AdGuard Browser Extensions

There's been a lot of talk lately about the changes that await Google Chrome in the near future. In short, Google is going to change Chrome's extension platform. Developers confirmed it multiple times that the old API is going to be deprecated and that the new declarative webRequest API is inevitable. Translating it into human language, it will effectively kill a lot of extensions, and significantly reduce the capabilities of ad blockers.

A lot has changed since the first ad blocking browser extensions appeared on the market. Simply blocking ads is not enough anymore (not to say it is an easy task — advertisers are constantly learning new tricks to jam their ads past the filters). Today, big data rules the world. Tracking is omnipresent, the price of information has skyrocketed, and so has the value of privacy. People seek tools to protect it, and ad blockers need to adapt to the new demands in order to stay competitive. We understand this more than anyone, and the new AdGuard browser extension v3.0 reflects this.

About a month ago we announced the most recent addition to the AdGuard family: AdGuard for Safari. It has already found its users, and we were happy to see a lot of feedback during the very first days after the release. Today, after taking that feedback into account, we roll out the first update. So what exactly is inside?

It seems that Apple is not really on a path to make adblockers’ life easy. As you might have heard, Safari 12 came out and disabled all Safari adblocking extensions that were downloaded directly from the Web without using Mac App Store.

Despite all the internal and beta testing, sometimes things just don't go quite as you expect them to after a release. This happens even to the largest of companies, not to mention AdGuard. What separates good developers from not so good ones is how fast they react to the unexpected difficulties. We'd like to think we are among the former ones, that's why we don't shy away from hotfixes if the situation calls for it.