Chrome API Update Will Kill a Bunch of Other Extensions, Not Just Ad Blockers (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A planned update to one of the Google Chrome extensions APIs would kill much more than a few ad blockers, ZDNet has learned, including browser extensions for antivirus products, parental control enforcement, phishing detection, and various privacy-enhancing services. Developers for extensions published by F-Secure, NoScript, Amnesty International, and Ermes Cyber Security, among others, made their concerns public today after news broke this week that Google was considering the API change. Furthermore, efforts to port NoScript from Firefox to Chrome are also impacted, according to the plugin's author, who says the new API update all but cripples the NoScript for Chrome port.

Comments

Makes it simple

[Anonymous Coward]

If they do this then goodbye all Chromium based browsers that implement this and hello Firefox - and any browsers that fork from that...

Sorry (not sorry) but my ability to block evil crud that pollutes my browsing and can potentially infect my devices is more important to me.

Re:Makes it simple

[AmiMoJo]

Before jumping ship, it's worth reading the actual thread discussing this change: https://groups.google.com/a/ch...

Google staff are participating. They are talking about the need to keep the old API around indefinitely, perhaps with some limitations on functionality. The purpose of the proposal is to gather feedback from add-on developers about what functionality the new API doesn't offer and needs to be kept in the old API.

In particular, they recognize that for privacy reasons it's important for users to have a 100% guarantee that certain things are blocked and not merely hidden, which is the main performance issue at the moment.

Also, the developer of AdBlock Plus chimed in to dispel the myth that it's got something to do with them. They point out that AdBlock is affected by the change as well.

Re: Makes it simple

[houghi]

Remember when google listened to the concerns when they raped Dejanews? Or any other time?

Neither does anybody else, because they do not care. They have never cared. The moments they are on your side is just lucky, not intentional.

Remember when Microsoft was the worst? They have not changed, others have just become even worster.

Re:Makes it simple

[phantomfive]

Before jumping ship,

Nah, just jump to Firefox.Firefox is a fine browser, and it's better to not have a browser monoculture.

Re:Makes it simple

[lgw]

I'm sure an advertising company will move heaven and earth to insure ad blockrrs keep working. Sure they will. You can totally believe Google employees when they claim that Google won't kill add blockers.

Time to go back to Firefox.

[AJWM]

Although, on my home machines I never left. Firefox isn't perfect, but at least it lets me run NoScript.

Just as well. A browser monoculture, whether the old IE or the new Chrome, is and was never a good thing, however much web developers might think so.

inner milk of magnesium

[epine]

Before jumping ship, it's worth reading the actual thread discussing this change: https://groups.google.com/a/ch...

That was super useful. Almost makes you think it could be placed in the story summary ... but, nah, that might lead to useful discussion.

Yes, Google is listening with one ear, but the overall tone (so far as I scanned) ran the gamut from hostile to cynical to mind boggled.

Interestingly, it remained civilized as these things go, and there were few posts in the hallowed mushroom-cloud apocalypse tradition of the fight/fulminate/flight triangle of charred human remains, whose mortal moral fuses went outright Code Magnesium. While it's orbiting around that general quadrant, it's not yet an ad-blocker black hole of no return.

Nice that Google still dips their big toe into evil before jumping straight in, nigh irrevocably.

And yet, somewhere deep down, you know they want to.

Re:inner milk of magnesium

[Rob Y.]

Well, that link no longer works, so I guess they didn't want their discussions made public.

But folks, it may be time to move beyond ad blocking to an era of, yes, government regulation of anonymous data mining - both in terms of what can be mined, how long it can be retained, and what can be done with it. There has to be some kind of balance between ad-funded 'free' services and the complete forfeiture of your privacy - along with your right to not be victimized by fraudsters.

Ad blocking used to be about turning off annoying animations that ate up our bandwidth and drove us nuts in the process. We've all got enough bandwidth these days, and the most annoying distractions have been done away with. But targeted advertising, and the tracking to enable it has become much more sinister.

In any case, Ad-blockers and anti-tracking plug-ins are an imperfect solution, and potentially expose you to new and different trackers (since these add-ons need to track your activity in order to stop others from doing it, they're always going to be potential malware vectors themselves). Now, eliminating such workarounds before addressing the underlying problem is no solution at all. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be discussing solutions. And we can't let some arbitrary (okay, not completely arbitrary, but still..) anti-government stance blind us from the fact that sometimes, laws and law enforcement are more efficient than Rube Goldberg systems of using 'good' technology as a defense against 'bad' technology.