We’ve been anticipating it for years,1 and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the extension will soon no longer be available because it “doesn’t follow the best practices for Chrome extensions”.2 Daly Barnett. “Chrome Users Beware: Manifest V3 is Deceitful and Threatening.” EFF, December 9, 2021. ↩ Lawrence Abrams. “Google warns uBlock Origin and other extensions may be disabled soon.” Bleeping Computer, October 13, 2024. ↩

We’ve been anticipating it for years, and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the extension will soon no longer be available because it “doesn’t follow the best practices for Chrome extensions”.

Now that it is finally happening, many seem to be oddly resigned to the idea that Google is taking away the best and most powerful ad content blocker available on any web browser today, with one article recommending people set up a DNS based content blocker on their network 😒 – instead of more obvious solutions.

I may not have blogged about this but I recently read an article from 1999 about why Gopher lost out to the Web, where Christopher Lee discusses the importance of the then-novel term “mind share” and how it played an important part in dictating why the web won out. In my last post, I touched on the importance of good information to democracies – the same applies to markets (including the browser market) – and it seems to me that we aren’t getting good information about this topic.

This post is me trying to give you that information, to help increase the mind share of an actual alternative. Enjoy!

  • sushibowl@feddit.nlEnglish
    1·
    18 days ago

    It’s addressed in the article. The brave CEO has stated they will continue to support manifest v2 as long as the needed code remains in Chromium. He made no promises what happens when it is removed, though (“I don’t write checks of unknown amount and sign them”)

    • cmhe@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      18 days ago

      So that means they are just supporting it as long as it is easy to do, and that they are not brave enough to fork chromium.

      • cum@lemmy.cafeEnglish
        1·
        18 days ago

        They’re already a fork of Chromium… Also it doesn’t matter much since they use the Google extension store, which disabled uBO.

        You could probably install and handle a manifest V2 extension by installing the xpi file manually. But as a developer, the users who would actually do this is a small fraction of the previous user base.

        So how do you justify your limited manpower to be spent on that increasingly obscure user base? It may as well be removed anyways at that point.