Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers (9to5google.com)
Recent and related:
Chrome is looking to permanently drop MV2 extension - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48471970 - June 2026 (450 comments)
Chrome is looking to permanently drop MV2 extension - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48471970 - June 2026 (450 comments)
74 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 65.2 ms ] threadChromium forks are at the mercy of Google doing everything they can to stop ad blocking.
Firefox forks are often maintain by just “some dude”. If they decide they don’t want to maintain it anymore, it’s done. If everyone switches to a fork and then Firefox goes away because nobody is using the browser anymore, it’s done.
I read some blogs that get linked from hn. I read some reddit subs. And I use LLMs for "search" and questions.
Whenever I do have to go back to the regular web it is horrible.
uBlock/uMatrix functionality should be built into the core. Every domain and PSF should be sandboxed to its own profile. User agents and many js queries should return standard responses. Forcing display of video controls should be trivial. Manipulating pages to show/hide elements and customize feeds should be trivial. Right clicking to download any asset should just work.
And so, so much more.
The browser is my agent, not your mole.
My understanding is they're doing this in the name of security, though it obviously has some benefit to ads. this policy more closely aligns with what Safari does today. And it prevents add-ons from scraping information since they have to put in the block list ahead of time.
I've been using manifest v3 version of Adblock and it's worked just fine for me. But obviously is not perfect, but it fell into more towards security and privacy of the user against malicious extensions.
Likewise, I desperately want to stay on windows because of anticheat, but every year they keep making it harder.
This is story about browser Chromium browser monoculture and Google's influence over it.
Employees at companies using corporate computers love a good malicious popup, right?