Mozilla has officially reiterated that it’s going to keep offering support for both Manifest v2 and Manifest v3 extensions in Firefox. Google is removing support for Manifest v2 from Chrome, and with it a feature called blockingWebRequest that is used by ad blockers like uBlock Origin. Google’s replacement for that feature is more restrictive and less capable, and as such, uBlock Origin no longer works on Chrome.
Firefox, however, will continue supporting both blockingWebRequest and declarativeNetRequest — giving developers more flexibility and keeping powerful privacy tools available to users.
↫ Scott DeVaney and Ed Sullivan
There’s a lot to be worried about when it comes to Mozilla’s future, but on this matter, at least, they’re taking the correct stance that genuinely puts users first. It’s no surprise Google is using Manifest v3 as an excuse to nerf adblocking in Chrome, since adblocking cuts into Google’s most important source of revenue. If you’re still using Chrome, this alone should be more than enough reason to switch to Firefox, so you can retain the most optimal form of adblocking.
The various Chromium skins will most likely all lose support for Manifest v2 as well once the code is actually removed from Chromium in June 2025. Vivaldi announced as such, and unless any of the other Chromium skins out there decide to fork Chromium and maintain their own version, you can expect all of them to lose support for Manifest v2 around the same date. Safari is harder to pin down, since Apple doesn’t make any statements about future product. For now, it supports both Manifest v2 and v3, and I don’t really see a reason why Apple would remove v2 support.
Mozilla in its current form has no future anyway.
What are you talking about? You’ve just read that GOOGLE is REMOVING something that helps block ADS, you also read that Mozilla is NOT removing this thing that HELPS block ADS and your conclusion is that Mozilla has no future?
ARE YOU OK? logic, please?
marc_dimarco,
I don’t think the implication was that “mozilla has no future” had anything to do with their stance on adblocking, but rather their shrinking market share and financials.
https://expertbeacon.com/firefox-at-a-crossroads-will-google-cut-off-mozillas-funding-in-2024/
We know that google designed manifest v3 to promote their interests in advertising and manifest v2 is better for adblocking. Supporting v2 still might not change mozilla’s outlook though.
Limited demographics have been witnessing google testing their ability to detect and block adblocking browsers on youtube over the past year. I encountered it myself for a week or so last summer. I haven’t been affected since then, but I suspect google may intend to roll this out globally at the same time they kill manifest v2 in chrome so that anyone thinking about jumping ship will see that installing firefox or another adblocking browser won’t fix the problem and may even make the experience worse.
Considering there are an ongoing management changes happening at the very top, as a result Firefox could try to position itself as a web browser with strongest ad block support and attract a couple of users by doing so. Still to gain any significant traction new leadership will need to be much more politically incorrect and engaging, to firstly even educate potential user base on why they need Firefox. As ATM nobody really cares, ads or no ads, it’s all the same. Privacy for example is currently a concept most people can’t even grasp any more, so expecting such people will act on it is rather naive. Decades of the industry making profit out of human privacy took its toll.
Opera (which is Chromium based) plans to continue supporting Manifest V2 extensions in Opera independently of what will happen to other browsers: https://blogs.opera.com/news/2024/10/opera-support-manifest-v2-ad-blocking/
Opera is one of the few Chromium browsers that would have a easier time to continue supporting Manifest V2 because they have their own browser extension store (https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/). Other then Chrome and Opera, I don’t think any of the other Chromium browsers that have their own extension stores.