The search giant was originally going to completely end support for the Manifest V2 protocol in June 2023, but decided to postpone its decision for a year. The company first announced its plans to ditch the old expansions for Manifest V2 last year, and there have been no changes since. It was then expected that Chrome Beta, Dev, and Canary builds would be some kind of experiment, where they would start turning off support for the old protocol and promoting the new one, and Manifest V3 would become mandatory for getting the Favorite icon in the Chrome Web Store. Now such an experiment has been postponed to January 2024.
The reason for the suspension is given as a desire to give extension developers more time to migrate to Manifest V3. The company After Google said it had identified common problems after monitoring comments from the developer community. The main ones are related to the use of the capabilities of the DOM (standard document object model) and severe restrictions on the lifetime of the Service Workers service. While the first issue was fixed with the Offscreen Documents API that was added in Chrome 109, the second issue has not yet been resolved. Google also says it wants to help developers migrate to the new protocol.
As the first step of moving to Manifest V3 is delayed, Google’s original plan is no longer relevant. The company promised to provide an updated schedule for phasing out Manifest V2 by March 2023. Compared to the previous version, the new iteration prioritizes privacy, although many developers believe that the main reason is the limited ability of ad blockers to work.
Source: Trash Box
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