Your favourite ad blocker may not be long for this world. Users looking to add the extremely popular to their have been met with the following message: "This extension may soon no longer be supported because it doesn't follow best practices for Chrome extensions."

alludes to concerns about users' privacy and security, but the bigger picture centres on Chrome’s Manifest V3 extension update. The Manifest V3 update is a pretty seismic shift, as it will likely also affect any web browser built using Google's free and open-source Chromium project, such as and .

Chrome Manifest versions can be thought of as a list of rules for browser extensions to follow, detailing what APIs developers can use and what permissions extensions can have access to. Anyway, put a pin in that Manifest definition because the 'permissions' part becomes incredibly important later on.

Manifest V2 was the dominant specification for years, though Chrome is set to . Some users on newer Chromebook models already lack the option to download browser extensions still using Manifest V2, .

As uBlock Origin still uses this older Manifest version, that's bad news for the ad blocker's existing 40 million users on Chrome. is a Manifest V3 compliant alternative, though "a pared-down version" that's had to "sacrifice many features" in order to comply with the new framework.

, a company that develops a variety of ad blocking and privacy tools for a number of browsers, offered some insight as to why V3 represents such a shift . Ghostery's director of engineering, Krzysztof Modras, puts it plainly, "The most important limitation of Manifest V3 is the removal of extension access to the browser’s network layer."

This creates a permissions nightmare for developers. For instance, rather than automatically blocking ads across multiple websites, V3 will instead require extensions like uBlock Origin Lite to request access from the user on a per site basis. 

Talk about pop up fatigue. Not only that, but [[link]] V3's stricter limits on dynamic and static rules mean you'll notice a distinct slow down when it comes to how frequently ad blocking lists are updated, ultimately ensuring your ad blocking extensions are a lot less effective. That said, not all browsers are pulling support for Manifest V2, and Hill assures development of uBlock Origin will continue—.

So if Manifest V2 [[link]] is still good enough for Firefox, what's going on? to share his own strongly worded take, claiming, "Google [is] using its dominant Windows browser market share anticompetitively to shore up its ad monopoly by blocking ad blockers."

Speaking with PC World, Ghostery CEO Jean-Paul Schmetz offered less ruffled analysis, saying, "Google is probably too complicated as an organization to [use Manifest V3 changes to [[link]] protect its advertising interests] efficiently. What is absolutely clear is that they tried to make Chrome a more predictable platform [in terms of ads], because Chrome for them is a very important platform for the rest of their monopolies."

While , it's still bad news in the meantime for those using ad blockers on Google's browser, which is likely to be many of you. Firefox is definitely a tempting option in the face of all of that, however it's been making headlines recently with of its own. No browser is perfect, but I reckon 'will it let me block ads?' is going to be the deciding factor that wins out for most.