There’s a growing split over how much room browsers should leave for ad blocking — and Chrome and Firefox have ended up on opposite sides of the fight.
The rupture centers on a feature called Web Request, commonly used in ad blockers and crucial for any system that looks to block off a domain wholesale. Google has long had security concerns about Web Request and has worked to cut it out of the most recent extension standard, called Manifest V3, or MV3 for short. But, in a recent blog post, Mozilla made clear that Firefox will maintain support for Web Request, keeping the door open for the most sophisticated forms of ad blocking.
In essence the move by Google will increase security as it closes out the ability for any 3rd party extension to use an API feature called Web Request. This is the feature that most ad-blocker extensions use to filter the traffic, by observing traffic between the browser and a website and to modify or block requests to certain domains.
The Web Request feature is powerful and flexible, and it can be used for both good and bad purposes.
For compatibility reasons, Mozilla will still use most of the Manifest V3 spec in Firefox so that extensions can be ported over from Chrome with minimal changes. But, crucially, Firefox will continue to support blocking through Web Request after Google phases it out, enabling the most sophisticated anti-tracking ad blockers to function as normal.
Once Manifest V2 support ends in June 2023, changes in functionality will become more apparent to users of any Chromium-based browser.
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