Google Chrome starts killing ad blockers

It looks like Google Chrome really wants you to look at advertisements.

In a quote post on X posted by Raymond Hill, the developer who brought us the free ad blocker Chrome extension uBlock Origin, it appears that Google Chrome is turning off the ad blocker.

“The deprecation of uBO in the Chrome Web Store has started,” Hill posted.

This comes in response to another user, Christoph Nakazawa posting a screenshot that shows Google Chrome turning off three extensions — MDN Search, Neat URL, and uBlock Origin — with the note “These extensions are no longer supported. Chrome recommends that you remove them.”

“After more than 15 years, it’s time to switch browsers. I just want Chrome but without nefarious behavior by Google,” Nakazawa wrote. “What Chrome-based browser would you recommend on macOS?”

As Mashable noted in August, this change comes as Google Chrome moves from Manifest V2 to Manifest V3. In an emailed statement to The Verge, a Google spokesperson Scott Westover said the majority of “actively maintained” extensions in the Chrome Web Store already use Manifest V3. “The top content filtering extensions all have Manifest V3 versions available — with options for users of AdBlock, Adblock Plus, uBlock Origin and AdGuard,” he told the outlet.

This doesn’t come as a huge surprise, as Google has already been cracking down on ad blockers on its other sites, including YouTube.

If you’d like to avoid this entirely, consider switching to more ad-blocker friendly browsers, like Brave.