Ron Amadeo

For several years now, Google has wanted to kill Chrome’s current extension system in favor of a more limited one, creating more restrictions on filtering extensions that block ads and/or work to preserve the user’s privacy. The new extension system, called “Manifest V3,” technically hit the stable channel in January 2021, but Chrome still supports the older, more powerful system, Manifest V2. The first steps toward winding down Manifest V2 were supposed to start January 2023, but as 9to5Google first spotted, Google now says it delayed the mandatory switch to Manifest V3 and won’t even have a new timeline for a V2 shutdown ready until March....

Chrome’s browser competitors Safari and Firefox have both been blocking third-party tracking cookies used by advertisers, by default, for over two years now. Google, the world’s largest advertising company, totally wants to match its competition and reduce user tracking; it will just take a little longer to do it. Google’s latest blog post details the second delay to the shutdown of third-party tracking cookies. Google says it will now support the tracking method until “the second half of 2024....

Google wants to kill third-party tracking cookies used for ads in Chrome with the “Chrome Privacy Sandbox .” Since Google is also the world’s largest ad company, though, it’s not killing tracking cookies without putting something else in its place. Google’s replacement plan is to have Chrome locally build an ad interest profile for you, via a system called “FLoC” (Federated Learning of Cohorts). Rather than having advertisers collect your browsing history to build an individual profile of you on their servers, Google wants to keep that data local and have the browser serve a list of your interests to advertisers whenever they ask via an API so that you’ll still get relevant ads....