Microsoft will adopt Google Chrome's controversial Manifest V3 in Edge

Microsoft has decided to support the Google-proposed Manifest V3 in its Edge browser - based on the Chromium browser engine - despite continuing concern about the impact on content-filtering extensions such as ad blockers. The manifest is used by browser extensions to declare what permissions an extension requires, and is …

[Dan 55]

So much for Microsoft blowing its trumpet about being non-slurpy in Edge

All it means is now they've got Edge set up they can run the team down to the minimum and wave Chrome changes through.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So much for Microsoft blowing its trumpet about being non-slurpy in Edge

So far its a better faster Chrome though.

[beep54]

Meh

I never use Edge and about the only thing I use Chrome for is to play a couple of silly games, so.... I am still miffed that even tho IE is (theoretically) turned off, it still collects some info. I've made sure that Edge doesn't load on start up so it doesn't seem to do that anymore.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Meh

"...it doesn't seem to..."

I laughed, but today's Microsoft users really are left with best guesses. It's sad that web searches reveal that everybody's first concern on Max/Linux is installing 3rd party things, but the first concern for everybody on Windows is uninstalling 1st party things.

Ironically, nobody on Windows seems to use the term "jailbreaK' and even if a Windows subversion was named Chateau d'If... nobody still would (although to be fair, there's no treasure waiting for you in that story).

[Marki Mark]

PI Hole

So glad that my PI Hole doesn't depend on any of this browser API malarkey

[mark l 2]

Re: PI Hole

I used DNS blocking as well, but it doesn't work with sites such as Youtube, as I assume Google serve ads from the same domains as they serve videos?

But Ublock origin is still able to block the ads, but probably won't be able to once manifest v3 is out

[big_D]

Re: PI Hole

I don't care about the ads, the sites have to earn a living. But I do object to them tracking me.

I am perfectly happy for a site to serve me 1st party ads, as long as they don't track me to other sites.

[gobaskof]

Re: PI Hole

"I am perfectly happy for a site to serve me 1st party ads, as long as they don't track me to other sites."

The thing with an ad-supported internet was it was abused. First party ads are theoretically no worse than a magazine having some ads. Oh God, why is it a video, now there is sound, it just changed size and moved the content, ahh it is an in-page popup now. It is this hellscape that made AdBlockers take off. Perhaps things have got better, I haven't turned mine off in years.

[Updraft102]

Re: PI Hole

"The thing with an ad-supported internet was it was abused. First party ads are theoretically no worse than a magazine having some ads. Oh God, why is it a video, now there is sound, it just changed size and moved the content, ahh it is an in-page popup now. It is this hellscape that made AdBlockers take off."

And that's not even considering the trackers, the analytics scripts, and the massive use of your bandwidth, RAM, and cpu cycles to download and run 20 libraries so that you can be spied on most effectively. I did a test with a bunch of sites loaded in Firefox with the adblocker (uBlock Origin) enabled and with it disabled, on fresh starts of Firefox where I just waited until the pages were all fully loaded, and the RAM footprint of the unblocked Firefox used around twice the RAM. The entire Firefox program and all of its addons (and I use a lot) plus the content itself used about the same amount of memory as just the ads.

Google and the like have broken ad-supported sites. It used to be that when you wanted to advertise in a given magazine, you called their advertising department and set that up. They decided if they wanted to run your ad in their publication, and you dealt with them.

Now site owners have little control over the ads on their own sites. No one places their ads on the site (effectively the publication) itself... they contact Google or Amazon or another third-party ad broker, and that broker (who has no concern at all about the reputation or continued viability of that site... there are always more when one dies) decides what will be placed on that site. If the ad is offensive, it is the site owner that takes the heat, not the ad broker.

Not only that, but the ad brokers have got (enough) advertisers convinced that tracking and analytics are a necessary part of any advertising.

That's why there was no such thing as advertising prior to the modern era in which computing power, internet bandwidth, and storage capacity advanced to the point that the tracking of individuals to collect massive amounts of data of use to advertisers was possible. When I grew up in the 70s and 80s, that kind of thing was impossible, so of course there were no ads at all then, since of course you can't have ads without trackers. TV commercials, radio commercials, print ads, signs/handbills/billboards, product placement, etc., never existed, and don't exist now, because the kind of tracking that makes ads possible could not exist within those frameworks. /sarc, obviously.

Those site owners who don't want to expose their users to tracking don't really have much of a choice if they want that revenue. Allow Google or Amazon to spy on your customers and agree to take whatever ads they want to run, or no money for you.

The ad companies that made ads "better" for the advertisers by targetting only the customers who were the most receptive have destroyed internet advertising. Adblocking is merely a symptom of that, not the cause.

[bryces666]

intercept between browser and network?

I like Raymond Hill's software offerings, especially uMatrix to also reduce tracking.

So does anyone know of any software for android phones and my pc's that can do the blocking by intercepting the requests after they leave the browser but before they hit the network since inside the browser will stop working soon? My hope is there is something that works on the device so it is good on any network being used.

[bl0ck]

Re: intercept between browser and network?

Blokada.org, private DNS (eg. dns.adguard.com), etc.

[Howard Sway]

hurt the privacy and security of Chrome users

Hoping for privacy from Google is like hoping an approaching tiger might be about to invite you out for a quiet meal together. It might well do that, but its idea of what that means may well be very different from yours.

<You appear to have AdRammingPersonalInfoGrabber disabled in your browser. This site will not work without AdRammingPersonalInfoGrabber enabled>

[Franco]

Anyone still got the installer for Netscape Navigator 3? Asking for a friend.....

[Denarius]

Quoting Mandy

"is absolutely not the goal." Well, they would say that, woudn't they?

[David 132]

Re: Quoting Mandy

When Google and Microsoft talk about “privacy”, I prefer to quote another Mandy: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

[Hubert Cumberdale]

Re: Quoting Mandy

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya.

[Franco]

Re: Quoting Mandy

Privacy? Inconceivable!

[Phil Koenig]

Microsoft: The Google Wannabe

Whether it comes to trying to track and data-mine everything you do with your computer, or working against your web freedom and privacy, Microsoft has become a big Google wannabe these days.

[Version 1.0]

Google owns the Internet

Remember the days before Google started deleting sites from the search database that didn't comply with their mobile friendly "standard"? Web sites in those days (and there are still a few out there) would contain pages and pages of text information about everything - nowadays all you see are pictures and a link that you have to register to download the stuff you used to read for free. The Google "mobile friendly" web site requirement has made them a hell of a lot of money.

[IGnatius T Foobar !]

Edge is Chrome now.

On my personal rig I'm running Dissenter (a cousin of Brave, a privacy-focused Chromium browser). At work, I'm running the latest Edge. They all look pretty much the same now. Edge is basically just Chrome with the Google slurping replaced with Microsoft slurping, and the tethers to Google's web properties replaced with tethers to Microsoft's web properties.

After the installation of DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials, and another extension to replace the new tab page with ANYTHING other than MSN ... it's easy to forget that I'm not using Chrome.

I'm not thrilled about a Chrome monoculture, but at least the core is open source.

[Updraft102]

Just a quick observation...

Manifest v3 only affects extensions. Blockers that are built in, as they are in several of the Chromium derivatives, will not be affected.