No need to ditch adblocker on Chrome: impaired, but “better than nothing”

Google’s changes to its Chrome extensions have left many users confused about their options, with their preferred adblockers either no longer available, or ineffective. The impaired Chrome adblockers are still better than nothing, Ghostery believes, yet warns about potential user migration to other browsers.

In an interview with Cybernews, Jean-Paul Schmetz, CEO of Ghostery, and Krzysztof Modras, Director of Engineering and Product at Ghostery, shared their insights on where the adblocking market could go forward and the trade-offs they had to make to keep their adblocker functional on Chrome.

Google is implementing a new version of the software platform powering its browser’s extensions, referred to as Manifest Version 3 (MV3). It brings new updates and features, but also removes others. As a result, some users have already found their adblocking solutions, including the most popular adblocker uBlock Origin, which was disabled on Chrome.

Google faces a dilemma: While it wants to retain users on Chrome, it clearly realizes that the move will upset millions of uBlock Origin users.

“The history of ad blocking shows that people actually switch browsers if there is no good ad blocking extension present,” Schmetz said.

“What we noticed, starting about a year ago when Google was becoming more aggressive about blocking adblockers on YouTube, people were massively switching browsers.”

Ghostery, one of the oldest adblockers, founded in 2008 and available on multiple platforms, observed YouTube users usually choosing pre-installed browsers like Edge or Safari rather than downloading less-known browsers.

“But it was just an A/B test. Google is very clever, they know how to minimize the effects. People would move to Edge, and they would not see ads anymore with Ghostery, so they thought they had fixed the problem. But it was just the other group of the B test,” Schmetz explains.

“We've been doing cat and mouse with YouTube for months now.”

Chrome itself overtook Firefox and became the most popular browser partly due to a vast availability of extensions and customization features.

“They implemented extensions not because they wanted to do PDF printing. They did it because they realized that everyone was thinking about Firefox because of adblocking,” Schmetz explains.

Browsers implement any developments affecting extensions very slowly to make sure that the third-party tools are ready.

“Manifest V3 has been telegraphed for five years, and it feels like the slowest process possible. Every time they would delay by six months because they were afraid of some key extension not following,” Schmetz noted.

Yet, Manifest V3 is here. While it is still possible to block ads on YouTube and elsewhere, the adblockers will not be the same.

Manifest V3 removes many features and requires significantly higher effort and constant updates from adblocker developers to keep pace with evolving ads and trackers.

Ghostery said it invested two years just to become compatible with MV3. The company also dedicated significant efforts to lobbying Google to relax some initial restrictions.

Already the change has caused a stir in the market and it is “just starting.”

What’s gone for good with Manifest V3?

Manifest V3 has significantly impacted the functionality and capabilities of adblockers.

“There are actually a few huge pain points. One is that the list of rules used for blocking has to be shipped with the extension. That means, if you want to update it, you will have to release a new version,” Modras, Director of Engineering and Product at Ghostery, explains.

Prior to Manifest V3, the team released a new version of Ghostery every couple of weeks or months. Now, they have to update the extension at least weekly, or the rules get quickly outdated.

This is much less flexible and hampers the ability to quickly respond to new tracking and ad techniques.

“The code has to be prepared, has to be packaged, has to be submitted for a review. Google has to review it, accept it, and only then it's published and distributed,” Modras said. “We have a delay of at least a day until this process comes through.”

Another huge loss for adblockers is the ability to actively analyze and modify URLs to remove tracking parameters. Now, adblockers can’t strip tracking components and private data, such as user identifiers, embedded in the links. This forces them to either block the entire URL, or allow it untouched.

Advanced anti-tracking techniques are also gone. Adblockers can no longer use any AI-driven anti-tracking algorithms on the fly that analyze the requests and look for patterns and fingerprints.

“Now, this is completely impossible,” Modras said.

“Without having more subtle ways to block trackers, we have to now resolve to very brutal blocking, which can sometimes jeopardize some website functionality.”

Scriptlet-based ad blocking is also crippled – they now have to be bundled into extension releases. Scriplets are small custom code scripts that modify webpages to surgically remove ads, especially on platforms like YouTube.

“This is also not possible to be updated over the air. So we also have to submit for the review, we have to push this through the entire publishing pipe until this can reach the user,” Modras said.

Invisible adblocking aspects – such as privacy – have suffered more than visible adblocking. Advertising companies will be able to smuggle trackers not covered by the predetermined rules and update them frequently.

“For normal users, I think, using adblockers still beats surfing the internet without it,” the CEO of Ghostery said.

Will YouTube be able to bypass new adblockers?

“That's a tricky thing, because they always could,” Modras explains. “One way would be to just put the ad inside of the video stream and adblocker can do absolutely nothing. They don't do it for different reasons.”

YouTube is also known to experiment with adblockers to test the patience of its free-tier users. In the past, they introduced various crackdown measures.

What’s changed is that now adblockers might take days or weeks to deliver new rules to block YouTube ads.

“They will experiment and see how users react, and that requires us to adapt to their behavior very, very fast. And now we're basically being delayed by at least a day. This one day may be sufficient for users to basically ditch the ad blocker altogether because the video doesn't play.”

Privacy solutions development hampered

Ghostery is just one of the companies that participate in the cat-and-mouse game with Google and other advertisers. The years spent on adopting Manifest Mv2 mean they couldn’t spend time developing their products.

“One consequence of this is that Google has effectively stopped innovation in the adblocking landscape. They have removed the tools necessary for us to innovate and to fight against tracking, which is an ever-evolving, super-powerful industry that is basically fueled by advertising money with an incentive to scan everything on the web, track everything, and sell. And they have deprived us of tools to combat this,” Modras said.

Users might or might not switch their preferred browser and adblocker combinations – Ghostery refrained from making far-reaching recommendations.

“Our main focus is just to create those tools to maximize your privacy, to block all the ads possible, and to do it as conveniently and quickly as possible. We do it under the constraints of the platform that we are at. And honestly, if Chrome has 95% of the market, that's what we have to focus on.”

While Modras expects some of their users to change browsers, “there is no way we'll now transfer all the users to Firefox.”

“This is also a fear for Google, right? They know they are at risk of losing users to Firefox, for instance. So they will do everything they can to keep those users within Chrome. That’s why they choose to recommend a couple of adblockers as uBlock Origin replacement.”

How does Ghostery earn money?

“I mean, we have a very, very small company. So low cost is the first part of the business model, the L part in the P (profit) and L (loss). And then we have supporters. It's one of these modern business models,” the CEO said. “We do a subscription-donation.”

“Donations, contributions from all sides,” Modras added.

They noted that none of adblockers on the market are large companies and users should beware of shady practices such as “unblocking for money,” or whitelisted ads that are allowed through the filter.

“It's not like you're ever going to see an adblocker doing an IPO,” Schmetz said.

Adblockers have no alternatives

Security and privacy professionals, including cybersecurity authorities, always recommend using adblockers to filter out unwanted and potentially malicious content. This recommendation won’t change with Manifest Version 3.

Ghostery representatives noted that there are no other ways to effectively block ads. For example, there are network-level solutions that filter URLs and IP addresses, but the quality will be lower – these tools can’t look into the encrypted HTTPs traffic.

“If you block a domain, you will never be able to go to Facebook, because it’s a tracking company that has to be blocked. So you have to have this browser companion, the extension that lives inside the browser and actually monitors the traffic as it comes,” Modras explains.

“Antivirus can’t ever help to protect our privacy. This has to be a browser add-on.”

“Using an adblocker is better than not using an adblocker,” Schmetz repeated.

The CEO, no surprise here, believes that his solution is the best mix of transparency, usability, and adblocking aggressiveness.

However, he warns users looking for a uBlock Origin replacement to be aware of potentially fraudulent copycats. Scammers also know about the changes and try to offer alternative adblockers mimicking legitimate ones. So scrutinize the developers, reviews, and Google recommendations before downloading any extension.

“You can be even more sure if you look at the recommendations on the Mozilla site. Mozilla is very strict with its recommendations. There are adblockers that are not present on the Firefox market because they were kicked out for some malicious practices,” Modras said.