According to the latest proposal for changes in Chromium, the open source project maintained by Google on which Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, and Microsoft Edge are based, most of the adblockers would become useless. That is because Google wants to limit what developers can do with their extensions, supposedly to improve the privacy, security, and performance of the Chrome browser. That is explained in the so-called Manifest V3.
Only Chrome will be able to decide which adblocker to ban
The manifest explains that the current extensions platform has several problems in the areas of performance, security, privacy, and ergonomics. With the new measures Google would be stopping an extension to cause significant or lasting damage, and at the same time that the APIs guarantee that the extensions are fast and efficient.
This is why Google plans to restrict particular APIs such as WebRequest that has blocking functions and, at the same time, the Internet giant promotes DeclarativeNetRequest as an alternative to WebRequest adblocking functions.
Adblockers that filter more than advertising would cease to function completely
An adblocker can filter everything that the user does not want to see on a website when accessing a URL, such as advertising, but also other things such as running JavaScript code, multimedia elements, or cookie headers, as explained by Raymond Hill, the creator of the uBlock Origin.
With Chromium limiting the API, an extension like uBlock Origin would basically stop working. That is because the new DeclarativeNetRequest allows only Google Chrome browser to decide how to handle network requests.
Google says the reasons for this are on the one hand to improve browser speed by not having to wait for third parties to filter network requests, and at the same time to protect our privacy by not allowing an extension to read network requests on behalf of a user.
As a passionate gamer since the 1990s, Vadim has kept his passion alive since then, and he is here to cover video games news, as well as to share with you all the novelties out there regarding gadgets or games-related tech.
