Google pushes back update that will break ad-blocking extensions

At the end of summer became knownthat Google is going to update the Chrome extension standard to Manifest V3, which will improve the browser's security and performance over V2.

But as part of the concern for users, Manifest V3 replaced an API called Web Request, which is widely used by ad blocking extensions, with Declarative Net Request. This interface is more secure, but limits the capabilities of AdBlock and its counterparts.

Manifest V2 support was originally scheduled to end in January 2023 for Chrome Canary, as well as developer and beta builds. In June, the changes will gradually begin to roll out to users of stable builds of the browser, and by January 2024 they will completely abandon the old standard. But due to negative feedback from the developers, the timing decided to move.

Now the exact dates are not specified, but they definitely decided to abandon the first stage of the program in January. The updated schedule should be published closer to March next year, which gives the developers several additional months to come up with opportunities to migrate to Manifest V3 while maintaining key features extensions.