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!

  • Madis@lemm.eeEnglish
    6·
    27 days ago

    We will now [Oct 9] begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable. This change will be slowly rolled out over the following weeks. Users will be directed to the Chrome Web Store, where they will be recommended Manifest V3 alternatives for their disabled extension. For a short time, users will still be able to turn their Manifest V2 extensions back on. Enterprises using the ExtensionManifestV2Availability policy will be exempt from any browser changes until June 2025.

    https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate/mv2-deprecation-timeline#october_9th_2024_an_update_on_manifest_v2_phase-out

    So there is no single date for normal users, but June 2025 is fixed for enterprise (and expected date for Brave, Vivaldi)

    • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      27 days ago

      is ungoogled chromium affected i use that as a secondary browser for some extensions

      • Madis@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        27 days ago

        Yes, by default every Chromium browser is affected. It is just a matter of

        • whether they want to extend it to the enterprise time (which Edge and Opera won’t do IIRC)
        • whether they’d try to keep it working after enterprise time (maybe Brave and Vivaldi, but it could take a lot of effort)
        • whether they even have an alternative place to download extensions from if CWS takes MV2 extensions down (Brave has some workaround for few extensions, not sure about others)

        Maybe there will be some devs working on Ungoogled Chromium to keep the support, but they also have to think where users would even get the extensions from.

        • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          27 days ago

          Ohh okay I wanted to try bromite on pc bcs it has a inbuilt adblocker but it broke some my extensions