Google Chrome change that weakens ad blockers begins June 3rd

Google will begin phasing out Manifest V2 Chrome extensions starting June 3, 2024 (Chrome 127), issuing warnings on Beta/Dev/Canary and gradually disabling V2 on stable, while enterprises using the ExtensionManifestV2Availability policy have until June 2025. Manifest V3 aims to improve security, privacy, and performance by restricting network access, moving request modification into the browser via service workers, and replacing background pages, but imposes challenges for advanced extensions like ad blockers—prompting uBlock Origin’s uBO Lite with less frequent ruleset updates. Google cites platform improvements (user scripts, offscreen documents, expanded declarativeNetRequest rulesets, review skipping, rollbacks) and claims over 85% adoption among actively maintained extensions, urging remaining developers to migrate.