Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

[steven36]

Back in January, Google announced a proposed change to Chrome’s extensions system, called Manifest V3, that would stop current ad blockers from working efficiently. In a response to the overwhelming negative feedback, Google is standing firm on Chrome’s ad blocking changes, sharing that current ad blocking capabilities will be restricted to enterprise users.

 

 

 

Manifest V3 comprises a major change to Chrome’s extensions system, including a revamp to the permissions system and a fundamental change to the way ad blockers operate. In particular, modern ad blockers, like uBlock Origin and Ghostery, use Chrome’s webRequest API to block ads before they’re even downloaded.

 

With the Manifest V3 proposal, Google deprecates the webRequest API’s ability to block a particular request before it’s loaded. As you would expect, power users and extension developers alike criticized Google’s proposal for limiting the user’s ability to browse the web as they see fit.

 

Now, months later, Google has responded to some of the various issues raised by the community, sharing more details on the changes to permissions and more. The most notable aspect of their response, however, is a single sentence buried in the text, clarifying their changes to ad blocking and privacy blocking extensions.

"Chrome is deprecating the blocking capabilities of the webRequest API in Manifest V3, not the entire webRequest API (though blocking will still be available to enterprise deployments)."

Google is essentially saying that Chrome will still have the capability to block unwanted content, but this will be restricted to only paid, enterprise users of Chrome. This is likely to allow enterprise customers to develop in-house Chrome extensions, not for ad blocking usage.

 

For the rest of us, Google hasn’t budged on their changes to content blockers, meaning that ad blockers will need to switch to a less effective, rules-based system. This system is how blockers like AdBlock Plus currently work.

 

One of the original concerns of switching to this system was the fact that Chrome currently imposes a limit of 30,000 rules, while popular ad blocking rules lists like EasyList use upwards of 75,000 rules. In the response, Google claims that they’re looking to increase this number, depending on performance tests, but couldn’t commit to anything specific.

"We are planning to raise these values but we won’t have updated numbers until we can run performance tests to find a good upper bound that will work across all supported devices."

The lead developer of uBlock Origin, Raymond Hill, has commented on the situation, both to The Register and on uBlock Origin’s GitHub, pointing out that allowing ad blockers goes completely against Google’s business model.

"Google’s primary business is incompatible with unimpeded content blocking. Now that Google Chrome product has achieve high market share, the content blocking concerns as stated in its 10K filing are being tackled."

Google themselves have even admitted as such in a recent SEC Form 10-K filing by Alphabet, uncovered by Hill, in which ad blocking extensions are labeled as a “risk factor” to Google’s revenues.

"New and existing technologies could affect our ability to customize ads and/or could block ads online, which would harm our business.

 

Technologies have been developed to make customizable ads more difficult or to block the display of ads altogether and some providers of online services have integrated technologies that could potentially impair the core functionality of third-party digital advertising. Most of our Google revenues are derived from fees paid to us in connection with the display of ads online. As a result, such technologies and tools could adversely affect our operating results."

With that in mind, the change makes a great deal of sense, when you think of Chrome as a way for Google to better deliver ads to your devices. By allowing in-depth ad blockers to continue to function, they’re allowing for a direct, negative impact on their largest revenue stream. Chrome’s enterprise users get an exception because they’re a separate revenue stream.

9to5Google’s Take

Firefox is available on all platforms (including Chrome OS via the Android or Linux app) and, unlike Chrome, supports browser extensions on Android, including uBlock Origin and other privacy extensions. Just remember to unblock sites you wish to support financially.

 

Source

[mp68terr]

9 minutes ago, steven36 said:

Firefox is available on all platforms (including Chrome OS via the Android or Linux app) and, unlike Chrome, supports browser extensions on Android, including uBlock Origin and other privacy extensions. Just remember to unblock sites you wish to support financially.

Chromium-based browsers are likely not affected either by google move against ad-blockers (?).

[steven36]

Just now, mp68terr said:

Chromium-based browsers are likely not affected either by google move against ad-blockers (?).

Yes it will effect all  Chromium-based browsers

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=896897

 

Chromium is maintained  by Google it's just the open source version of Google Chrome  other browser decided to use Googles  code and not there own . Same  as Firefox is open source  and when they change there API  there is no way to run legacy extensions and web extensions even in forks like waterfox esr  witch still contain the old code at the same time legacy extensions break web extensions. Once Google pushes out there new API  no longer will these adblockers  be compatible  with it so they will  remove it from there store ,

 

[mp68terr]

3 minutes ago, steven36 said:

Yes it will effect all  Chromium-based browsers

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=896897

Bad news then. Make the forks pretty weak when the main app change.

[steven36]

4 minutes ago, mp68terr said:

Bad news then. Make the forks pretty weak when the main app change.

Back before Chromium  had  a better  API  less restrictive than it  has now were you could run YouTube  downloader extensions and  they was many others they had,  all were abandoned with a api update , Just like Firefox broke  extensions many times with API updates  and then they  switch to Web extensions and broke all legacy ones . But still Firefox allow  Web extensions like these that were ban from Google's Chromium api years ago.

[Karlston]

Google is brave doing this. Ad-blocking add-ons are very popular, and  Chrome users will notice if ads start to appear.

 

Mozilla is probably smiling right now.

[steven36]

26 minutes ago, Karlston said:

Google is brave doing this. Ad-blocking add-ons are very popular, and users will notice if ads start to appear.

 

Mozilla is probably smiling right now.

Most likely , after they messed  up there  browser for years  trying to become more like Chrome  trying figure  out some magic pill to get users to switch back to Firefox   .  One thing you can say about Mozilla i never knew them to give up  . When Microsoft was busy killing off Mozilla's 1st browser Netscape  they sold it to AOL  and was busy making what we now know as Firefox . It started out as Mozilla Application Suite   witch is now known as Sea monkey  they forked it to what they called Phoenix now known as Firefox and  Microsoft lost tons of users to Firefox  with the help of AOL changeling Microsoft's dominance over web browsers  .  .

 

Firefox was created in 2002 under the codename "Phoenix" by the Mozilla community members who desired a standalone browser, rather than the Mozilla Application Suite bundle. During its beta phase, Firefox proved to be popular with its testers and was praised for its speed, security, and add-ons compared to Microsoft's then-dominant Internet Explorer 6. Firefox was released on November 9, 2004,^[and challenged Internet Explorer's dominance with 60 million downloads within nine months.^[Firefox is the spiritual successor of Netscape Navigator, as the Mozilla community was created by Netscape in 1998 before their acquisition by AOL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox

 

 

Now Google  is becoming like Microsoft of the 1990s  . Gorhill  explains it all here  in  this topic

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#issuecomment-496009417

[stylemessiah]

They'll cave, they simply have to....

 

Part of me is sure theyre trying this on due to the old adage "any publicity is good publicity"

 

They'll probably backpedal and cave at the 11th hour and make themselves look like theyre the friend of the average user....trust me the average unwashed end user is that stupid to count this as a plus...

[steven36]

43 minutes ago, stylemessiah said:

They'll cave, they simply have to....

 

Part of me is sure theyre trying this on due to the old adage "any publicity is good publicity"

 

They'll probably backpedal and cave at the 11th hour and make themselves look like theyre the friend of the average user....trust me the average unwashed end user is that stupid to count this as a plus...

People  kept trying  to tell me on here  Mozilla  was going to cave  with doing away with  legacy addons  when i try to warn them and then it happen    . Google caved  on a lot of things but they been talking about this since 2018  and still  not backed down about it  . I can still remember when everyone used IE  and they was no Ad Blockers  and ads were normal  and people got infected  with viruses  , spyware  and all kinds of crap in the early 2000s .

[mp68terr]

23 minutes ago, steven36 said:

when everyone used IE  and they was no Ad Blockers  and ads were normal  and people got infected  with viruses  , spyware  and all kinds of crap in the early 2000s .

Probably less ads to block in the early 2000s. Slower connections and likely less ad-related business.

[steven36]

55 minutes ago, mp68terr said:

Probably less ads to block in the early 2000s. Slower connections and likely less ad-related business.

They was worse back then  because they was  nothing to block them   Porn wasn't  free back then like it is now  you had use some type  of p2p  program , ftp or Usenet to download it to get it free and sites that showed it on the clearnet  would  infect there  porn seekers  with 1-900 dailer programs and porn popups . I   cleaned peoples PCs from spyware and other crap back then and you always could tell who was trying to find free porn because they was infected. with the porn type adware .   One time back then even Windows update site was infected with a virus . They was big ad marketing  campaigns  back then by everyone  that installed adware and spyware on your system , Freeware came with spyware even with no opt out , the internet was the wild west and then you had real virus everywhere to boot. You can find old pcs  with Windows 98 and things if they still work infected with spyware and adware that don't even exist no more  .

[mp68terr]

Don't remember seeing most ads at that time, maybe because of the use of the proxomitron (as far as I remember).

Yes, plenty of anecdotes about porn-related spy-crap-younameit-wares from that time 

[The AchieVer]

Google still plans to cripple ad-blocking in Chrome, but enterprises will be exempt

The tech giant is considering making an exception to its stop on ad blockers for enterprise.

 

 

 

Google has clarified proposed changes to the Chrome browser that some developers fear will cripple ad blockers and revealed an exemption for enterprise users.

 

 

Back in January, Google angered developers of ad blocker Chrome extensions over planned changes to Chrome's webRequest API that could harm existing extensions. The proposal, outlined in a draft of Google's Manifest V3 document about the future of Chrome extensions, potentially affects ad blockers, security extensions, parental control enforcement, and various privacy-enhancing services. 

 

Google planned to change the webRequest API in a way that would stop existing permitted behavior that allowed ad-blocker extensions to "intercept network requests to modify, redirect, or block" API requests. Instead, the webRequestAPI would be reduced to an "observational" role, making it a tool for passive, rather than active, interaction by extensions. 

 

In a message on a Google Groups page about Manifest V3, Google staffer Simeon Vincent explained the motivation for the deprecation and mentioned an exception for enterprise instances of Chrome.

"Chrome is deprecating the blocking capabilities of the webRequest API in Manifest V3, not the entire webRequest API (though blocking will still be available to enterprise deployments)," wrote Vincent. 

 

"Extensions with appropriate permissions can still observe network requests using the webRequest API. The webRequest API's ability to observe requests is foundational for extensions that modify their behavior based on the patterns they observe at runtime."

 

Vincent's further descriptions illustrate the Manifest V3 document is still subject to change. 

 

"Chrome is not deprecating <all_urls> in Manifest V3, but we are changing how it works. Our primary motivation here is to give end-users more control over where extensions can inject themselves. The current extension installation flow allows developers to declare that they require access to a given set of hosts and the user must choose whether to grant all required permissions or cancel the installation. We are planning to modify the install flow so the user will be able to choose whether or not they want to grant the extension the ambient host permissions it requested. We're still iterating on the updated UI and will share additional details once this lands in Canary [the experimental build of Chrome where Google tests new features]."

 

 

Raymond Hill, the developer of uBlock Origin and uMatrix who raised concerns about the changes in Manifest V3, still has some objections to the revised proposal, in particular with Google's claim that it can't provide a definitive answer on the status of the webRequest API until it runs further performance tests. 

 

"The blocking ability of the webRequest API is still deprecated, and Google Chrome's limited matching algorithm will be the only one possible, and with limits dictated by Google employees," wrote Hill. 

"It's annoying that they keep saying "the webRequest API is not deprecated" as if developers have been worried about this -- and as if they want to drown the real issue in a fabricated one nobody made."

 

In his view, sluggish web page loading is due to Chrome "bloat" rather than the performance of the API itself for "well crafted extensions".  

 

Hill also argues that to improve performance, Google should just follow Mozilla's approach in its Firefox browser.  

"If performance concerns due to the blocking nature of the webRequest API was their real motive, they would just adopt Firefox's approach and give the ability to return a Promise on just the three methods which can be used in a blocking manner."

 

 

 

Source

[steven36]

1 hour ago, mp68terr said:

Don't remember seeing most ads at that time, maybe because of the use of the proxomitron (as far as I remember).

Yes, plenty of anecdotes about porn-related spy-crap-younameit-wares from that time 

Back then clickable banner ads paid pretty good  now they don't pay nothing

 

Banner ad click through rates have fallen to less than 0.1%

 

The  first banner ad from way back in 1994 payed out

 

This banner ad saw a 44% click through rate and sent traffic to a series of AT&T ads narrated by Tom Selleck, that promised a future where you could read books, get directions, send faxes, pay tools, buy stuff, watch movies, and attended meetings – all online? Whoa!!!

https://marketinginsidergroup.com/content-marketing/banners-99-problems/

 

So they had to start tricking people with popup ads because  click through rates have fallen  now it's even worse  because now Google collects your data in order to make ads , so now you have to worry about ads you can see  and  them harvesting your data witch you cant see .  See back in the early internet they made most of there money on freeware from spyware /adware by offering you something free and your whole PC would be  a spyware /adware  botnet.  They all done  it Google , Yahoo  Ask , etc  etc, would  put toolbars in products  full of spyware  that would install in IE  so they could snoop on your browsing .  Well  people cached on to it and complained so they started offering opt outs in software for these campaigns . So the ad vendors moved it to the cloud  and started making software with there spyware baked in , instead of selling it  to others as a 3rd party program and it was a success  they took the market share from IE  by giving you the ability to block there own  ads  but they was still getting paid from harvesting your data .  Well  since last year the EU  and USA  is starting to come down on them for using spyware tactics  so  they fear that well  is fixing to dry up and  they will have to fully  depend on ads to get paid  and 0.1% don't cut  it with adblockers blocking there ads we never see them and they never get paid .

 

What is happening  to them now from  harvesting  data  with all the big data breaches  from hackers   happen to ads starting back  in  2007/2008 before then ads were  just more of annoyance  than anything else..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising#History

 

The problem all along is with  any kind of monetizing   of the internet it will be hacked sooner or latter and the blackhats  is going to  cash in.   Hacking turn  from pranksters  doing it for shits and giggles to  a  very well paying business so nothing is safe no more  if it connects to the internet.

 

[stylemessiah]

In any event, not going to affect me, ive long either run a custom version of Squid or more lately ive used dnsproxy-cache with my own custom blacklist generation...big benefit of dnsproxy-cache is that i use it on my android too, using the same list as my desktop...i just sync the black/whitelists

 

So really, if google want to disallow adblockers, ill still be just fine thanks

 

I still dont think they will enforce the adblocking extension takedown

 

[steven36]

36 minutes ago, stylemessiah said:

I still dont think they will enforce the adblocking extension takedown

  

Ad-blockers  will still be allowed  but only the ones like ABP  that  are partners with Google  that white list  there ads  and  dont really work on chorme because they only allow  30,000 rules.

 

11 hours ago, steven36 said:

For the rest of us, Google hasn’t budged on their changes to content blockers, meaning that ad blockers will need to switch to a less effective, rules-based system. This system is how blockers like AdBlock Plus currently work.

 

Using the method  you say to block ads  you will still need to make your own  cosmetic  rules    because ad-blocking  in the cloud  still leaves   a lot  of stuff behind  . Same as when i use to use admuncher   and used APB  to make cosmetic  rules years ago . I have and option to block ads thorough a service  i pay for in the cloud  but never used  it, i will just remove chromium i hardly  use it anyway  if they don't back out. I use Auto host witch is meant to be used with UBO  or others it already blocks  a few sites were i cant access them without tor  that's the problem with system wide adblocking  it blocks to little or too much.

 

[TheEmpathicEar]

Hmm, it seems strange that Google would take such an extreme stance on this issue. Ad Blockers have been around for a long time. Why wait until now? Did I miss something here?

EDIT: Will there be some work-a-round(s) [if] when this goes into effect?

[IronY-Man]

That looks to be master plan all along , as most of the browser's now depends on Chrome's Engine sans Fox !

[Karlston]

2 hours ago, TheEmpathicEar said:

Why wait until now? Did I miss something here?

 

Google gets a large part of its revenue from ads. $US116 billion in 2018. Adblockers are a threat to that income.

 

From this article published May 1... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30/google-s-ad-revenue-mystery-five-possible-theories

 

Quote

Shares of Google’s Alphabet Inc. shares fell off a cliff on Tuesday after the company’s first quarter earnings report, the sharpest drop in seven years. One culprit was the unexpected shortfall in Google’s main business: Advertising sales grew at the lowest rate since 2015.

 

Google have decided that growing its ad revenue is more important than maintaining its Chrome browser's market share.

[Whoopenstein]

How ironic - since Google originally started out with a search engine that didn't push ads. All of the others did. That's what made them successful. Then the original guys sold out. The company got huge. How greedy and evil can you get? Bastards!

[Karlston]

Similar topics merged.

[TheEmpathicEar]

[What is the other topic?] In 1998-1999, I did a Computer Training course, very basic. We were told to use this new search engine: Google. It was very lean, very simple. Who would have ever thought that it would come to this? Google has a monopoly in online search, ads, and probably some other things that I am forgetting. But, to be this greedy and make it harder for us to block or suppress ads? Who knew?

[Karlston]

10 minutes ago, TheEmpathicEar said:

 

[What is the other topic?

 

 

If you're asking what I merged into this topic, it's the post from our friend @The AchieVer  and any replies.

 

Since this topic is fairly busy, those posts are a fair distance above my merge message post. Merging inserts posts in chronological (time) order.

 

HTH.

 

[DKT27]

Expect a lot of people to switch to Firefox. A lot of them are switching already but they were in minority, now expect more to do so.

 

Remember, changes to Firefox addons made it problematic for regular users of Firefox, it does not deter Chrome users from switching to Firefox.

 

Having said, I do think such addons developers will find a way to make them work, but not as efficiently though.

[TheEmpathicEar]

Well, I may have to switch to Firefox [if it comes to this]. Chrome users [like me] would have to know how to migrate bookmarks, and possibly other things.