Our comment on Google Chrome's proposed extensions platform change

You might have already heard about this. Google is going to change Chrome's extension platform. The proposed change in its current state will cripple or even effectively kill a lot of extensions, and it will significantly reduce the capabilities of ad blockers including AdGuard Chrome extension.

We are receiving numerous questions about this situation, and in this post, I'd like to clarify our position.

In my opinion, Google does NOT intend to kill ad blockers. They genuinely want to make the extensions platform more secure and improve the situation with users privacy. It is not a secret that Chrome Web Store is full of spyware and even malware. So they had two options: invest more time into the manual review process or limit extensions capabilities. It's obvious now what they chose.

It does not mean that ad blocking extensions for Chrome will cease to exist. It just means that they will become worse. How much worse depends on the outcome of this discussion (please don't comment there if you are not a developer). The new proposed API is not final, and there is a chance that in the end, the solution will not be too bad.

So what do we think about it? I'll be blunt, we at AdGuard are sick and tired of what's going on with large ecosystems during the last couple of years. Google (1, 2), Apple (1, 2), and even Amazon (1) (who would have thought!) slowly deprive users of control over their data. Surprisingly enough, usually, it is being done in the name of security and privacy.

This is the reason why we spend so much time developing products that do not depend on those, who control ecosystems. AdGuard Home might be in its early stages, but every recent news reinforces my belief that this is the future of content blocking.

Needless to say that premium AdGuard products for Windows, Mac, and Android work on the network-level and are not affected by this change.