Google started testing the Manifest V3. Will this be the end of uBlock Origin?

A few months ago we shared here on the blog the news about Google's intentions to remove ad blockers from your browser, this because the changes introduced in the Manifest V3 They mainly affect extensions that are intended to block advertising within the browser.

Now, several months later Google has started testing the third version of its manifest (Manifest V3), in which the support for the new manifest, defines the capabilities and resources provided by plugins, this Manifest V3 has been added to the Chrome Canary experimental builds.

The new manifesto was developed as part of an initiative to improve security, privacy and performance Add-ons (the main goal is to simplify the creation of high-performance and safe add-ons and make it difficult to create slow and insecure add-ons)

The manifest is still in the initial alpha testing stage, It is not final and has been added to give developers the opportunity to start experimenting and adapting their plugins. The activation of the new manifesto is expected next year.

While End of support for the second edition of the manifest has yet to be determined. To simplify the migration of plugins to the new manifest, a checklist has been prepared that includes the changes that need to be addressed for plugin developers.

Related article:

Google continues with its intentions to remove ad blockers

Here it is important to remember that the main dissatisfaction with the new manifesto is related to completion of the stand for lock mode from the webRequest API, which will be limited to read-only mode.

An exception will only be made for the Chrome for Enterprise edition, in which support for the webRequest API will be maintained. Mozilla decided not to follow the new manifest and to keep Firefox fully using the webRequest API.

Raymond Hill, lead developer of uBlock Origin, condemned this decisione Google. According to the latter, the switch to declarativeNetRequest API would likely mean the death of these extensions used by at least 10 million Internet users.

"If this (rather limited) declarativeNetRequest API ends up being the only way that content blockers can do their job, it basically means that two content blockers that I have maintained for years, uBlock Origin and uMatrix can no longer exist"

Instead WebRequest API to filter the content in the new manifest proposed a declarative API declarativeNetRequest.

If the webRequest API allowed you to connect your own controllers with full access to network requests and capable of modifying traffic on the fly, the new declarativeNetRequest API provides access to a universal built-in filtering engine Out of the box that independently processes blocking rules, does not allow the use of its own filtering algorithms, and does not allow complex rules overlapping each other based on conditions.

The new manifest also introduces other changes that affect plug-in support. Among them they are:

• The transition to running service workers as background processes, which will require the developers to change the code of some additions.
• New granular permission request model: plugin cannot be activated immediately for all pages ('all_urls«), But it will only work in the context of the active tab, that is, the user will have to confirm the work of the plugin for each site.
• Change in cross-origin application processing- According to the new manifest, the same authority restrictions will be applied to the content processing scripts as to the main page where these scripts are inserted (for example, if the page does not have access to the location API, so the script plugins won't get this access either).
• Prohibition of the execution of code downloaded from external servers (We are talking about situations where a plugin loads and executes external code).