Source: The Next Web
Google is completing its three-year migration from Manifest V2 to V3, which removes the technical capabilities that make broad-spectrum ad blockers like uBlock Origin possible—forcing users toward Google's own ad-filtering whitelist or third-party alternatives like Firefox and Safari. This is a business realignment that consolidates Google's control over what ads users see, since Manifest V3's permission model makes blocking entire ad networks effectively impossible without explicit site allowlists that advertisers or Google control. The move exposes a structural conflict: browser vendors profit from ad markets while users rely on protection tools. It may accelerate migration to non-Chromium browsers and invite antitrust scrutiny over whether a company can unilaterally disable competition in its platform's extension ecosystem.