Google claims it doesn’t want to kill ad blockers but protect users’ privacy

Back when Google had announced that it wanted to improve the messy state of Chrome extensions in October last year, a section of the plan seemed like it was going after ad blockers. However, in a new blog post, Google is clearing things out by saying that they don’t want to kill ad blockers. [caption id=“attachment_5954471” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”]  Representational Image. Credit: tech2/Nandini Yadav[/caption] In order to improve security, privacy and performance of Chrome extensions, Google had uploaded a post in October on its Chromium blog. A section named ‘Manifest V3’ apparently could hurt ad blocking and privacy extensions, according to a report on CNET. Currently, Chrome has several rules in place in its design to control the flow of data through extensions. When an ad blocker extension is active on the browser, it scans through a list of ad-based internet addresses and accordingly block them on the active website or webpage. In the original plan, the company was going to introduce a limit of 30,000 such addresses. However, Google confirmed that it’s increasing the maximum to 150,000 now. In the latest Google Security Blog post, the company said, “We are not preventing the development of ad blockers or stopping users from blocking ads. Instead, we want to help developers, including content blockers, write extensions in a way that protects users’ privacy.” The Manifest V3 design isn’t final according to Google and it’s reiterating all the rules while simultaneously working with the developer community.