Google delays the death of Manifest v2 and changes to extension badges in the Web Store

Though a more technical subject, the coming of Chrome’s “Manifest v3” has become one of the most talked about and debated “issues” in the tech community today. The reason why is that many ad blockers may stop working when this change takes place, and though Google swears it’s not looking to put anyone out of work, its approach to openness has come into question.

Our goal is not to break extensions. We are working with extension developers to strive to keep this breakage to a minimum, while still advancing the platform to enhance security, privacy, and performance for all users.

Chromium Bugs

You can read a whole lot more about what this means for you and your ad blocker in our previous write-up. Last year, Chrome 88 introduced it in hopes of fixing the “extension problem“, and making the Chrome Web Store more trustworthy for users. However, earlier this week, it was noted that due to common challenges that Google is looking to address to make the transition from v2 to v3 smoother for developers, it will be pushing the timeline back.

Now, instead of deprecating Manifest v2 in June of this next year in Chrome Stable, it will “reevaluate” its plan, so all phase-out changes have been temporarily paused. This is no doubt great news for ad blocker extension devs, but since Manifest v3 is much better for user privacy, it means that the beneficial changes are also on hold.

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. Expect to hear more about the updated phase-out plan and schedule by March of 2023.

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