Google Backtracks on Chrome Modifications That Would Have Crippled Ad Blockers (zdnet.com)

Google has changed its stance on upcoming Chrome Manifest V3 changes as benchmark shows they lied about performance hit. Catalin Cimpanu, writing for ZDNet: A study analyzing the performance of Chrome ad blocker extensions published on Friday has proven wrong claims made by Google developers last month, when a controversy broke out surrounding their decision to modify the Chrome browser in such a way that would have eventually killed off ad blockers and many other extensions. The study, carried out by the team behind the Ghostery ad blocker, found that ad blockers had sub-millisecond impact on Chrome's network requests that could hardly be called a performance hit. Hours after the Ghostery team published its study and benchmark results, the Chrome team backtracked on their planned modifications. At the root of Ghostery's benchmark into ad blocker performance stands Manifest V3, a new standard for developing Chrome extensions that Google announced last October.

Comments

Re:Even if the performance was bad

[theweatherelectric]

Really, the goal here seems to be to make adblocking safer and more efficient, better for users, not to kill it.

That presupposes that adblockers are inefficient now. But, as linked to in the summary, simple measurements show that isn't true.

And I use an adblocker, advise everyone I know to use adblockers, and would switch to a different browser if Chrome were to block adblockers.

Adblockers work better in Firefox. You should advise everyone to switch to Firefox now instead of waiting. uBlock Origin uses WebAssembly in Firefox for better performance, but Chrome does not allow this yet.