How difficult would it be to fork and mantain a chromium version that still supports Manifest V2?
As Google tries to hinder ad-block extensions with their new platform Manifest V3, it seems to me Chrome or any Chromium derivatives are no longer a viable way to browse the web safely. So it got me wondering, how much big of a task would it be to still suport Manifest V2 on newer releases of Chromium? Maybe implement some legacy option for backwards compatibility with older extensions. I think it would be a great alternative to have, but I haven't seen anyone coming up with something similar.
25 replies
Just use Firefox already.
And what do you do when Firefox deprecates v2 too?
If it does, we can worry about it then, but at present there's no reason for them to do so. Chrome is deprecating v2 because it conflicts with their advertising mandate. Firefox's goals are vastly different.
Remind me: who provides most of the funding that FF has?
that only reinforces that you should use firefox… forcing google to pay more money to mozilla and giving mozilla more power to negotiate is a good thing
sure google has some power over them with the money they give, but by using chromium that power is absolute - no need to pay, ask, influence when you just get
Your point?
Because of incentives it's not impossible for the Mozilla foundation to drop support for manifest V2 eventually. If Google's paying 90% of their bills, it's not unreasonable to assume they also have a say in the direction of the browser
I've never seen any reason to believe Google has any say in the direction of Firefox. Google pays to be the default search engine, not more, not less.
This same argument could be brought up about Safari. All other browsers are based on Chromium anyway, so they are directly developed by Google themselves.
Right now - easy, with the difficulty going up over time as the main Chromium codebase continues to change (and especially as it gets security updates). I think I’ve read that some variants (Brave?) have committed to supporting ManifestV2 for as long as possible, for instance with their own fork.
For a year, but it will be extremely difficult for them to maintain mv2 after jun 2025.
Why that date specifically?
Most of these browsers use the enterprise policy of chromium.
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate/mv2-deprecation-timeline
Thank you for the clarification
Just wait for July 2025
Why. What happens during that time?
I have no idea. Another month passes
I think that using gecko based browsers like Firefox is the best thing to do in the short term. But having no competition is a bad thing. So supporting new web engines, like Ladybird, is important too: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird
And Servo
yes and no… competition is good, but we do already have blink, webkit, and gecko… browser engines are biiiiig, complex beasts, and we do have competition already… more competition, at some point, becomes redundant
Don't think so, competition is good most of the time. Since Mozilla can be criticize with their browser and do not have the best engine, it could be good to have something else to compete with
If I recall correctly, some Chromium browsers will continue to support Manifest V2. For example, Brave and Vivaldi, if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah, but their adblockers are built in ones.
Those are not store extensions.
Why does it matter? You can always install the one you want.
Disabling Manifest V2 will break a lot of extensions apparently.
Can they be disabled?