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Comment by polote | Hacker News Reader

I honestly think that Google underestimated how much they are going to piss off users with MV3. There are thousands of extensions that will stop working and be impossible to build. But also there will be a lot of broken experiences as remote loading is forbidden and fixes will need a new release.

Can't wait, but that's a very good opportunity for Firefox as Firefox will become more powerful than Chrome

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Or more likely, towards Edge, by virtue of requiring almost no effort to deploy the same set of extensions in a very similar browser in the hands of a company who doesn't require destroying privacy as much as google does to keep making money.

IIRC, the Edge team said they would adopt manifest v3, but correct me if I'm wrong.

This page intended for developers of Edge extensions seems to support your statement:

https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/edge-developer/blob/main/mi...

Well, Firefox is adopting it too but not breaking the old manifest support at the same time.

One of the "benefits" to Microsoft of using Chromium is reduced development costs and they're not going to get that if they let the forks diverge too much.

Right, but 'we don't support this!' would be a great look when most technical people are already strongly opposed to Manifest v3. I'd call it an easy win, but of course they'd have to maintain that and possibly implement / design their own API's when Manifest v4, for example, comes out... so it's definitely not as easy as it may seem.

I'm sure Microsoft wouldn't mind spending more on development if it means market share from Google if Chrome breaks everyone's extensions and they still work on Edge

Edge seems to be trying very hard to kill all the momentum they've gained

They recently baked in a "feature" to hijack online shopping with some Pay Later garbage:

https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-keeps-making-its-edge-browser-...

Now they're running gross little popups if you browse to the Chrome installer in Edge:

https://gizmodo.com/seriously-what-is-going-on-with-microsof...

> “Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the added trust of Microsoft.”

> “That browser is so 2008! Do you know what’s new? Microsoft Edge.”

> “I hate saving money,” said no one ever. Microsoft Edge is the best browser for online shopping.

Too be honest I don’t think the messages to use edge over chrome are really in the same category as the others. Googles plaster their homepage with a big banner of “hey chrome is so much better than what your using” and did for years.

A bit tit for tat in my book.

I just think it's hilarious that they simultaneously call chrome old hat while boasting that they're the same as chrome.

In the article, Firefox is cited as intending to adopt MV3 for compatibility reasons. If they indeed do so, I'm not sure how much relief running Firefox will offer from the more evil aspects of MV3.

Firefox will not implement all the restrictions: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2021/05/27/manifest-v3-updat...

With Firefox's market share, not much. This could massively benefit Firefox adoption, though, because everyone relying on old extensions will have to switch.

From that viewpoint, the new restrictions could actually be a good thing.

At the point when Edge (Chromium) no longer supports proper adblockers, I would instantly stop using it and use Firefox for almost everything. It would be a 100% deal-breaker for me. Right now, I have Firefox installed but don't use it much, because I don't see a compelling advantage.

If you start using Firefox now, you may probably better appreciate it (especially if you also look at other features and extensions like Containers).

My understanding is that they will adopt but continue to support "legacy" extensions

They're not really "adopting" it as the way forward. Firefox will be able to use Mv3-type extensions, but the current extension types will continue to work.

Firefox devs have confirmed that they'll implement Mv3, but without all of its restrictions and with compatibility for older extensions.

While the capability of blocking web requests isn't in question, there are some rumblings around deprecating background pages in Firefox, too: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1578286

Certainly nothing firm as far as it looks, but at the very least they're thinking about it, even though that change is somewhat problematic, too.

Chances are that alienating the power users won’t even make a dent in Chrome’s marketshare.

I’d suspect a majority of users isn’t even aware that browser extensions are a thing.

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