For a while now the transition away from Manifest V2 (MV2) to MV3 has been on-going and it looks like it is entering its final phase of deprecation, at least, in the case of Google Chrome. A recent discussion thread in the w3c WebExtensions Community Group GitHub repo has highlighted how the latest and upcoming versions of the most popular browser are expected to be its final releases with support for MV2 extensions.
What this essentially means is that the tricks and bypasses that were used to keep MV2 extensions like uBlock Origin and others alive will not work any more on Chrome, or at least not for very long. For example the Windows Registry mod that could extend MV2 availability will cease to function after Chromium version 151.
People keep mentioning Firefox but fail to realize that Google, as the sole sponsor of Mozilla Corporation (not to be confused with Mozilla Foundation), can just kindly ask for Firefox to follow suit and gimp itself, just like it did before with a move to webextensions. Gotta admit it, Google has won the web, what they say (eventually) goes.
Google doesn't even need to get their hands dirty like that. IMO all they need to do is continue making it difficult for companies to support Firefox when designing their websites. That, in addition to making sure companies know that Google is tirelessly working to make sure Chrome won't work with ad blockers is going to eventually kill Firefox completely.
If there are no remaining mainstream browsers that support ad blockers that pendulum is going to take a long time to swing back.
google can just stop funding mozilla and it will be dead in tracks as are all the forks that goes with it,.
Firefox is partially in this position because the community really does not support Firefox. Every decision Firefox makes or Mozilla makes in an attempt to try and claw back their financial freedom away from Google, the community dumpsters them on. Then, on posts like this, the community turns around and dumpsters Firefox for being so financially dependent on Google.
FireFox was and is an awesome project, but unfortunately, without the financial backing of a large for-profit business, they cannot keep up with Chrome. Even then, FireFox, with an engineering team a quarter the size of Chrome's, still manages to keep up, which is a god damn miracle.
Developing a browser that is fast, actually works with new web standards, stays up to date, and is adding features is incredibly difficult. It is a stupidly expensive endeavor, similar to the level of effort necessary for operating systems.
And unfortunately, there is no Linux equivalent for web browsers, at least not right now. There are some up-and-coming projects, but it's going to be decades before they reach the level of maturity necessary to start competing against Chrome. At which point there may be so much standards capture that some of these browsers may find it impossible to actually catch up.
From my memory of their financials, they actually get enough donations for the browser. The issue is the for profit companies fetish for a million different side quests.
then we'll move again, like we did with chrome. this game of cat and mouse is easy to keep up and really only serves to harm these companys in the long run.
Except they aren’t moving anymore.
I think Google finally trapped most of the web’s population, for good.
This. The number of people (real people, not internet people) I know who just keep using Chrome or other Google products without care is shocking.
That's theirchoice is all I'll say, I know plenty went to fire for for these reasons, it stands to reason they'll do it again.
Move to what and where? Browsers are basically OS's at this point, even MS stopped developing its own. Ladybird is going to be a joke and don't think any other company or community is coming to write a new one.
If Firefox had enough market share to be a problem for Google, or would probably also have enough money to not need Google.
Like how they killed JPEG-XL.
All over some employee’s ego associated with his AVIF contributions, from what I’ve seen.