myself and post a thorough comment in an
| effort to educate as well as inform others about
| terminology in HN discussions.
|
| Please strive to be generous in your interpretations of
| others.
| barkingcat wrote:
| Please strive to be generous in your interpretation of my
| comment as well - likewise.
|
| There are 3 posters including me replying to your
| question re what channels are, 2 including the same link.
| Hopefully that answers your question! (and by that I mean
| that I hope you didn't interpret that to be me sending
| you to a mistaken answer? if that's what you were
| refering to?)
|
| That link is indeed genuinely from google.
| davidgerard wrote:
| > This change will give Chrome users increased
|
| ads
| jrockway wrote:
| MV3 comes from a legitimate concern for user security. Every
| time I visit my Mom she has some Chrome extension that steals
| all her traffic and reads every page and reports back to some
| shady company. It's a huge problem for ordinary users, it's
| just that ad blockers legitimately do the same thing as far as
| the browser is concerned, so it's a hard balance to strike. If
| you do nothing, random people lose key personal information. If
| you do something, HN complains about how it's a conspiracy to
| make them see more ads.
|
| As always, it's probably a little from column A and a little
| from column B, but mostly column A with the "unfortunate" side
| effect of column B. Google has had years to remove ad blockers
| from the extension marketplace, for example, and they'd need to
| write a lot less code relative to MV3.
|
| Not building uBlock Origin into Chrome was the mistake they
| made here. Once there is a known-good ad-blocker built in,
| nobody cares about extensions anymore. (Except for the steal-
| your-data extensions, whose authors are definitely amongst us
| on HN.)
| Siira wrote:
| We can't pay the price of your old relative X's laziness.
| They don't care about their privacy, their data gets stolen.
| Their choice, their tradeoff.
| linkgoron wrote:
| Google could disable extensions completely and your claim
| would still be true. It's clear that MV3 does _not_ _come_
| from a legitimate concern for user security, because Google
| could solve security issues without destroying a large part
| of the extension ecosystem.
|
| It might _also_ solve issues with security, but Google 's
| complete refusal to work with the community to find common
| ground shows what they're really after.
| xtacy wrote:
| While this is in part a good news, they are still not accepting
| MV2 extensions to the Chrome Web Store, even as unlisted/private
| extensions. There is no change to that policy:
| https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv2-sunset/...
| panny wrote:
| I made my first foray into web extensions with mv3 on chromium
| recently. I thought, maybe it's fine since I have nothing to
| unlearn. Nope. mv3 is terrible and nothing works. Every example
| of something I want to do is in mv2 and doesn't work at all in
| mv3. The attempt has killed any desire I have to write a
| webextension at all.
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| The 'switch to firefox' meme-storm and the still-horrible
| bugginess of mv3 made this inevitable.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| The switch to Firefox meme-storm may have ignited but I saw no
| actual movement of users to Firefox.
| swinglock wrote:
| You should switch to Firefox.
| cogman10 wrote:
| I wonder what sort of hit to their userbase they'll experience
| when it finally happens for real. The internet is unbearable
| without ad blocking.
| staticassertion wrote:
| Virtually none, I expect. Especially since "without ad
| blocking" isn't on the table, there will continue to be ad
| blocking in Chrome.
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(page generated 2022-09-28 23:00 UTC)