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Manifest v3 will arrive with Chrome 88 in mid-January,
Stephen Shankland / CNET
With the next version of Chrome, Google is moving forward with a plan to improve privacy and security by controlling some of the capabilities of the extensions that are used to customize the browser. The move had angered some developers who they hoped it would cripple ad blockers.
Manifest v3, the programming interface behind Google’s security plans, will arrive with Chrome 88 in mid-January, Google said Wednesday at the Chrome Dev Summit. Extensions using the old Manifest v2 will continue to work for at least one year.
Extensions can change the behavior of Chrome through the abilities manifested by Manifest v3. Among other things, Manifest v3 limits the number of “rules” that extensions can apply to a web page while it is loading. Rules are used, for example, to check whether a website element comes from an advertiser’s server and should therefore be blocked. Google announced the changes two years ago.
Reducing the number of rules allowed the angry creators of extensions like the uBlock Origin ad blocker and the Ghostery tracking blocker. They said the rule limits will prevent their extensions from executing their full lists of actions to filter ads or block tracking. That could allow websites to bypass the extensions and preferences of the people who installed them.
Google has defended its technology and argues that giving extensions too much freedom invites abuse. The search giant says it listened to developers and modified Manifest v3 in response. For example, it relaxed the originally proposed rule limit and added a new mechanism to enforce some rules. Eyeo, the developer of one of the widely used Adblock Plus extensionHe said Tuesday that he is happy with Google’s Manifest V3 approach.
The changes underscore how difficult it can be for Google to balance providing powerful tools to developers and the need to prevent abuse. The balance is particularly difficult to strike given that Chrome is one of the largest platforms in the tech industry. More than a billion people use the browser, Google said, and it accounts for about 64% of web usage, according to analytics firm StatCounter.
“We believe extensions should be trusted by default, so we’ve spent this year making extensions more secure for everyone,” Google said in a blog post.
The company has incorporated comments from ad blocker developers AdGuard and EasyList. “One of our goals is to make it as easy as possible for developers to achieve their core use cases while requiring less access to user data,” the company said in a statement.
Extensions can pose a serious risk. Google blocks more than 1,800 malicious extensions uploads each month, it said in 2019.
Developers at uBlock Origin and Ghostery did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Microsoft Edge gets Manifest v3
The importance of Chrome’s team options is magnified by the fact that other browsers, including Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Opera and Brave, are based on their open source Chromium database. Microsoft said it will also adopt Manifest v3.
“After an extensive review of the concerns raised by content blockers and the community, we believe that most of those concerns have been or will be resolved,” Microsoft said in a blog post in October. “We recognize the value of content blocking extensions and appreciate the role they play in honoring user choice.”
Another change from Manifest v3 is that extensions can no longer update their capabilities by downloading code from third-party sites. The full extension should now be distributed via the Chrome Web Store, a move Google says improves security screens and speeds up reviews.
Manifest v3 should eventually give Chrome users a better idea of how extensions use their data and provide more control over how that happens, Google said.
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