[HN Gopher] Pausing Manifest V2 phase-out changes
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Pausing Manifest V2 phase-out changes
 
Author : tech234a
Score  : 143 points
Date   : 2023-04-01 18:29 UTC (4 hours ago)
 
web link (groups.google.com)
w3m dump (groups.google.com)
 
| [deleted]
 
| tyingq wrote:
| Just fine tuning how slowly to boil the frogs. At some point,
| they will pull the trigger. My hypothesis is that the various
| entities that want to work around ad-blockers hold back for now,
| because they don't want to push people from the more basic
| blockers to the more advanced ones. Once this is in place, pretty
| much all adblockers of note are dns based, or semi-static list
| based...."basic". I wonder if there's a renewed push fighting ad
| blockers then.
 
  | colordrops wrote:
  | Their goal is probably to slowly ween a tiny group of power
  | users onto other browsers that allow ad blocking while
  | acclimating everyone else to the full ad experience.
 
  | bornfreddy wrote:
  | Or working on pressuring Firefox to implement MV3.
 
    | johnny22 wrote:
    | firefox already implements mv3 as much as they can, but
    | without removing what mv2 offered don't they?
 
      | cpeterso wrote:
      | That's correct. Starting in version 109 earlier this year,
      | Firefox supports many MV3 APIs without removing or
      | deprecating MV2 APIs. To ease the transition to MV3 for
      | extension developers, Firefox extensions can use both MV2
      | and MV3 APIs.
      | 
      | https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/11/17/manifest-v3-sign
      | i...
 
| lapcat wrote:
| Google is not even close to finishing MV3: "On the userScripts
| API, the proposal has been merged into the WECG but the
| engineering work has not started yet."
| https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/blob/f8f430f1904c2a6fa8...
| 
| MV2 is sticking around until at least 2024.
 
| shmde wrote:
| I love it when advertisment companies who make money handcrafting
| the perfect ad for you, analysing your search history, talk about
| Privacy. Yes, this V3 manifest will break adblockers but think
| about your pRiVaCy gUys!!!
 
  | freedomben wrote:
  | I don't disagree with you (always follow the money), but on the
  | other hand, who better to understand the privacy concerns than
  | the people who work around them for a living? I would
  | definitely want to listen to them. That doesn't mean we just
  | take what they say uncritically, but their perspective is very
  | important.
 
    | tyingq wrote:
    | onBeforeRequest(), though, is just one of several ways to run
    | arbitrary JS on a 3rd party page within an extension. There's
    | a reason it's "first to be hobbled", and that reason isn't
    | privacy. Nobody can prove intent, of course, but I'm
    | predicting the pace of "privacy improvements" slows
    | considerably after the smart heuristic-based ad blockers are
    | out of the way.
 
| skullone wrote:
| Is Google sure of what they're doing at all anymore?
 
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Ultimately the biggest risk here I think is adblockers. It's the
| universal extension
 
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| So the phase-out won't begin until 2024 at the earliest? Did I
| read that right? What was it previously, June 2023?
| 
| > We will provide sufficient migration time for developers - at
| least 6 months of heads-up - before beginning any experiments to
| turn off MV2 in the browser next year
| 
| So "next year" is 2023 or 2024?
 
  | ollien wrote:
  | Given this was posted 3 days ago, I'd say 2024 :)
 
    | Tempest1981 wrote:
    | Yeah, "in the next year" vs "over the next year". English has
    | many nuances.
 
  | illiarian wrote:
  | Or will be when they think they can get away with it.
  | 
  | Every time they try the backlash is weaker and weaker because
  | people get tired, or have other things to worry about.
 
    | jareklupinski wrote:
    | or they install higher-order ad-blockers, like pihole /
    | diversion
 
      | ziml77 wrote:
      | Blocking ads at the DNS level is very limited. All that has
      | to happen to bypass it is the site you're visiting serves
      | the ad data directly or really just from any domain that
      | also serves up info you don't want to block. It also can't
      | do anything to counter anti-adblock mechanisms or to clean
      | up the layout which might have space already reserved for
      | the ads.
      | 
      | Using a MITM to alter the responses is an option, but
      | you're likely to run into issues with sofware and devices
      | not being able to handle a custom CA.
 
| John23832 wrote:
| As someone who has made an extension for an actual product, this
| whole rollout/situation has been an absolute shitshow.
| 
| This is, what, the third pause of the rollout?
| 
| Google stopped accepting V2 extensions sometime last year,
| pushing V3 but totally ignoring MANY of the current use cases of
| extensions that V3 just doesn't work for. Firebase auth, a Google
| freaking product, doesn't work in V3 (you can make it work with a
| bunch of "I read it on a forum somewhere" work arounds).
| 
| The ONLY reason they're pushing this is to shore up their ads
| business by breaking add blockers.
 
  | hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
  | A few months back a HN user suggested it may be wise to
  | continually delay an unpopular change, im no PR expert but I
  | thought that was an interesting perspective.
 
  | tssva wrote:
  | This isn't a new pause of the rollout. It is a message giving a
  | general update on changes made to the APIs since the pause
  | announced months ago began.
 
    | gnicholas wrote:
    | My reading is that this announcement indicates a new quasi-
    | indefinite pause, beyond what was previously announced. They
    | will probably still phase out v2, but every additional
    | message about this pushes the timeline back further (even if
    | it's not explicitly mentioned).
    | 
    | BTW, does anyone know how to subscribe to these Chrome
    | updates? I'm kinda surprised not to get them via email,
    | considering I manage multiple Chrome extensions.
 
      | tssva wrote:
      | The December pause announcement stated it was until at
      | least January 2024. This update still mentions a timeline
      | of next year for v3. I find it hard to read as anything
      | beyond the update of progress which was promised for March
      | when the pause was announced in December.
 
| lewisjoe wrote:
| Great news. One thing that I'm sure about V3 is that it isn't
| well thought-out at all. For example, imagine your extension has
| to cache data for a browser session (across tabs but with a
| single cache), it's impossible as of now.
| 
| The only workaround to do that has a 1MB storage limit,
| essentially forcing you to have a server-side cache mechanism
| (redis or whatever) for this trivial use-case.
| 
| And worse, Google developers essentially refuse to understand the
| problem -
| https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=118522...
 
  | lozenge wrote:
  | Just raised to 10 MB?
 
  | whstl wrote:
  | It is hubris. Google thinks it can get away with anything,
  | since they're the market leader. The reality is that a certain
  | number of people will migrate to Firefox over AdBlockers not
  | working well anymore, and will give FF a second life. And those
  | are the people who helped get Chrome off the ground by
  | installing on the computers of relatives and recommending to
  | friends.
 
    | bornfreddy wrote:
    | This, 1000 times. There is only one thing a monopoly holder
    | is afraid of - losing the monopoly.
 
  | tracyhenry wrote:
  | Are you talking about local storage? If so the limit is 5 MB:
  | https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/stora...
 
  | brucethemoose2 wrote:
  | This seems to be a pattern among Google employees, as least as
  | I'm seeing from the outside.
  | 
  | They have their own company reality bubble, and clashes or
  | inconsistencies with the outside world are met with disbelief.
 
    | summerlight wrote:
    | For this specific case of MV3, I wonder how many of those
    | developers are actually writing and maintaining extensions.
    | Yeah, I know one suspected motivation of this change is
    | disabling ad blockers but IMO even if we ignore this aspect
    | this migration is planned badly everywhere. If they really
    | wanted to focus on just kicking ass of ad blockers, it would
    | be done much quicker without facing this level of backlashes.
    | 
    | Not just for MV3 (or even Google), but many of those "API
    | teams" actually don't have a good understanding on its actual
    | use cases so the incentives are usually aligned with their
    | own goals and directions rather than the actual customers
    | because what they see everyday is just their code base and
    | some OKR. I guess they really didn't want to miss out the
    | opportunity to clean things up so they put every single wish
    | list into the bucket without much user study and then it's
    | spectacularly exploded as we know.
    | 
    | I've seen a bunch of "internal migrations", which is supposed
    | to be a way easier than this kind of external ecosystem
    | migration. Unless it was planned and executed very well,
    | those teams are usually shocked by the initial backlash and
    | how "creative" their users are. Sometime those teams are able
    | to come up with reasonable compromises, but in many cases
    | they just deny the reality then blow things up (which
    | sometime works if there's not much dependencies though, but
    | many case it's just wasted as soon as upper managements kick
    | in). This is why almost all successful API migrations are
    | accompanied with some sort of extensive user study from the
    | beginning rather than some arbitrary metrics/goals set by
    | themselves.
 
    | djbusby wrote:
    | The customer is always right - except when I think I'm
    | smarter than their stated needs.
 
      | kivle wrote:
      | The customer, eg. the advertising industry.
 
    | freedomben wrote:
    | Indeed, but it's a problem in engineering society-wide, not
    | just Google. The more I think of it actually, it's just a
    | human problem. Even kids default to this. I wish Socratic
    | Ignorance were taught widely and often in school.
 
    | Kye wrote:
    | I remember getting into it with a Google person in a forum
    | once. They kept insisting they couldn't do real, portable
    | files in Google Drive for Docs because that would break
    | collaboration. They didn't seem able to understand I didn't
    | _want_ collaboration. I wanted to be able to open my word
    | processor /spreadsheet/etc files in other tools without
    | needing to connect to the internet (predates offline mode). I
    | wanted to be able to back them up somewhere (3-2-1 strategy).
    | I wanted to be able to do automated analysis across all my
    | writing. In short, I wanted to own my files.
    | 
    | They simply could not conceive of a use case that was offline
    | or didn't trust Google to be reliable. I honestly don't think
    | they ever used a real desktop office suite. They had no model
    | in their head to understand it.
 
      | malermeister wrote:
      | _It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when
      | his salary depends on his not understanding it._
 
      | ikiris wrote:
      | Collaboration is the killer feature of the docs ecosystem.
      | You will never convince them to break it for X reason.
 
    | jiggawatts wrote:
    | Not just Google, all of Silicon Valley. Here on HN, I
    | regularly see comments along the lines of: "Wait, do people
    | actually still use Windows on servers!?"
    | 
    | Yes, yes they do.
 
  | charcircuit wrote:
  | >has a 1MB storage limit
  | 
  | They changed this a couple days ago to be 10 MB with Chrome
  | 112.
 
  | blibble wrote:
  | > One thing that I'm sure about V3 is that it isn't well
  | thought-out at all.
  | 
  | that's because it's been invented for the sole purpose of
  | making "breaking effective ad-blocking" look legitimate
 
    | nonbirithm wrote:
    | And similarly, FLoC was invented for the sole purpose of
    | making targeted advertising look legitimate.
 
      | pornel wrote:
      | There was also a lot of futile searching for use-cases for
      | Signed Exchange spec, which was just AMP letting Google
      | host and monitor other pages' traffic.
 
    | charcircuit wrote:
    | From what I've seen the main purpose is to increase secruity
    | and privacy of the extension ecosystem. I have seen no sign
    | of mv3 being for breaking ad blocking. MV3 and other parts of
    | chromium have added features that help ad blockers.
 
      | akomtu wrote:
      | That's lie pushed by Google. MV3 removes the ability to
      | block requests, but keeps the ability to observe requests.
      | Great for ads-related spying.
 
| politician wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if this is related to ChatGPT or LLM.
| Google is aware of the impact LLMs are having and that Manifest
| V3 is facing widespread disapproval. Previously, Google's
| strategy was "take it or leave it", so their decision to
| reconsider could indicate apprehension about the potential
| acceleration of the ad-based search business's decline.
 
| m_a_g wrote:
| Anything that breaks uBlock Origin is a deal breaker. With the
| chrome team making so many alterations to their plans, I guess
| we'll have to wait and see.
 
  | poolopolopolo wrote:
  | Pretty much, there will never be a "smooth" transition from V2
  | to V3 when you are purposely trying to kill the most used
  | plugins.
 
  | Operative0198 wrote:
  | Mv3 broke uBlock Lite for me (used uBlock to control js
  | mostly).
  | 
  | But that wasn't a deal breaker because I got to discover
  | NoScript (still stuck on mv2 but I like the approach vastly
  | better than original uBlock's implementation).
  | 
  | Just waiting to see how this functionality will be handled in
  | mv2 sunset since Noscript has no plans to migrate atm and
  | uBlock lite should be "guttered" for the foreseeable future.
 
    | [deleted]
 
  | pkulak wrote:
  | Why wait? Move to Firefox now.
 
    | ithrow wrote:
    | Feels slow in old computers with 4GB and Chrome has a better
    | built-in for freeing up memory from inactive tabs.
 
      | voytec wrote:
      | But will likely be plagued with performance degrading ads.
 
        | shadowgovt wrote:
        | And it's still fast in spite of that, which speaks to how
        | far behind Mozilla is.
 
        | paulryanrogers wrote:
        | Part of the difference is that the modern web is built
        | for Chrome. Even checking ones site or service with
        | Firefox for functionality is a bridge too far, much less
        | performance.
 
      | bornfreddy wrote:
      | Not sure about that, works for me just fine on many (even
      | old) computers. But even if it was true, I prefer keeping
      | the number of open tabs below 100 if that means not running
      | browser made by an advertising agency. Talk about conflict
      | of interests...
 
    | kivle wrote:
    | Using 2-3x as much battery as all other browsers on my
    | Macbook is the dealbreaker for me.. I want to use the same
    | browser on all systems when I move..
 
      | kgwxd wrote:
      | You should get off mac for the same reasons to get off
      | chrome.
 
      | jug wrote:
      | Would Brave maybe work better? But I personally feel a bit
      | awkward about the crypto stuff in it even if it can be
      | disabled. I don't think a browser should deal with these
      | things. However, it might be personal preference... It does
      | offer built-in ad blocking and more.
 
        | kivle wrote:
        | I also feel weird about all the crypto stuff in Brave. I
        | chose Vivaldi (also a Chromium based browser with built-
        | in adblocker). It's developers include a lot of former
        | Opera devs.
 
      | loxias wrote:
      | IME Firefox (esp with the right extensions, like
      | autosuspend tabs) is very light on system resources. A bit
      | more so than chrome. I run only Linux though.
      | 
      | All the "websites that should be a program" (Netflix, Hulu,
      | Slack, Amazon Video) now run great in FF, without my
      | computer overheating. (though some of them might be on the
      | chopping block if they don't quit blocking me from seeing
      | HD content)
      | 
      | I hear Apple does some special magic in MacOS so that on
      | that platform Safari actually works (compared to the ~real~
      | non-Apple world, where Safari is slow as heck and why would
      | anyone ever touch that with a 10ft pole.)
 
        | kivle wrote:
        | Honestly I do not think Apple does some special magic on
        | Mac OS for Safari. I settled on Vivaldi (a chromium based
        | browser with built-in ad blocking developed by former
        | Opera devs). It gives battery life not much worse than
        | Safari to be honest. Safari is very nice and snappy on a
        | mac, but the extension support is extremely limited.
 
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Doesn't appear to open up MV2 for new extensions, so if your
| favorite extension gets sold / goes rogue then alternatives may
| be crippled by MV3 as it exists today.
 
| preinheimer wrote:
| People who want to release a new, cross browser, extension are
| left in a crappy position.
| 
| Chrome won't accept a new manifest v2 extension. MV3 extensions
| have lots of problems in chrome, and are even worse supported
| everywhere else.
| 
| Google needs to reopen mv2 to new submissions until they've got
| things figured out, and the other browsers are on board.
 
| [deleted]
 
| bobse wrote:
| Microsoft Teams is still broken on Firefox? Linux app was also
| killed by Microsoft liars.
 
  | 20after4 wrote:
  | That's a feature not a bug.
 
  | cpeterso wrote:
  | Mozilla had been working with Microsoft to resolve Teams
  | compatibility issues.
  | 
  | Teams users using _teams.microsoft.com_ (primarily Business and
  | Enterprise customers on a paid plan, but also some free
  | /personal legacy accounts) should be able to use Teams without
  | issues now.
  | 
  | However, there is a second Microsoft Teams instance running on
  | _teams.live.com_. Most Personal /Consumer/Free users of Teams
  | are on that version, and there, Teams is currently showing a
  | "browser unsupported" banner.
  | 
  | https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/25070#issuecomm...
 
| i386 wrote:
| "Comments are locked" is always a slap in the face
 
| qwertox wrote:
| > As we head towards Manifest V3 migration, we are intently
| monitoring comments from the developer community to help inform
| our timelines.
| 
| Here's some feedback:
| 
| If uBlock Origin loses full control over what gets loaded and
| what not, I will immediately uninstall Chrome from all my and my
| family's devices and switch back to Firefox, after a decade of
| using Chrome as the main browser. I will then also recommend the
| exclusive use of Firefox.
| 
| Why not offer MV2 and MV3 in parallel, where MV2 is a per-
| extension opt-in with a prominent security warning during opt-in?
 
  | kej wrote:
  | You can just do this anyway, you know. Firefox is pretty great
  | these days.
 
    | judge2020 wrote:
    | Especially on macs
 
      | darreninthenet wrote:
      | I found it's lack of support for native functionality in
      | MacOS too irritating (eg doesn't support system wide
      | autocomplete - so my @@ shortcut that puts my email address
      | in doesn't work in FF - I know I could put it in again in
      | FF but it's annoying it just doesn't work) so I went back
      | to Chrome in the end.
      | 
      | I was using Edge for a while but the absolute car crash
      | their UI has become - and can't be configured - sent me
      | running screaming for the hills.
      | 
      | Edit - and don't get me started on the massive slowdowns
      | once I have more than a handful of tabs open.
 
        | nozzlegear wrote:
        | My biggest complaint with Firefox on macOS is the lack of
        | support for native picture-in-picture. They implement
        | their own version that doesn't stay visible when you swap
        | between the virtual desktops; won't overlay on top of
        | full screen applications; and can't be moved across
        | monitors (iirc) either.
 
    | miohtama wrote:
    | Also it would be healthy for the web ecosystem overall if
    | users, especially power users, would use less Chrome. Any
    | excuse to uninstall Chrome is a good excuse.
 
    | sgtfrankieboy wrote:
    | Switched to Firefox for like 6-12 months, eventually moved
    | back to Edge a couple of weeks ago. Had to open it constantly
    | anyways.
    | 
    | I couldn't get used to Firefox's DevTools and the JSON viewer
    | in Firefox is bad compared to the JSON Formatter chrome
    | extension.
 
      | capitainenemo wrote:
      | Huh. I'm rather surprised you're comparing the out of the
      | box firefox json formatting (rather good compared to
      | chrome's non-existent formatter) to an extension. Are there
      | no JSON formatting extensions for firefox?
 
        | 20after4 wrote:
        | I used an extension a while ago, however, it became
        | unnecessary once the built in json view was implemented.
        | Not sure if it's still around or whether it offers any
        | advantage over the built in feature.
 
    | xchkr1337 wrote:
    | I wish Mozilla focused more on Linux support. I tried
    | switching to Firefox multiple times, and in day-to-day use I
    | always keep running into unfixable problems like bad font
    | rendering, slow webgl performance, ui glitches etc.
    | 
    | Problems like this never happen when I'm using Firefox on
    | Windows, and honestly the state of Firefox on Linux is kind
    | of surprising since it's the most commonly recommended and
    | preinstalled browser on Linux distros.
    | 
    | Right now I'm using Chromium but I'd be eager to switch if
    | there was anything better which could provide me with a fast
    | and stable browsing experience.
 
      | GeoAtreides wrote:
      | I have been main driving Firefox on Linux for the past six
      | years, on Lubuntu, without any kind of problems. None
      | whatsoever. It's fast and it's rock solid stable.
      | 
      | Edit: some people mentioned it's Firefox snap that has
      | problems. I'm using the apt-get package one.
 
      | hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
      | I can't report any of those issues, my biggest gripe is
      | Ubuntu forcing a snap package on to me
 
      | 20after4 wrote:
      | I'm using Firefox on Linux1 and I have experienced none of
      | those problems. Although I'm not particularly happy with
      | the direction that Mozilla has been headed, Firefox is
      | certainly a vast improvement over Chrome or even Chromium.
      | 
      | 1. Latest version of Firefox (not ESR), Latest Debian, both
      | Intel & AMD graphics. I can't speak for NVIDIA graphics on
      | Linux as I gave up on NVIDIA a few years ago.
 
        | 20after4 wrote:
        | Admittedly there were a few issues in the past, just
        | nothing in the last couple of years that I can think of.
 
        | kgwxd wrote:
        | I was on Linux for about 10 years without a single issues
        | with Firefox until it was turned into a snap package.
        | Slow as hell startup times and other oddities. Removed
        | that and installed from apt and it was back to perfectly
        | stable. Font rendering was always different but I
        | wouldn't say worse. In fact, now that I'm fully back on
        | Windows, the font rendering on Linux is the only thing I
        | really miss. Windows seems a bit blurry in comparison.
 
        | i_love_cookies wrote:
        | [dead]
 
      | bitcharmer wrote:
      | > I always keep running into unfixable problems like bad
      | font rendering, slow webgl performance, ui glitches
      | 
      | Been using Firefox on Linux as my daily driver and haven't
      | seen any of that. Can you provide any examples?
 
      | davidgerard wrote:
      | > bad font rendering
      | 
      | would I be correct in guessing that you're using the snap?
      | It's pretty, uh, garbage. The Chromium snap keeps having
      | font problems too.
 
        | tigrezno wrote:
        | this is fun because the snap works perfectly on my
        | machine, and it's fast as the native version. I think the
        | snap version is far better than running it natively (more
        | secure). A web browser is a hacker's dream.
 
  | jraph wrote:
  | uBlock Origin already has less control in Chrome than in
  | Firefox.
  | 
  | https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
 
  | jbverschoor wrote:
  | Same..
 
  | noman-land wrote:
  | Why would you wait for this one single thing when you have had
  | so many historical reasons to choose Firefox over Google
  | already? Why wait for Google to piss you off for the thousandth
  | time when 999 times is plenty?
 
| Diggsey wrote:
| Manifest V3 is a perfect example of "great idea but terrible
| execution". The ability to have extension pages be suspended when
| not in use is great. Improving (and having finer grained)
| permissions is great. It should have stopped there: introduce a
| new "persistent" permission that extensions can request to stay
| around permanently, and when not requested, introduce lifecycle
| events so extensions can properly handle suspension/resumption.
| Make some tweaks to how permissions as a whole are handled.
| 
| Instead we have this abomination which is worse for everyone
| involved. It doesn't improve performance because it forces
| extension authors to hack around the broken API, and in doing so
| waste CPU and memory.
| 
| Firefox FTW
 
  | kgwxd wrote:
  | The primary idea is terrible, the good ideas are only there to
  | cover up the primary purpose, kill tracker blocking. Terrible
  | idea, terrible execution.
 
  | joisig wrote:
  | MV2 background pages were already by default in a mode where
  | they are suspended when not in use. MV3 doesn't improve on that
  | except to make it impossible to have persistent background
  | pages.
 
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