In January, Google announced Manifest V3, a proposal that would change how extensions on Chrome would function. In the process, it would prevent ad blockers among the current brood from working properly.
To no one's surprise, plenty of users aren't happy about it, and they voiced out their negative reactions to it. Despite that, however, the Mountain View company will be continuing with its plans.
Chrome Blocking Ad Blocking
As reported earlier by 9to5Google, Google has received negative feedback over its proposed change, and it has now responded to the clamors of the community.
"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)," the company said.
Just to be clear, this means that ad blocking capabilities on Chrome aren't going away for good. They'll just be limited to paid, enterprise users of the browser moving forward.
A Google spokesperson also reached out to the news outlet, saying that "Chrome supports the use and development of ad blockers." They also added that the company is working with developers to "get feedback and iterate on the design of a privacy-preserving content filtering system that limits the amount of sensitive browser data shared with third parties."
However, 9to5Google explains that the proposal and its changes will render most ad blockers on Chrome to be unusable for regular users of the browser.
Better Ads
Google has been implementing one measure after another in a bid to combat abusive ads, though it has been rolling out ads to various platforms, such as the Google app and Android TV.
At any rate, it's trying to put an end to the kinds of ads that users typically want to block. The company is a member of the Coalition for Better Ads, after all.
Google's move is more or less expected, considering it makes most of its revenue from advertising, but for those who can't live without ad blockers, it might be time to switch to, say, Mozilla's Firefox, which recently got an update that made it "faster than ever."
