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Google announced that it would revise the proposed changes to the Chrome extension API, which would have broken or reduced the features of a wide range of extensions blocking ads in order to guarantee the preservation of the current variety of content blocking extensions, in response to a wide range of applications. developers and users of these extensions. The company argues that "it is do not, our goal has never been to prevent or remove content blocking " [emphasis Google’s] and that it will work to update its proposal to address capacity gaps and critical issues.
The advertising agency plans to reorganize its extension interface to, for example, increase user privacy, prevent extensions from taking malicious actions, and make browser performance more consistent. Together, these works are documented under the name of Manifest V3.
One of these changes in particular has had serious consequences for ad blockers. Currently, ad blockers are using an API called heavily Web request. This API allows extensions to examine each of the network requests issued by a page and modify them (for example, to redirect them to a different address, to add or delete cookies), to block them completely or to allow them to continue. without hindrance. This has both a significant impact on privacy (an extension can see and steal your cookies and so pretend to be masked) and, according to Google, an impact on performance, because each request network (which he can have dozens in one page) must wait for the extension to perform its analysis.
Google proposed that ad blockers could provide the browser with a list of blocked sites and let the browser block itself, with a new API called déclarativeNetRequest. This has prevented the use of more complex algorithms and the size of this list has been limited to 30,000 entries, much less than many ad blockers typically use.
The change would have erased many ad blockers, as well as other legitimate extensions using the same API. For example, some extensions block phishing sites or known URLs for distributing malicious software. Although their purpose is different, they function in the same way as ad blockers and have been similarly threatened by the proposed changes.
Performance is not always a problem
Ghostery extension developers collected baseline data that measured the overhead imposed by a few ad blocking extensions. The benchmarks have not tested the full extensions, but have used the request blocking engines extensions running in the JavaScript runtime engine of Node.js, measuring near-end performance. 39, a quarter of a million requests, of which about 20% were blocked.
The results show that even though some blockers can introduce a significant performance delay – a version of the DuckDuckGo blocker had a median delay of 8 milliseconds – Ghostery, uBlock Origin and Adblock Plus overhead were negligible, with processing time well below one-tenth of a millisecond. As such, although Google's performance logic is not without foundation, blocking all such extensions because some uncomfortable – although the current extension platform, such as confidentiality, remains a concern.
Google's response to refoulement makes some concessions to developers, although it is far from a complete reversal. The company always intends to limit the Web request API, and still wants the extensions to switch to déclarativeNetRequest. However, these two API changes are in progress. New déclarativeNetRequest its capabilities will be enhanced: extensions will be able to use dynamic blocking lists (where blacklisted URLs are added and removed at runtime), and the overall size of the blocking list will increase by 30,000 (well Google keep that there and that blockers should strive to remove obsolete URLs from their blocking lists).
Google also wants to allow more flexible blocking criteria, such as the size of resources, and is exploring ways to modify requests. But his answer also indicates that some of the changes made by the extensions can be done with the help of other APIs, and as such do not need to be part of déclarativeNetRequest, and are not reasons to keep the current Web request API.
The company also pointed out that Manifest V3 was still a work in progress and that even when Manifest V3 went into production there would be a transition period. The current Manifest V2 platform will be removed only when Manifest V3 is strong enough. In the current state of things, it seems that extension developers will still not be able to do all that they can currently do with Web requestbut may cover more of their bases than the initial proposal allowed.
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