Google rolls back ad-blocker autocracy
 

Backtracking in the face of evidence

Google has rolled back plans to ban rival ad-blocking extensions from its Chrome software after it was revealed that its claims that they were a network hit proved bogus.

A study analysing the performance of Chrome ad blocker extensions has proven claims made by Google developers last month.

Google claimed that it needed to modify the Chrome browser to kill off ad blockers and many other extensions.

The study, carried out by the team behind the Ghostery ad blocker, found that ad blockers had sub-milliseconds impact on Chrome's network requests that could hardly be called a performance hit.

Hours after the Ghostery team published its study and benchmark results, the Chrome team backtracked on its planned modifications.

At the heart of Ghostery's benchmark into ad blocker performance stands Manifest V3, a new standard for developing Chrome extensions that Google announced last October.

Google wanted extension developers to use the new DeclarativeNetRequest API instead of the older webRequest API.

This would limit the number of network requests an extension could access. This meant that ad blockers would be killed oof in favour of Chrome's new built-in ad blocker.

https://fudzilla.com/news/48178-goog...cker-autocracy