gorhill commented 4 days ago
Update from Simeon Vincent
Summary
The blocking ability of the webRequest API is still deprecated, and Google Chrome's limited matching algorithm will be the only one possible, and with limits dictated by Google employees.
It's annoying that they keep saying
"the webRequest API is not deprecated" as if developers have been worried about this -- and as if they want to drown the real issue in a fabricated one nobody made.
until we can run performance tests
Web pages load slow because of bloat, not because of the blocking ability of the webRequest API -- at least for well crafted extensions. Furthermore, if performance concerns due to the blocking nature of the webRequest API was their real motive, they would just adopt Firefox's approach and give the ability to return a Promise on just the three methods which can be used in a blocking manner.
Personal view on this
What we see are the public statements, for public consumption, they are designed to "sell" the changes to the wider public. What we do not see is what is being said in private meetings by officers who get to decide how to optimize the business. So we have to judge not by what is said for public consumption purpose, but by what in effect is being done, or what they plan to do.
This is how personally I see the deprecation of the blocking ability of the webRequest API in manifest v3:
Excerpts from
Google's 2018 10K filing (my emphasis):
ITEM 1. | BUSINESS
Google's core products and platforms such as Android, Chrome, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Play, Search, and YouTube each have over one billion monthly active users.
[...]
How we make money
The goal of our advertising business is to deliver relevant ads at just the right time and to give people useful commercial information, regardless of the device they’re using. We also provide advertisers with tools that help them better attribute and measure their advertising campaigns across screens. Our advertising solutions help millions of companies grow their businesses, and we offer a wide range of products across screens and formats. We generate revenues primarily by delivering both performance advertising and brand advertising.
[...]
ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS
[...]
Technologies have been developed to make customizable ads more difficult or to block the display of ads altogether and some providers of online services have integrated technologies that could potentially impair the core functionality of third-party digital advertising. Most of our Google revenues are derived from fees paid to us in connection with the display of ads online. As a result, such technologies and tools could adversely affect our operating results.
In order for Google Chrome to reach its current user base, it had to support content blockers -- these are the top most popular extensions for any browser. Google strategy has been to find the optimal point between the two goals of growing the user base of Google Chrome and preventing content blockers from harming its business.
The blocking ability of the webRequest API caused Google to yield control of content blocking to content blockers. Now that Google Chrome is the dominant browser, it is in a better position to shift the optimal point between the two goals which benefits Google's primary business.
The deprecation of the blocking ability of the webRequest API is to gain back this control, and to further now instrument and report how web pages are filtered since now the exact filters which are applied to web page is information which will be collectable by Google Chrome.
Side note:
eyeo GmbH (owner of Adblock Plus) is a business partner of Google (through its "Acceptable Ads" business plan), and its business share some the same key characteristics as the Google's ones above:
- It gets revenues from the displaying of ads with those with which it has a contract (Google, Taboola, etc.)
- It expressly names uBlock Origin as a risk factor to its business[1]
The "Acceptable Ads" plan, aside being the main revenues stream of eyeo GmbH, is also a good way for Google to mitigate against the expressed concerns in its 10K filing regarding content blockers.
[1] In its 2016 annual report filed on
https://www.unternehmensregister.de/ureg/.