Doomsday will not be soon: Google dare not disrupt Manifest v2

It seems Google can’t get the internet to go from Manifest v2 to v3. Insects play an important role, but so does the developer’s limited attention. They fear that version 3 will be too restrictive and will shorten the functionality of ad blockers, among other things.

Before the end of March, Google will publish a new schedule for the release of Manifest v3 in Chromium. The company announced this in December last year, after its original timing was abandoned. Calendar buffs will note that March is officially over. However, it remains to wait for a new roadmap. Clarification is scheduled for an unspecified later date.

embarrassed

This is good news for ad blockers and a bit embarrassing for Google. In 2018, the company launched an API update plan for Chromium extensions. The current set of APIs is called Manifest v2 and will no longer be relevant. For example, Google fears that the API gives too much freedom to developers to abuse Chromium and unnecessarily consume too much CPU or memory. Manifest v3 should be a more modern alternative.

Meanwhile, Manifest v3 is already available, but it will be crawling with bugs and incompleteness. Therefore, Google Manifest v2 dare not disable. It seems to be taking much longer than expected to get version 3 to the proper level, allowing extension developers to continue happily relying on version 2. At this point, about 128,000 extensions will work with Manifest v2 and only 34,000 with Manifest v3.

Good for Google

This is not very surprising. Manifest v3 remains primarily a Google project, and it certainly isn’t happening at the behest of the wider community of developers or users. On the contrary: the new API will provide developers with less powerful tools and seriously compromise the operation of ad blockers, among other things. Google makes a living from ads, so releasing a “better” API to make it easier to block ads can feel like a conflict of interest.

For its part, Google undertakes that it will under no circumstances disable Manifest v2 until Manifest v3 is fully ready, and until then it will issue a warning at least half a year before the date in question. This warning has not yet been issued.