Google backtracks on decision to kill Chrome ad-blockers

By Staff writer | 18 Feb 2019 at 13:51hrs
Chrome
A study conducted by the team behind the Ghostery ad blocker found that claims made by Google developers regarding the impact of ad-blockers on browsers were incorrect.

Chrome developers previously stated that the browser would be modified to use a the new DeclarativeNetRequest API instead of the webRequest API to improve performance, a move which could kill ad-blockers in Chrome.

Following the publishing of the Ghostery study, Google developers announced that the webRequest API relied on by these applications will not be removed due to the negligible performance hit delivered by ad-blocker extensions.

The study found that the time taken for ad-blockers to inspect and process requests slowed page loading time by less than a millisecond and used a minimal amount of memory.

Developers posted in the Chromium group forums after the publication of the Ghostery study, stating that the upcoming changes to Chrome would no longer include the compulsory migration to the new API.

"It is not, nor has it ever been, our goal to prevent or break content blocking," developers stated.

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