The phase-out timeline

We will begin disabling Manifest V2 extensions in pre-stable versions of Chrome (Dev, Canary, and Beta) as early as June 2024, in Chrome 127 and later. Users impacted by the rollout will see Manifest V2 extensions automatically disabled in their browser and will no longer be able to install Manifest V2 extensions from the Chrome Web Store. Also in June 2024, Manifest V2 extensions will lose their Featured badge in the Chrome Web Store if they currently have one.

from google

What Manifest V3 Means for You

That said, our team has had to make some changes to the uBlock extension in order to comply with the new requirements of Manifest V3. These changes are detailed below.

Allow List Limits

With Manifest V3, uBlock is required to limit how many websites our users are able to add to their allow lists. Going forward, you’ll only be able to add up to 5,000 websites to your allow lists.

Ad Blocking Quality

Currently, our filter lists are updated automatically—often on a daily basis. So if you see an ad that has managed to get around the ad blocking filter, it’s typically taken care of right away because of these updates. Moving forward, we’ll no longer be able to enable automatic daily updates to filter lists. Instead, our developers will be frequently releasing new versions of the extension to address any ads that are circumventing our filters and still showing to users. Our goal is to ensure most users won’t notice a difference, as we plan to increase how much we release the extension to keep up with changing ads and filter lists.

from ublock

Manifest V3, or Mv3 for short, is outright harmful to privacy efforts. It will restrict the capabilities of web extensions—especially those that are designed to monitor, modify, and compute alongside the conversation your browser has with the websites you visit. Under the new specifications, extensions like these– like some privacy-protective tracker blockers– will have greatly reduced capabilities. Google’s efforts to limit that access is concerning, especially considering that Google has trackers installed on 75% of the top one million websites.

It’s also doubtful Mv3 will do much for security. Firefox maintains the largest extension market that’s not based on Chrome, and the company has said it will adopt Mv3 in the interest of cross-browser compatibility. Yet, at the 2020 AdBlocker Dev Summit, Firefox’s Add-On Operations Manager said about the extensions security review process: “For malicious add-ons, we feel that for Firefox it has been at a manageable level…since the add-ons are mostly interested in grabbing bad data, they can still do that with the current webRequest API that is not blocking.”

from the eff

What are we doing differently in Firefox?

WebRequest

One of the most controversial changes of Chrome’s MV3 approach is the removal of blocking WebRequest, which provides a level of power and flexibility that is critical to enabling advanced privacy and content blocking features. Unfortunately, that power has also been used to harm users in a variety of ways. Chrome’s solution in MV3 was to define a more narrowly scoped API (declarativeNetRequest) as a replacement. However, this will limit the capabilities of certain types of privacy extensions without adequate replacement.

Mozilla will maintain support for blocking WebRequest in MV3. To maximize compatibility with other browsers, we will also ship support for declarativeNetRequest. We will continue to work with content blockers and other key consumers of this API to identify current and future alternatives where appropriate. Content blocking is one of the most important use cases for extensions, and we are committed to ensuring that Firefox users have access to the best privacy tools available.

from mozilla’s blog

Google has removed ad blocking and privacy extension AdNauseam from its Chrome Web Store, and has taken the unusual step of flagging the extension as malware, thereby preventing AdNauseam from being used by those who have installed the software via Chrome’s developer mode.

[…] Google in 2013 banned ad blocking for Android apps in the Google Play Store, for violating its prohibition on interfering with the function of other apps. It conducted another purge in early 2016, banning stand-alone ad blocking apps like Adblock Fast and Crystal. It subsequently formalized its stance with a Play Store policy update, allowing browsers with built-in content blocking support to remain.

from a completely unrelated theregister article

Google has “a dominant, near chokehold position on the market,” said Joanna O’Connell, an analyst who specializes in online advertising for the market research firm Forrester. “They don’t just have a buying platform, or the ad-serving market, or a content asset in YouTube, or the search market. They have all of those things.

[…] For the first time in 2019, U.S. digital ad spending surpassed traditional print and television advertising, according to market research firm eMarketer. By 2023, it is projected to account for two-thirds of all money spent on advertising. Last year, advertisers spent $124.6 billion on all U.S. digital advertising, including both search and display ads, said the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which measures digital ad spending.

[…] A large chunk of U.S. digital advertising, $54.7 billion or about 44 percent, is search advertising, for which Google is the undisputed market leader, according to the IAB. But the bigger piece — and where the antitrust regulators are focused — involves display advertising, the images, text and videos that often pay for websites like news, sports, blogs and smaller e-commerce sites.

[…] The Omidyar report doesn’t make any recommendations for how to bring competition back to the ad-technology market that Google dominates. But one option highlighted by U.K. authorities would be to break up some of Google by requiring it to sell off businesses within the stack so that it operates either only on behalf of ad-buyers or on behalf of ad-sellers.

from another unrelated article from politico

In yet another case of broken promises – or maybe fraud? – Google failed to honor agreements governing ad placements on third-party sites 80% of the time. The scandal was uncovered by ad-tracking firm Adalytics, which examined ad impressions from over 1100 brands from 2020-2023. Advertisers paid premium rates, typically higher by a factor of 20, to ensure their video ads would appear prominently on reputable sites. However, Google actually gave the ads substandard placements on numerous misinformation and piracy sites. Advertisers affected include not only companies like American Express and Macy’s but also government entities like Medicare, the Social Security Administration, and the U.S. Army. Now, advertisers are knocking on Google’s door demanding refunds – and Google is pretending not to hear them.

from creativefuture

The agreement between Facebook and Google, code-named “Jedi Blue” inside Google, pertains to a growing segment of the online advertising market called programmatic advertising. Online advertising pulls in hundreds of billions of dollars in global revenue each year, and the automated buying and selling of ad space accounts for more than 60 percent of the total, according to researchers.

[…] Adam Heimlich, the chief executive of Chalice Custom Algorithms, a marketing and data science consulting company, said the deal gave Facebook so much advantage that it was like allowing the social network to “start every tournament in the finals.”

Facebook promised to bid on at least 90 percent of auctions when it could identify the end user and committed to spending a certain amount of money — as much as $500 million a year by the fourth year of the agreement, according to the draft of the complaint. Facebook also demanded that data about its bids not be used by Google to manipulate auctions in its own favor, a level playing field not explicitly promised to other Open Bidding partners.

Perhaps the most serious claim in the draft complaint was that the two companies had predetermined that Facebook would win a fixed percentage of auctions that it bid on.

“Unbeknown to other market participants, no matter how high others might bid, the parties have agreed that the gavel will come down in Facebook’s favor a set number of times,” the draft complaint said. A Google spokeswoman said Facebook must make the highest bid to win an auction, just like its other exchange and ad network partners.

from the new york times

Uninstall your chrome.

I got a bit carried away, maybe I should make this a thread?