"We still have real misgivings that these changes have more to do with Google protecting its bottom line than it does with improving security for Chrome users."
Ghostery is working to update its extension for Manifest V3 but would rather spend its time on "real privacy innovations," President Jeremy Tillman said in a statement Wednesday. Now Chrome, Safari and Edge dictate what can or cannot be blocked and how it should be done." Previously, ad blocker developers were exploring ideas like using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to improve their products. "The main victim of Manifest V3 is innovation," Meshkov said in a statement Wednesday. The shift brought on by Manifest V3 will spread to all browsers, to the detriment of ad blocking software, predicted Andrey Meshkov, co-founder and chief technology officer of AdGuard, an ad-blocking extension. AdGuard, Ghostery unhappy with Manifest V3 "We believe extensions must be trustworthy by default, which is why we've spent this year making extensions safer for everyone," Google said in a blog post. Privacy push could stop some annoying website pop-ups and online tracking.
They said the rules limits will stop their extensions from running their full lists of actions to screen ads or block tracking. Reducing the number of rules allowed angered creators of extensions like the uBlock Origin ad blocker and the Ghostery tracking blocker. Google announced the changes two years ago. Rules are used, for example, to check if a website element comes from an advertiser's server and should therefore be blocked. Among other things, Manifest v3 limits the number of "rules" that extensions may apply to a web page as it loads. Extensions can change Chrome's behavior through abilities that Manifest v3 exposes.