Google aims to limit browser privacy and ad-blocking extensions in 2023, but fortunately you still have ways to escape the tech giant’s reach.
Browser extensions are little add-ons made by independent developers for browsers such as Chrome, Safari and Firefox and can be used for a variety of tasks.
You may have seen or used extensions for things like note-taking, saving web pages, reading text aloud for the visually impaired, or ad blocking.
In a classic Google move that the company has repeated before across its App Store and browsers, Google is taking old tools away from developers and forcing them to use far more limited new tools, rather than making both available.
The old framework of tools on which browser extensions are built is called Manifest V2, and its successor will be predictably named Manifest V3.
In short, this change (coming in January 2023), will affect how browser extensions function and limit the things they can do. In some cases, this is useful child-proofing to prevent people downloading malicious add-ons.
However, in many cases, this change will make it much harder for privacy and advert-blocking extensions to do their job.
These kinds of extensions block websites from tracking you and collecting your information, as well as block different kinds of ads. These are especially useful when you deal with lots of surprise or pop-up ads, many of which are malicious attempts to get you to click on their links.
An estimated 736 million people use ad-blocking services worldwide, many of which will be impacted by the change coming next year. This is especially true since Google’s code in fact powers not just Chrome, but many current browsers (such as Microsoft Edge) and even desktop apps (such as Spotify).
Fortunately, there are ways to hold on to ad blocking after January 2023. Mozilla’s Firefox browser (an old competitor in the space) will still maintain ways for privacy and ad-blocking extensions to work.
Another good option would be the Brave browser, which is also based on Google’s engine, but which is committed to its own in-built privacy features and ad blocking.
If you truly wish to stay with a Chrome-based browser, there will still be some ad-blocking extensions available. uBlock Origin Lite is an extension that is built using the new V3 framework and will continue to work in 2023, but it is much more limited in what it can do.
This move to Manifest V3 removes the flexibility that is required by ad blockers to work well and keep pace with advertising innovation, and forces developers to rely on Google to give them the tools they need. This is unlikely, considering Google’s vested interest in advertising and their previously lacklustre support for extensions in general.
This change is outright bad for privacy efforts, and will hamstring the ability for extensions to block data collection. Google claims that these changes will improve security and performance.
However, digital rights groups have put forward several arguments as to why security improvements will be minimal. On top of that, academic research, such as a 2020 study by researchers at Princeton and the University of Chicago, show that privacy extensions actually speed up performance by blocking resource-intensive trackers and ads.
As put by digital rights non-profit the Electronic Frontier Foundation in an article late last year: “Manifest V3 is another example of the inherent conflict of interest that comes from Google controlling both the dominant web browser and one of the largest internet advertising networks.”
IOL Tech