from Hacker News

Google backtracks on Chrome modifications that would have crippled ad blockers

by jiaweihli on 2/16/19, 10:35 PM with 156 comments

• by xkapastel on 2/17/19, 12:25 PM

  Google did NOT backtrack on ANYTHING. From the new thread:

  > Another clarification is that the webRequest API is not going to be fully removed as part of Manifest V3. In particular, there are currently no planned changes to the observational capabilities of webRequest (i.e., anything that does not modify the request). We are also continually listening to and evaluating the feedback we’re receiving, and we are still narrowing down proposed changes to the webRequest API.

  "We are still narrowing down proposed changes" means they still plan on removing the part of webRequest that everyone cares about, the feature that lets it block requests.

  There was an initial thread about these changes: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chrom.... Lots of people made great comments about why the proposed change was a bad idea. What did Google do? Ignore the thread and post another about how they are "iterating" on Manifest V3. Google's strategy is clear: wait for the outrage to subside, keep making new threads to divert discussion if you have to, then go ahead and make the changes you were planning on anyway.

  Keep in mind that their story about performance has been shown to be a complete lie. There is no performance hit from using webRequest like this. This is about removing sophisticated ad blockers in order to defend Google's revenue stream, plain and simple.

• by pgt on 2/17/19, 10:46 AM

  Every year Stallman sounds less crazy. I used to think it didn't matter what tools I chose as a lone developer making consumer tech products and DSP audio applications. But over time, I saw that consumers rely on frontier-makers more than you think, even though they may lag behind by a few years.

  I reluctantly switched to Firefox because it still has add-ons and since Chrome's web tools are so good. With Mozilla's Rust adoption, Firefox got fast. This means my web products work a little better on Firefox, intentional or not. When enough people make that choice, a tipping point forms in the future. Paul Graham wrote about this in "The Return of the Mac" [^1].

  Don't underestimate the power of your choice at the frontier, even if it takes a while to reverberate through time.

  [^1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html

• by comex on 2/17/19, 6:30 AM

  They've done nothing of the sort. The ZDNet article quotes:

  > "Another clarification is that the webRequest API is not going to be fully removed as part of Manifest V3," said Chrome engineer Devlin Cronin [emphasis his].

  But the full quote shows what he's talking about:

  > Another clarification is that the webRequest API is not going to be fully removed as part of Manifest V3. In particular, there are currently no planned changes to the observational capabilities of webRequest (i.e., anything that does not modify the request). We are also continually listening to and evaluating the feedback we’re receiving, and we are still narrowing down proposed changes to the webRequest API.

  The only commitment is to not modify the read-only "observational capabilities".

• by happybuy on 2/17/19, 8:11 AM

  Sounds like Google will still move towards what they were planning but will likely just take a bit more time and more versions to get there (as the outrage subsides).

  From my perspective, the biggest improvement in their proposal would have been the increased privacy and security users would receive with adblockers that use the proposed scheme.

  Under the current scheme, any Chrome adblocker can see all of the pages that users browse; a potentially huge privacy hole.

  At least with the proposed scheme, adblocker extensions wouldn't have had access to a user's browsing history. This is the same approach that Safari uses with its content blocker API.

  Yes, the Safari approach has more limitations, but it is also significantly better from a privacy perspective.

• by x15 on 2/17/19, 10:09 AM

  This is a win-win situation for Google. I doubt they haven't done the maths. If they lose a percentage of the userbase, but get increased revenue, it's only logical to do that. If their userbase decreases, their monopoly status also decreases, making regulation harder.

  The percentage of users who install firefox is low because of the inertia of the default. Having Google as the default search engine in firefox certainly didn't help.

  Imagine downloading firefox to replace IE or Edge on a fresh Windows install and then immediately witness Chrome ads in your search results.

  Mozilla should had disrupted the third party tracking/ads business, when it had the chance, by providing a default ad blocker and severing ties with no-privacy-respecting search engines (before Google disrupted the browsers market that is).

  Google's Android browser is doing well by not supporting extensions, why would they miss the chance of additional revenue by not crippling their desktop browser the same way?

• by jzl on 2/17/19, 6:36 PM

  Not seeing any comments here about the most interesting part of the OP: how Ghostery ran tests disproving Google's claim about the length of ad blocking lists causing noticeable performance degradation. Yet in the mailing list announcement from Google that instigated this article they doubled down on that claim:

  Increased Ruleset Size: We will raise the rule limit from the draft 30K value. However, an upper limit is still necessary to ensure performance for users. Block lists have tended to be “push-only”, where new rules are added but obsolete rules are rarely, if ever, removed (external research has shown that 90% of EasyList blocking rules provided no benefit in common blocking scenarios). Having this list continue to grow unbounded is problematic.

  Yet, if there's a limit it will also be problematic. The lists only grow in size because of the cat-and-mouse game caused by ad blockers existing in the first place. If there's a size limit, that immediately gives a win to the ad servers because they will find a way to subvert the known limit.

• by vxNsr on 2/17/19, 6:39 AM

  As people said in the thread about the actual study, this isn't a real backtrack, they're still locking down the rules, just being a bit more accommodating to the current gen of adblock, but the second ads adapt around current tech, adblockers will be stuck in the mud.

• by mosselman on 2/16/19, 10:54 PM

  Things like this is why it is so important for the web to have multiple browsers available to choose from.

• by rajeshmr on 2/17/19, 8:27 AM

  I never understand the intent behind introducing this move - is it greed for more ad money through lockdown ? The company is literally a monopoly and still it wants more. This seems like the company is bowing down for shareholder supremacy.

• by ikisusi on 2/17/19, 6:05 PM

  Coincidentally Chrome 72 upgrade seems to break adblockers so that they can't block google analytics, and maybe other ads/tracking as well, if web page uses a service worker: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19185637

• by SquareWheel on 2/17/19, 1:30 PM

  Here is the actual response. I don't know why this wasn't posted two days ago.

  https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chrom...

• by kkm on 2/16/19, 11:16 PM

  HN thread about the Adblockers performance study mentioned in the article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19175003

• by XorNot on 2/17/19, 11:52 AM

  Someone pointed out that every Chrome user got that way because a techie got them off Internet Explorer... and those same people can just as easily get them onto Firefox.

• by jointhefuture on 2/17/19, 5:03 PM

  Well here's the next issue to freakout about

  https://github.com/domenic/proposal-function-prototype-tostr...

• by osrec on 2/17/19, 6:55 PM

  Dear Google, you have a chance to do so much good! Don't fritter that opportunity away for easy dollars! We know ads are your cash cow currently, but you seriously have enough cash and talent to generate cash flows from less annoying (and perhaps, useful) things. Have some faith in your people. And above all, please don't be evil, and don't fib.

  Dear DuckDuckGo, please can you focus a little less on search, and more on a producing a high quality browser? Seriously, I feel if you want to rid the world of Google's stranglehold, you don't need to make a better search engine, but a better browser. Google has bloated Chrome enough that any alternative that is lightweight, cross platform, with a solid password manager and dev tools would make me jump ship in a flash. Be sure to support PWAs too. And shorten your name - duckduckgo as a name is a bit weird - your new domain, duck.com might be worth doubling down on. Thanks!

• by luord on 2/19/19, 2:00 PM

  Is there anything preventing the community from just forking chromium and ignore these changes?

  Then again, by that point it might be better to just switch to Firefox.

• by kuwalu123 on 2/17/19, 8:57 PM

  Maybe now people will start to use Tor Browser for daily browsing. If you are inside EEA you don't even have to actually connect to Tor network just use Tor browser.

• by dang on 2/17/19, 3:49 AM

  Editorializing titles like this is against the site guidelines and will cause an account to lose submission privileges.

  Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here.

• by grzm on 2/16/19, 11:10 PM

  Actual title: "Google backtracks on Chrome modifications that would have crippled ad blockers"

• by zamakan on 2/17/19, 12:21 PM

  Who cares? I use safari on my phone and have been slowly switching away from google creepiness to Firefox.

• by onetimemanytime on 2/17/19, 6:21 AM

  >>Google changes stance on upcoming Chrome Manifest V3 changes as benchmark shows they lied about performance hit.....Hours after the Ghostery team published its study and benchmark results, the Chrome team backtracked on their planned modifications.

  Adios Google that once was. Ad blocking does cause performance issues, but revenue ones.

• by unnouinceput on 2/17/19, 7:52 AM

  Ahhh, I'm lazy and wanted my final reason to switch to FF. Oh well, I'll let google track me through browser for now, if they leave my uOrigin+NoScript alone. The second those won't work I'll make the switch.