[HN Gopher] Pausing Manifest V2 phase-out changes
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Pausing Manifest V2 phase-out changes
        
       Author : ghostwords
       Score  : 244 points
       Date   : 2022-12-09 19:53 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (groups.google.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (groups.google.com)
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related. Others?
       | 
       |  _Feel the power of the Manifest v3_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33063619 - Oct 2022 (274
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Google postpones MV2 shutoff in Chrome stable to June 2023_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33012057 - Sept 2022 (283
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Manifest V3: The Ghostery Perspective (2021)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32983565 - Sept 2022 (5
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32950199 - Sept 2022 (153
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _uBlock Origin Lite: Description_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32911640 - Sept 2022 (148
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Proxy Chrome extensions are not going to be usable in MV3_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32899846 - Sept 2022 (204
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Ad blockers struggle under Chrome 's new rules_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32764304 - Sept 2022 (3
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _"UBO Minus (MV3)" - An Experimental uBlock Origin Build for
       | Manifest V3_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32754274 -
       | Sept 2022 (255 comments)
       | 
       |  _AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32648131 - Aug 2022 (360
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Cannot read clipboard from service worker in a MV3 chrome
       | extension (2020)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32622739
       | - Aug 2022 (51 comments)
       | 
       |  _Tor Project - 'We are concerned about Google's plan to retire
       | Manifest v2'_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32608847 -
       | Aug 2022 (4 comments)
       | 
       |  _Chrome extension Manifest V3 migration tracker_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31494944 - May 2022 (6
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Manifest v3 in Firefox: Recap and Next Steps_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31425256 - May 2022 (168
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Ask HN: Will you keep using Chrome when manifest-v2 is sunset?_
       | - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30589773 - March 2022 (5
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Google's Manifest V3 still hurts privacy, security, and
       | innovation_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29555673 - Dec
       | 2021 (2 comments)
       | 
       |  _Google Nukes Ad-Blockers-Manifest V3 Is Coming_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29522952 - Dec 2021 (6
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _PSA: uBlock /AdBlocks on Chrome to lose function thanks to
       | Manifestv3_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29521258 - Dec
       | 2021 (315 comments)
       | 
       |  _Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threatening_
       | - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29502439 - Dec 2021 (375
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Chrome phasing out Manifest v2 support from Jan 2022_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29410104 - Dec 2021 (33
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for
       | ad-blockers grow_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28680033
       | - Sept 2021 (386 comments)
       | 
       |  _Manifest V2 Support Timeline_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28645250 - Sept 2021 (2
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Manifest v3 Update_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27305127 - May 2021 (93
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Microsoft Will Adopt Google Chrome 's Controversial Manifest V3
       | in Edge_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25445823 - Dec
       | 2020 (4 comments)
       | 
       |  _Manifest V3 now available on M88 Beta_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25361535 - Dec 2020 (138
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Manifest V3 changes are now available to test in Microsoft
       | Edge_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24780055 - Oct 2020
       | (36 comments)
       | 
       |  _Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21503049 - Nov 2019 (436
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Mozilla's Manifest v3 FAQ_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20867720 - Sept 2019 (106
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Chrome extension manifest v3 proposal: comment from uBlock
       | Origin author_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173 -
       | May 2019 (279 comments)
       | 
       |  _Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to
       | enterprise users_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430
       | - May 2019 (877 comments)
       | 
       |  _Chrome Extension Manifest V3 Could End UBlock Origin for
       | Chrome_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18976409 - Jan
       | 2019 (4 comments)
       | 
       |  _Chrome Extension Manifest V3 (draft) may end uBlock Origin_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18971656 - Jan 2019 (3
       | comments)
        
       | DarkmSparks wrote:
       | But really, the prospect of breaking support for the innumerable
       | applications that use V2 and will never be updated seems to be
       | the worst idea Ive seen in decades.
       | 
       | I still struggle to believe it, but everytime I read something on
       | this "V3 migration" that sounds like exactly what they plan..
       | 
       | This isnt like IE6 either, where every user was desperate for the
       | apps they were forced to use to die, it seems the only people
       | that really want this change is google.
       | 
       | Apologies in advance if Im wrong, the only reason I care is I
       | keep hearing "google plans to break lots of stuff with no clear
       | need to do so."
        
         | eshack94 wrote:
         | Your take on this is exactly correct.
        
         | matheusmoreira wrote:
         | They're the only ones who want this change because they're the
         | billion dollar advertising corporation and they want to kill ad
         | blockers on Chrome. The more painful and costly it is for them,
         | the better. Hopefully it will reduce Chrome market share too
         | when other browsers refuse to deprecate the features uBlock
         | Origin needs. Still not enough punishment for them.
        
           | defrost wrote:
           | > Still not enough punishment for them.
           | 
           | Force them all to live as Winston Smith in rooms with wall
           | sized screens that deliver unblockable ads and monitor their
           | every action?
           | 
           | ie. To eat their own dogfood.
        
             | matheusmoreira wrote:
             | Don't forget the high pitched noise when they try to close
             | their eyes.
        
               | EdwardDiego wrote:
               | New on Wraith Babes, millions watched her glide through
               | the Hot Shot curtain of dreams... ...Insufficent funds to
               | skip...
        
           | tlogan wrote:
           | The problem is this: Google cloud team probably want that
           | chrome browser has more extensions, that extensions can
           | control network flow (security, monitoring, etc.), and that
           | it is easy to hot fix. On the other hand, Google ads team
           | does not like extensions at all: especially if they can be
           | used to block ads. Ads team has more $$ while cloud team are
           | fighting hard to become relevant.
           | 
           | Thus the shitshow.
        
       | ranting-moth wrote:
       | I was writing an extension a few weeks ago. I decided to go with
       | MV3.
       | 
       | Most of the examples and documentation said something like "this
       | has been copied from the MV2 documents or example. It might not
       | work." It was awful.
       | 
       | I felt MV3 is really about limiting what the extensions can do.
       | 
       | I ended up having it Firefox only and MV2. Probably works in
       | Chrome too, but I wasn't going to waste time on it since it was
       | about to be removed.
        
         | eshack94 wrote:
         | > I felt MV3 is really about limiting what the extensions can
         | do.
         | 
         | You felt that way because that's exactly what it's about. It's
         | about doing everything possible to increase ad revenue in the
         | name of "increased security".
        
         | HellsMaddy wrote:
         | I developed an extension[1] after the Chrome Store stopped
         | accepting MV2, but before Firefox support for MV3 in stable. I
         | had to write some custom build scripts to build the extension
         | with MV2 for Firefox and MV3 for Chrome. Pretty annoying.
         | 
         | [1]: https://github.com/b0o/aws-favicons-webextension
        
         | joshka wrote:
         | I'm in a similar boat, wrote a MV2 plugin for firefox, started
         | looking at MV3 got confused about which bits are going to be
         | usable and which are not and when. Ends up being too difficult.
         | 
         | From a extension creator perspective, it might be better to
         | just pull all mention of MV3 on the MV2 pages until it's
         | properly baked.
        
           | vdfs wrote:
           | FYI Firefox is ditching MV2 too, they are keeping web request
           | blocking but they will deprecate v2
        
             | joshka wrote:
             | Yeah, it's in the nightly and going to GA Jan 23 according
             | to the latest blog post on it.
        
             | Vinnl wrote:
             | > MV2 will continue to work. We have not made decisions
             | about MV2 deprecation yet. We want to see what the response
             | and adoption of MV3 is from the community next year and
             | will then make decisions about the future based on that.
             | 
             | https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/10/31/begin-your-
             | mv3-mi...
        
         | modeless wrote:
         | Yeah the state of Chrome's extension API documentation is
         | awful. It needs to be totally reorganized and partially
         | rewritten. I'm hopeful that MDN will become a better resource
         | as Firefox becomes more compatible with the APIs. It's already
         | more helpful in some places.
        
           | iLoveOncall wrote:
           | All of Google's documentations are awful.
           | 
           | I spent a few days on a pet project using the Google Sheets
           | API and the official docs use a mix of 3 different versions
           | of libraries, none of which are really up to date, and you
           | have to guess which is the right one.
           | 
           | They don't care about developers.
        
             | ranting-moth wrote:
             | They put in quite some effort into writing the docs but
             | then they often leave them to rot. Broken links and invalid
             | code.
             | 
             | You'd have thought that a company the size of Google would
             | have their public documentation problem totally solved by
             | now.
        
               | 1986 wrote:
               | It's more than just good stuff rotting. It's a
               | fundamental lack of care, or maybe inability to ship
               | anything that represents a big iteration. On the Google
               | Analytics side, they are preparing to turn off data
               | collection from the existing version of Analytics in 6
               | months and have been telling everyone to migrate to the
               | new version for months now - but their "migration guides"
               | are missing crucial technical detail, fall out of sync
               | with the state of the new product a mere month or so
               | after publishing, or contradict each other. It's like the
               | whole effort of documentation has just been outsourced to
               | the world of blogspam. Meanwhile, they started
               | aggressively pushing for users to migrate their data
               | collection when the new product itself didn't support
               | some of the most basic use cases that needed to be
               | migrated. Something is just _off_ with Google 's ability
               | to ship these days.
        
           | joshka wrote:
           | Funny, I've been using the MDN docs and took a look at the
           | Chrome docs today. Some of the conceptual info was easier to
           | track on the Chrome docs where the Mozilla side seemed to
           | jump too low level too quickly.
           | 
           | Ideally, those docs should just be in one place so writing
           | Chrome/Safari/Firefox extensions should just work.
        
             | eyelidlessness wrote:
             | > the Mozilla side seemed to jump too low level too quickly
             | 
             | This is literally my only complaint about MDN, and it's
             | only a complaint when I'm in a hurry. The sprawling body of
             | standards MDN documents are _almost all_ fairly low level
             | and intended as such, and MDN mostly does a good job of
             | balancing the low level details with good boilerplate
             | examples. I can't say how this is for extensions on any
             | version, but if the MDN docs continue apace I'd be
             | surprised if they don't at least adequately answer this
             | "should" as shortly behind a stable spec as anyone could
             | wish for.
             | 
             | I wish XML-related tech was such a hot documentation
             | commodity... guess I better contribute as I go :)
        
               | ctxc wrote:
               | Hey! What things related to xml are you working on? I for
               | one went through the signing and stuff and it was pretty
               | rough going.
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | MV3 has some changes that are genuinely good, even if those may
         | feel inconvenient to develop for, mixed in with the genuinely
         | bad. For FF you can get the best of both worlds though since
         | their MV3 implementation isn't removing the controversial
         | deprecations/plans.
        
       | dessant wrote:
       | The Chrome extensions team has been considerably more responsive
       | to criticism since Simeon Vincent has become a Developer
       | Advocate. It's important to see the perspective of developers
       | who've been working with these APIs for years, and I'm glad that
       | they are finally listening.
        
         | lapcat wrote:
         | Vincent has been in that position for 4 years, so I'm not sure
         | what you think has changed.
        
           | dessant wrote:
           | Before that we didn't have anyone to contact, and the Chrome
           | extensions team definitely did not react to feedback in any
           | meaningful way.
        
             | horsawlarway wrote:
             | I'm not really sure I agree with this - I've been doing
             | extension development for about 12 years now, and I think
             | communication used to be fine.
             | 
             | Simply posting questions usually got meaningful feedback,
             | and while the team certainly wasn't "taking advice" from
             | the community at large, the manifest v2 space felt cohesive
             | and generally well thought out.
             | 
             | Things worked. Documentation was decent. Compatibility
             | problems between Firefox/Chrome were small and documented.
             | It was still possible to load extensions outside the
             | stores. Extensions could do genuinely powerful things.
             | 
             | Manifest v3... has been a complete fucking disgrace (and I
             | say that as someone who was really, really trying to give
             | Google the benefit of the doubt here early on, and someone
             | who has personally ported my organization's extensions to
             | MV3).
             | 
             | It's poorly documented (all sorts of things in the docs are
             | half-assed, scattered links to mv2 only pages, dead/broken
             | links in the pages, docs that contradict other docs,
             | completely undocumented features and capabilities, bad
             | examples, examples that no longer build, etc).
             | 
             | Basic features are literally not functional. We _STILL_ to
             | this day have repeated complaints from customers about the
             | extension  "dying" or "it stopped working" which I can
             | fucking promise is this issue: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/
             | chromium/issues/detail?id=127115...
             | 
             | Which has been closed and opened several times (currently
             | closed and is absolutely still happening). I still see this
             | at least once a week in development. The service worker
             | simply fucks off and stops doing anything at all (sitting
             | there with "inactive" despite sending messages to it, or
             | clicking the browser action).
             | 
             | Permissions are still a freaking disgrace - trying to play
             | nice with the permissions APIs gets your extension
             | relegated way down the list. Extensions which just request
             | "all_urls" get put right at the top of the extensions list
             | when a user clicks the extensions menu, while those that
             | properly ask for the active_tab permission get shoved way
             | down and have a "access requested" tag in bold that
             | actually seems scarier to users than the extensions that
             | just fucking declare all_urls.
             | 
             | Optional permissions, meanwhile, don't actually go away
             | when you release them in chrome (why even have the fucking
             | function call?) so you can't meaningfully display
             | permissions status to users without tracking state
             | yourself. And you sure as hell can't count on the state of
             | a permission to indicate user preference on whether a
             | feature should be active. Again - have to do all the
             | tracking manually.
             | 
             | Basically - The chromium team is fucking up _HARD_ here, in
             | my opinion. It 's really starting to feel like the decent
             | developers are gone (and I know a lot of them are) and the
             | result is now the same as IE used to be - the browser is
             | just a political tool to control competition. There's
             | little cohesion, features & flows are broken at random and
             | with no documentation. Issues are triaged superficially and
             | then closed instead of resolved. Developers are ridiculed
             | by the team for posting questions (jesus some of the
             | responses around questions for declarativeNetRequest are
             | fucking bad - especially given the shoddy state of the
             | docs), or simply ignored.
             | 
             | I'm pretty torn - I actually think the Edge port of
             | chromium is better than chromium at this point - and if
             | you'd told me 10 years ago that I would end up saying MS
             | has a better browser, I would have laughed in your face.
             | 
             | Meanwhile FF is just limping along, and Safari is
             | absolutely neglected because apple makes all their money in
             | the app store, so it's in their interests to have a shoddy
             | browser from a feature perspective (they still do good work
             | on performance and battery usage, at least).
             | 
             | ---
             | 
             | Long rant aside - I'm very disappointed in MV3. I tried
             | hard to play along, and it's shite.
        
               | lapcat wrote:
               | > Safari is absolutely neglected because apple makes all
               | their money in the app store, so it's in their interests
               | to have a shoddy browser from a feature perspective
               | 
               | This is a strange take as far as extensions are
               | concerned, because last year iOS Safari introduced
               | extension support, something that Android Chrome still
               | doesn't have. And Apple does sell Safari extensions in
               | the App Store, so extension development is in their
               | interests.
        
       | svnpenn wrote:
       | > This conversation is locked
       | 
       | Says all you need to know. They are going to shove this down
       | people's throats, whether they like it or not. Maybe not now, but
       | it's coming. It's kind of disgusting how they talk about this
       | change so matter of fact, as if Chrome is the only choice that
       | people have.
        
         | userbinator wrote:
         | They've already lobbied plenty of web developers into making
         | sites Chrome-only. It certainly shows how powerful their
         | propaganda is.
        
           | rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
           | >They've already lobbied plenty of web developers into making
           | sites Chrome-only
           | 
           | No they didn't, why do you lie like that?
        
             | xmprt wrote:
             | I won't make as strong a claim that they've lobbied
             | developers to make sites Chrome-only, but they've created a
             | lot of tools for developers to check how performant their
             | website is and how SEO friendly it is. Most of the time
             | that's based on Google's metrics which work best on
             | Google's browser and search.
        
               | rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
               | >Most of the time that's based on Google's metrics which
               | work best on Google's browser
               | 
               | And which ones are that? Time to first byte, first
               | content paint, render blocking resources?
        
               | hoten wrote:
               | The web performance metrics absolutely are not specific
               | to Chrome, what makes you think that?
        
             | dmitriid wrote:
             | Yes they did.
             | 
             | For an example, see any discussion on Chrome-only non-
             | standards like hardware APIs where people are convinced
             | they are standards and all other browsers are holding the
             | web back.
             | 
             | Their entire web.dev site is nothing but Chrome propaganda
             | machine that frequently posts about Chrome-only tech or
             | APIs without mentioning they are Chrome-only and possibly
             | never have the chance of becoming cross-browser (web
             | transport comes to mind as a recent example: shipped in
             | Chrome, its status is literally "some ideas scribbled on a
             | napkin")
        
       | gnicholas wrote:
       | This has been so frustrating. My company has two Chrome
       | extensions, one of which we've been able to migrate and are just
       | finishing up, and one of which we are blocked on because we're
       | waiting on a dependency to be sorted out.
       | 
       | Of course, we're not just on Chrome -- we're also on Firefox. But
       | our migrated extension doesn't work on Firefox, since they
       | haven't fully figured out their transition plan. We're left with
       | a gigantic mess that will be confusing to users (because our
       | Chrome MV3 has significant changes to our freemium model, which
       | made sense to implement during the manifest changeover). We'll
       | have to explain to our FF users that they still have the old
       | version, but the new version is only on Chrome. But for our other
       | extension, everyone's on the old version. What a mess.
        
       | cube00 wrote:
       | Locking the message so nobody can reply is a nice touch.
        
         | anaganisk wrote:
         | The removed the dislike button after some exec video of google
         | got so many dislike.
        
           | postsantum wrote:
           | That was the video where Susan Wojcicki received a freedom of
           | speech award from her mom
        
         | chucky123 wrote:
         | That's the Google way(tm)
        
       | jerrygoyal wrote:
       | The story:
       | 
       | They announced mv2 will phase out.
       | 
       | Their initial plan for mv3 was to cripple remote code execution
       | and network requests intercept api for their own good.
       | 
       | They didn't anticipate this much backlash from the community.
       | 
       | Now they've to reintroduce those capabilities making it same to
       | mv2 :|
       | 
       | Circus.
        
       | rx_tx wrote:
       | This is for Manifest V2 (browser extension API that has been
       | generating a lot of debate) and not some Mountain View office
       | footprint expansion like I mistakenly thought out of context.
        
       | 2Gkashmiri wrote:
       | booo..... "but muh brave wont be supporting it"....
       | 
       | the way to signal google that they are not doing a good thing is
       | by replacing chrome/chromium with firefox. switching from chrome
       | to opera/brave is doing the same thing.
       | 
       | sure, firefox is not helping their cause because of their CEO
       | salivating at google revenue but even then, they have committed
       | to supporting UBO, something that goes on to say a lot more about
       | the ethics behind firefox as opposed to chrome
        
       | ghostwords wrote:
       | Previous Google Chrome extensions Manifest V2 shutoff update
       | thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33012057
        
       | mfrisbie wrote:
       | What an unmitigated disaster. Anyone who has been following the
       | MV3 transition saw this coming from a mile away. When I wrote the
       | MV3 chapter for "Building Browser Extensions", it was nearly
       | impossible to commit to any content because there was so little
       | clarity or direction.
       | 
       | I suppose Google gets a tiny bit of credit for not jamming MV3
       | through and leaving developers with the bill, but given the state
       | of things, who has any confidence in what the future of browser
       | extensions holds?
        
         | dmitriid wrote:
         | > I suppose Google gets a tiny bit of credit for not jamming
         | MV3 through and leaving developers with the bill
         | 
         | They will try again in a year, and there will be less
         | opposition (because people get tired of fighting etc.), and
         | this will happen
        
           | akiselev wrote:
           | Doesn't matter. The only people who take Google seriously now
           | are the people who took IBM seriously yesterday.
           | 
           | Google isn't the CIA or NSA. They don't have that kind of
           | staying power because they don't have any guiding principle
           | beyond profit (for better or for worse).
        
             | dmitriid wrote:
             | What a weird thing to say.
             | 
             | Google dominates search, browsers, and mobile operating
             | systems. CIA and NSA inly wished they had this (well,
             | thanks to CLOUD Act they do, through Google and others).
             | 
             | People not taking Google seriously is precisely why all
             | this shit like Manifest V3 is happening.
        
               | vinibrito wrote:
               | I think that the viewpoint is that no dominator lasts
               | forever. Not so weird then. I think that we had two or
               | three browsers be the dominator already and then going
               | away.
        
               | [deleted]
        
         | dessant wrote:
         | It was inevitable to delay the rollout, the adoption of
         | Manifest V3 is way too low among the most popular extensions.
         | Take a look at the various featured categories on the Chrome
         | Web Store, only a small fraction of featured extensions have
         | migrated to Manifest V3. In 3 weeks all of them would have had
         | to be removed from those promotion pages and the Chrome Web
         | Store would have been in ruins.
         | 
         | The deprecation timeline is too aggressive considering that
         | Manifest V3 is still missing important features, so many
         | developers have decided to brace for impact, even if it meant
         | losing the Featured badge for their extensions in January 2023.
        
           | cj wrote:
           | > The deprecation timeline is too aggressive
           | 
           | I've seen Google deprecate a dozen products I've used. They
           | all follow the same pattern:
           | 
           | 1) Deprecation announced with shut down date
           | 
           | 2) 1-2 months before the day, they'll send an email saying
           | the shut down is delayed by 3-12 months
           | 
           | 3) Repeat steps 1-2 until enough people have migrated away
           | 
           | The same thing will happen with Google Analytics, scheduled
           | to be disabled July 2023. There's no way Google will turn off
           | millions of Analytics (GA3) accounts in 6 months when their
           | replacement product (GA4) is so inferior.
        
             | flatiron wrote:
             | I was a really big stadia fan. Controller and dozens of
             | games. Hundreds of hours in game. Everyone said it was
             | going to shit down and I did believe them but said no way
             | they would leave us hanging. Got every penny back from
             | them. So at least with stadia the few that believed in them
             | made out with free gaming over the last years (and a free
             | useless controller)
        
         | runlevel1 wrote:
         | I just wrote a quick script to survey extensions featured on
         | the Chrome Web Store.
         | 
         | Of the 1200 checked so far:
         | 
         | Manifest v2: 872
         | 
         | Manifest v3: 328
         | 
         | They'd basically be breaking almost 2/3 of extensions.
         | 
         | EDIT: Just noticed 9 out of 12 of Google's own extensions are
         | still on manifest v2 as well:
         | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/collection/by_ch...
        
           | tech234a wrote:
           | Note that Google's collection doesn't seem to include all of
           | their extensions. For example, they are missing Google Voice,
           | Google Dictionary, Send from Gmail, Page Analytics, Google
           | Tone, Chrome Web Store Launcher, RSS Subscription Extension,
           | Google Scholar Button, IBA Opt-out, Google Mail Checker,
           | Google Similar Pages, Endpoint Verification, Chrome Remote
           | Desktop, Chromebook Recovery Utility, Certificate Enrollment
           | for Chrome OS, Screen Reader, Print, Google Docs Offline, and
           | I'm sure there are plenty of other Google extensions that I
           | missed in my search. Some of them have been abandoned for a
           | number of years.
           | 
           | Also, this site [1] has been tracking Manifest V3 migration,
           | but I think they might be incorrectly including Apps and
           | Themes in their counts (I believe the 180K figure represents
           | all of the items on the store [2]) which might be throwing
           | off the numbers a bit.
           | 
           | [1]: https://chrome-stats.com/manifest-v3-migration
           | 
           | [2]: https://www.debugbear.com/blog/counting-chrome-
           | extensions
        
             | akiselev wrote:
             | Back in my day attaching Google's name to a product was a
             | positive development. Remember GMail?
             | 
             | "Unmitigated shitshow" is the only thing that comes to mind
             | today.
             | 
             | What tech giveth, tech taketh away.
        
               | szundi wrote:
               | This is so true. They even closed down their IoT core for
               | pennies.
               | 
               | Google = unreliable as business partners and more shitty
               | every day anyway.
        
               | ethbr0 wrote:
               | It's almost like they have an incorrect corporate reward
               | function, that their employees are then optimizing...
        
               | danaris wrote:
               | > What tech giveth, tech taketh away.
               | 
               | Honestly, I would say it's more "what tech giveth, greed
               | taketh away."
        
           | rasz wrote:
           | Im afraid this statistic wont tell you the whole picture
           | because there are things strictly prohibited/not supported by
           | v3. 100% v3 will simply mean all the extensions using those
           | APIs simply got deleted and no longer exist.
        
             | sounds wrote:
             | Our solution has been to uninstall Chrome. Firefox, and
             | when unavoidable, DuckDuckGo's private browser, are doing
             | fine.
        
           | ehsankia wrote:
           | Eh, before the post in OP, I believe the timeline was June
           | 2023 MV2 extensions go unlisted and January 2024 they get
           | deleted. People do procrastinate but we're still far from 2/3
           | being "broken".
        
           | lelandfe wrote:
           | Isn't one of the requirements to be featured using Manifest
           | v3?
           | 
           | https://developer.chrome.com/docs/webstore/best_practices/
        
             | tech234a wrote:
             | I don't think the best practices are necessarily the
             | requirements for the featured badge. Manifest V3 is not yet
             | a requirement for being featured, for example look at the
             | listing for uBlock Origin, which still uses Manifest V2.
        
       | xnx wrote:
       | Some of the most interesting announcements are made late on
       | Fridays.
        
       | CitrusFruits wrote:
       | This is a huge relief. The lack of Offscreen Documents API has
       | been a huge hurdle for migrating to MV3 and has caused numerous
       | headaches.
        
       | spritefs wrote:
       | Let me get this straight: google is removing support for blocking
       | webRequest API, but keeping support for non-blocking webRequest
       | API? How is this supposed to benefit privacy if the non-blocking
       | API is still supported?
        
         | teraflop wrote:
         | The "blocking" and "non-blocking" APIs do completely different
         | things.
         | 
         | With the old API (webRequest), Chrome calls an extension's
         | event handlers before every network request, and uses the
         | result of the handler to decide whether to filter the request.
         | This requires _Chrome itself_ to block
         | 
         | With the new API (declarativeNetRequest), an extension sends a
         | list of rules (i.e. URL patterns) to Chrome, and each rule
         | specifies a static instruction that says how requests matching
         | that pattern should be handled (for instance, being blocked,
         | upgraded from HTTP to HTTPS, or redirected). So Chrome can use
         | its own optimized lookup procedure and doesn't have to block
         | waiting for extension code to complete, which might take
         | arbitrarily long.
         | 
         | The privacy advantage is that the extension can tell Chrome how
         | to handle network requests (in a much more limited way than
         | before) but can't actually gain any information about what
         | requests the user is making. But that's only part of the
         | justification. The Chrome developers have stated in the past
         | that they believe slow extensions using the old webRequest API
         | are causing general browser performance problems (by doing lots
         | of blocking computation on every request) and making it seem
         | like it was Chrome's fault.
        
           | atesti wrote:
           | But don't they keep the original webRequest api in a way
           | where it does not block and where an extension can observer
           | all the traffice, do all the spying, but just cannot block
           | requests?
        
             | somehnacct3757 wrote:
             | The extension would need both the all_urls and webRequest
             | permissions to do this, since you can only spy on requests
             | to origins your extension has a host permission for. The
             | review team discourages all_urls permissions and
             | scrutinizes them more, so theoretically getting a spy onto
             | the store with the right permission combo is hard. If you
             | trust the review team.
             | 
             | Note that these regulations were established for MV2, and
             | MV3 doesn't do anything new to address this. So there's
             | still no benefit to MV3 on this topic. As far as I can
             | tell, and I work with these APIs for a living, the privacy
             | claims of MV3 are bogus.
        
             | gsnedders wrote:
             | It's a separate permission, I believe.
        
         | userbinator wrote:
         | The whole "Manifest V3" (what an opaque name --- again, likely
         | a deliberate choice) push was ostensibly about privacy and
         | security, but they're just excuses to further Google's control.
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | puffoflogic wrote:
       | Translation: We already accomplished our goal of killing
       | (efficient, effective) ad blockers and we really don't feel like
       | doing the rest of the work. Have fun with the results!
        
       | lapcat wrote:
       | I knew this was coming. Google said that they're committed to
       | allowing userscripts in MV3, but they haven't even _started_ the
       | implementation. They 're still in the proposal phase.
       | 
       | https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/279
        
         | TedDoesntTalk wrote:
         | They didn't commit to being in the first release of MV3. I
         | expect MV3 to be incomplete when first released in chrome.
        
           | lapcat wrote:
           | MV3 was released in Chrome quite some time ago, and it is
           | indeed incomplete. The question is not about releasing MV3,
           | which has already been done, but rather about removing MV2.
           | They keep postponing the removal of MV2, because MV3 is
           | incomplete.
        
         | vbezhenar wrote:
         | You can't insert tag into webpage? I'm confused.
        
           | lzaaz wrote:
           | Quite literally yes. It would've killed GreaseMonkey
           | userscripts and such
        
             | vbezhenar wrote:
             | According to my little research you can insert script tags,
             | but you can only use the scripts which are bundled inside
             | the extension. It's still not clear to me what prevents
             | this script to download external script using AJAX which
             | will execute whatever user wants (e.g. some cloud
             | userscript service).
             | 
             | Also for power users it should not be a problem at all.
             | Just create your own extension which is literally few
             | simple files and put your userscripts inside that
             | extension. Then load this extension from the chrome and
             | voila.
        
               | oefrha wrote:
               | > It's still not clear to me what prevents this script to
               | download external script using AJAX which will execute
               | whatever user wants
               | 
               | If you read the MV3 migration guide you'll quickly
               | realize why. CSP script-src is restricted to self, none,
               | or localhost sources for all non-sandbox pages, content
               | scripts included.
               | 
               | https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv3-migr
               | ati...
        
               | vbezhenar wrote:
               | I don't think that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking
               | about inserting a script from the extension which will
               | then download another script from the external source and
               | execute it. Once you've got access to the DOM, you're
               | pretty much unstoppable.
        
               | oefrha wrote:
               | No, CSP doesn't allow you to download scripts from an
               | external source. That's the point of the CSP.
        
               | vbezhenar wrote:
               | You still can just write your userscript as an extension.
               | I just checked - it works. I inserted script into HN and
               | did some stuff.
        
               | oefrha wrote:
               | I never said you can't.
        
               | vbezhenar wrote:
               | Can you pass data between script and extension?
               | Implementing JS or lua should be possible.
        
               | horsawlarway wrote:
               | Yes - I have done this in an MV3 extension. You can
               | basically re-implement your own runtime and download the
               | code and run it there instead of using eval/script tags.
               | 
               | It's very inefficient and it's a pain to write, but it is
               | possible.
               | 
               | I suspect they will not approve extensions that do this
               | if it becomes popular.
        
               | mh- wrote:
               | Since one of the parent comments mentioned AJAX, I'll add
               | that you'll also be prevented from eval'ing that payload.
        
               | oefrha wrote:
               | Yes, I should have been more clear: CSP doesn't allow you
               | to download an external script _and execute it_ , which
               | requires unsafe-eval.
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | Sounds like your exception will need to become a language
               | interpreter itself.
        
               | TOMDM wrote:
               | Does manifest v3 support wasm?
               | 
               | Time to package a JavaScript interpreter into wasm and
               | run it within the extension.
        
           | btown wrote:
           | The entire meta-point of MV3 is, ostensibly for consumer
           | protection, to prevent extension authors from dynamically
           | executing code that has not been reviewed by Google's review
           | process, as well as from executing code synchronously to
           | choose to block a network request. Of course, userscripts are
           | dynamic code not delivered as part of the extension itself.
           | And so are effective ad blockers - when one side of an arms
           | race is fundamentally limited from running code, it becomes
           | open season for the other. The conflict of interest left a
           | foul taste in many people's mouths.
        
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       (page generated 2022-12-10 23:02 UTC)