The fate of Chrome’s most popular ad blockers, including uBlock Origin, is becoming increasingly uncertain as Google continues to push forward with its Manifest V3 extension update. For months, developers and users have been cautioned about changes that would render many popular ad-blocking extensions obsolete. Now, a new warning displayed in the Chrome Web Store confirms that uBlock Origin “may soon no longer be supported.” On some newer Chromebook devices, the situation is even more dire: the option to download uBlock Origin is completely disabled, making it impossible to install.
This warning, first spotted on social media and later reported by BleepingComputer, cites uBlock Origin’s non-compliance with Chrome’s “best practices” for extensions under the Manifest V3 framework. While most commercial ad blockers have adapted to Manifest V3 requirements, Raymond Hill, the unpaid developer behind uBlock Origin, has kept the extension on the older Manifest V2 standard to highlight its limitations. Manifest V3 imposes new restrictions on how extensions interact with Chrome’s network layer, impacting the ability of ad blockers to effectively filter content.
To provide a viable alternative, Hill released uBlock Origin Lite, a pared-down version that is compatible with Manifest V3 but lacks some of the features of the original extension. As of now, the original uBlock Origin remains hugely popular, with over 39 million users on Chrome alone, while uBlock Origin Lite has only reached around 700,000 users.
Google issued a statement on the update, emphasizing that “93% of actively maintained extensions in the Chrome Web Store are running Manifest V3, and the top content filtering extensions have Manifest V3 versions.” However, developers of other ad blockers, like Ghostery, have voiced concerns about Manifest V3’s impact on the effectiveness of ad-blocking tools. Ghostery’s CEO, Jean-Paul Schmetz, criticized the update, claiming it neither enhances privacy nor security and advised users who value ad-blocking capabilities to consider using Firefox. Unlike Chrome, Firefox remains the only major browser not controlled by Google and still supports the unrestricted functionality of the original uBlock Origin. As Schmetz noted, “It’s possible that in the future only Firefox will allow ad blockers and be able to block certain kinds of ads.”
