Google moves to ad blocking: eliminate uBlock

Every time we browse the Internet, we come across a lot of advertisements on almost every page and website we visit. It doesn’t matter if it’s a forum, a news site, or a platform where videos are uploaded, the vast majority of them will have advertising to a greater or lesser extent. By using Adblock and other ad blockers, you can skip most of these ads, including those on pages like YouTube. Now Google wants to do away with all existing ad blockers, and today it dealt the community a hard blow because removed uBlock Origin from your Chrome Web Store

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Adblock is considered the most popular ad blocker because it was one of the first browser extensions that basically did what its name suggests. It’s installed on tens of millions of computers around the world because, as you can imagine, Advertising is annoying and people will look for alternatives to avoid it.. At the same time, advertising on web pages is absolutely necessary because many of them depend on it for income.

Google has decided to remove uBlock Origin from the Chrome Web Store in order to move to Manifest V3.

Although the use of Adblock was not entirely illegal, it was quite a controversial issue, but there were never laws completely prohibiting it. That’s why Google has started working on making changes that would put an end to this type of extension. This was in 2023, when it was already announced that the company was going to Make ad blocking obsolete with Manifest V3but this will not happen until 2024. Now it seems that we are already close to this day, as warnings about various extensions have started appearing, and some have even disappeared.

The extension that caught our attention the most is
uBlock Origin, because this adblock was considered
best of all can even block ads YouTube when others have failed in the attempt. Now if we search for uBlock Origin in the Chrome Web Store, we will find a message saying that the extension
no longer available because it “does not follow best practices for Chrome extensions.” If you have it installed and are looking for it, you will see another message indicating that Chrome browser support will be discontinued soon.

Those who have uBlock Origin installed will be able to continue using it until June 2025.

Reports seem to vary by region, with some Americans saying the app has disappeared from the store and other users in the EU region saying it’s still available, with a warning that it’s about to disappear. This extension is used by millions of people, so anyone who received the latest message should be aware that
uBlock Origin will disappear completely only in June 2025.. This way, those who use the app will be able to continue using it for several months.

However, if you are one of those who found out that it is no longer available because it is not compatible with Manifest V3, then you will have to download another alternative ad blocker. uBlock Origin Lite

This is a version based on the new
Manifest V3but you will notice that limited to adapt to Google’s new rules. Other Chromium based browsers such as Vivaldi
or Opera, announced that I don’t plan to abandon Manifest V2 and accept Manifest V3, so uBlock Origin and other extensions should work without problems here.