Google Just Delayed Its Controversial Chrome Changes

Google has delayed the controversial Chrome changes dubbed Manifest V3 that could cause some ad blockers to break. The Manifest V3 changes were originally earmarked to start in January 2023 in Chrome 112.

In a timeline published back in October, Google described how Chrome was considering running experiments to turn off support for Manifest V3’s predecessor Manifest V2 extensions in Canary, Dev, and Beta channel. By January 2024, Google was planning to remove all remaining Manifest V2 items from the Chrome Web Store, with enterprise V2 support ending at the same time.

However, that timeline has been postponed, according to 9to5Google, which first reported the delay.

Chrome’s blog explains Manifest V3 delay

Chrome extensions developer advocate Simeon Vincent confirmed in a post that Google is “intently monitoring comments from the developer community to help inform our timelines.”

Vincent said the browser maker has “heard your feedback on common challenges posed by the migration, specifically the service worker’s inability to use DOM capabilities and the current hard limit on extension service worker lifetimes.”

“We’re mitigating the former with the Offscreen Documents API (added in Chrome 109) and are actively pursuing a solution to the latter,” he added.

Vincent’s blog continues: “We’re committed to providing developers solutions to migration challenges with new functionality, bug fixes, and adequate time for adoption. For this reason, we’re postponing any January experiments to turn off Manifest V2 in pre-release channels of Chrome and changes to the featured badge in the Chrome Webstore, and we’ll be evaluating all downstream milestones as well.”

There’s no set timeline yet, but Vincent said to “expect to hear more about the updated phase-out plan and schedule by March of 2023.”

“Our guiding principle will be to give developers sufficient time to update and test their extensions after the launch of these new capabilities before turning off Manifest V2,” he added.

What is Manifest V3?

In case you’ve missed my coverage so far, Manifest V3 includes a revamp of the permissions system via the removal of the blocking version of the WebRequest API. Google says the change will improve security because currently, an adversary could change everything on a person’s web page without the user or Google knowing about it. The change also makes abuses easier to detect when the extension is submitted to Google’s store.

But the upcoming Chrome changes could impact functionality and cause some ad blockers to break. Given that Google is one of the world’s biggest advertising companies, critics have questioned the browser maker’s motivations.

Privacy advocates the EFF have called Manifest V3 “deceitful and threatening,” saying: “Like FLoC and Privacy Sandbox before it, Manifest V3 is another example of the inherent conflict of interest that comes from Google controlling both the dominant web browser and one of the largest internet advertising networks.”

Google is defending the move to Manifest V3, saying the possible drop in functionality is worth it for the security benefits. Manifest V3 is intended to protect less techy users of the Chrome browser, Google says.

However, many Chrome users are unhappy about the changes, with some moving to rivals such as Firefox. For now, Manifest V3 may be further into the future than it previously seemed but if you do want to make the switch, there are many Chrome alternatives. Some are even based on the same Chromium engine, such as Brave, which builds ad blocking into the browser itself.