Security News > 2020 > December > Google Chrome's crackdown on ad blockers and browser extensions, Manifest v3, is now available in beta

Google, which makes most of its money from online ads, insists it wants ad blockers to continue working under the latest, more locked-down iteration of its Chrome browser extension platform, known as Manifest v3.

As a way to measure the problem, Alexandre Blondin, Chrome product manager, pointed out in a blog post on Wednesday that when Google integrated the Chrome Web Store with its Google Safe Browsing infrastructure, "The number of malicious extensions that Chrome disabled to protect people grew by 81 percent."

Manifest v3 is a revision of the capabilities, or more specifically the application programming interfaces available to those developing web extensions for Chrome and for other Chromium-based browsers like Microsoft Edge.

"Although we appreciate the problems of unsafe extensions addressed in part by Manifest v3, we view Manifest v3 as doing serious harm to privacy," said Brendan Eich, CEO and co-founder of Brave Software, in an email to The Register.

According to Li and Vincent, the Chrome Web Store will begin accepting extensions written to conform to Manifest v3 when the stable version of Chrome 88 gets released.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/12/10/googles_browser_extension_platform_rewrite/