The War Between Google and uBlock Origin Continues: Farewell to Tricks to Keep Using the Ad-Blocker

Google has started the definitive removal of code blocks related to Manifest V2 within Chromium, marking the end of the classic version of uBlock Origin and all outdated extensions on browsers based on this engine.

Engineers from the Mountain View company have eliminated the flag kExtensionManifestV2Disabled, a tool that remained active for over a year allowing controlled deactivation and related alerts for users. The cancellation of this feature has rendered the transition phase unusable and has turned the old system into dead code within the browser.

Google programmer Devlin Cronin clarified the technical reasons for this decision during a discussion within the WebExtensions Community Group of W3C on GitHub. Google experienced increasing implementation difficulties, accumulated technical debt, and a number of recently emerged security bugs specifically related to the Manifest V2 architecture. Maintaining compatibility indefinitely has become impossible for the development team, which excluded the possibility of isolating the old code behind a compilation flag.

The Behavior of Microsoft Edge and the Response from Opera

The tricks used so far to extend the life of traditional extensions are numbered. With the arrival of Chromium 151, the Windows Registry options dedicated to businesses, such as AllowLegacyMV2Extensions and ExtensionManifestV2Availability, will cease to function, eliminating any workarounds for advanced users.

This scenario inevitably reflects on the entire ecosystem of derived browsers. Microsoft Edge has already begun the process of disabling uBlock Origin last February, aligning itself with the guidelines from the parent company of the engine. Meanwhile, Opera's position required an official clarification from the company after doubts were raised by Raymond Hill, the creator of uBlock Origin. Hill speculated on a disengagement from the Norwegian company due to delays in the approval of updates in the official store.

Opera responded by denying an immediate abandonment and confirmed the intention to support Manifest V2 as long as it remains technically sustainable. However, the company has blocked the loading of new MV2 extensions, initiating the development of an exclusive catalog for Manifest Version 3. The global shift to the new standard thus appears obligatory for the entire category.

Users wishing to remain on Chromium-related software have the option of uBlock Origin Lite (previously recommended by Hill), based on the new MV3 programming interface, although developers have noted a lesser effectiveness in content filtering compared to the original edition. The only real alternatives to keep the old extensions intact remain the Brave and Vivaldi browsers, or the definitive switch to Mozilla Firefox, which continues to support both protocols simultaneously.