Many Google Chrome extensions will receive another year of support for enterprise use, with the company’s decision to delay their deletion from the Chrome Web Store until January 2024. An announcement on the Google Chrome Developers blog reports a stay of execution for sweeping changes to the Chromium engine that are said to disable web browser plug-ins designed to block ads.
But no such deferral is offered to personal Chrome users, which Google says will be subject to plugins built on the existing Manifest V2 (MV2) API, which are temporarily disabled for a series of “experiments” next year.
While the new corporate policy will give businesses more time to access add-ons critical to their workflow, Google Chrome extension developers have less time to adapt to the browser’s adoption of the Manifest V3 (MV3) API.
Google says that from January 2023 it will no longer highlight MV2 plugins in the Chrome Web Store to “raise the bar for security” on the platform.
MV2 addons will no longer be publicly visible from June 2023. Plugins that are already publicly available in the store will be changed to “Unlisted”. This is a particularly noteworthy decision as it means that while they will remain functional for businesses, the plugins will be absolutely undiscoverable to new users.
Also, Google is warning developers that MV2 plugins may stop working “at any time” after new Chrome versions are released next year.
At the center of the discussion is WebRequest, an API critical for blocking web content such as ads, which Chrome’s MV3 implementation will remove.
Following the changes, the developers behind Mozilla Firefox announced their intention to preserve WebRequest in MV3 applications. “Content blocking is one of the most important use cases for add-ons and we are committed to ensuring Firefox users have access to the best privacy tools available,” Mozilla said.
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