Some absolutely cavalier bombastic bullshit that Google is going to finally send a messenger to the WebExtensions working group like a week or two before they shut off capable MV2[1], having never ever replied to any of the massive massive outpourings of dismay, sadness, & hatred. Just dogshit apocalypically bad mishandling, complete & utter trashfire stewardship. This is the most trust-breaking saddening enraging thing I can think of that has happened to the web. I want to curse these people out so bad. It's incomprenehsible to me, just indecent at every level.

None of this seems at all in any way good for the web. It's 100% self serving horseshit, that reduces the power of the extension, that makes extensions less of a threat to Google. None of it is good for extensions or users. It's a radical radical radical reduction in capability. 100% every argument is that we need to de-empower extensions or else, that we must fear extensions, reduce them, contain any uncertainty about what users might do. I've never seen a company sell such bitterness & sadness so actively before, ever. I see zero reason to believe a single word. There's not a single ray of hope cast anywhere here, no hope that extensions will ever reclaim any of their capabilities.

As well as the numerous complains about the declarative request api, to me, the real biggest change is that previously extensions used to act like pages. Pages have tons and tons of capabilities. They have dom. They can access all kinds of great nifty APIs. the new MV3 version? Extensions are just service workers. They have extremely fantastically limited capabilities[2]. There's no idea of how they might ever support things like WebSockets. Most of the great web apis are cut off. This is a shrivelled pathetic husk of what extensions were. And Google has deferred deferred deferred response. They've said nothing, always kicked the can, but they're still going to cut us all off next month. My honest view is that we're getting punked by a bunch of immoral indecent @#$@#$@#$!@#$!'s. This is sick. This is depraved. How dare you force this upon us? You've failed to show your face at every critical juncture. Uncouth. Unacceptable. Indecent.

Mozilla tried to pitch a slightly less vulgar option, where there would still be something like Pages, something that had some of the web api's accessible. We saw one content free ultra-negative post from Google in reply to this Mozilla idea, on Limited Event Pages[3]. "No, doesn't work", mic drop, peace out. This looks like such sick sabotage. Not even raising a real point to discuss. Just murdering what extensions are, and exiting the building.

I'm someone who generally sees a lot of upside to the things Google is doing for the web. But this is a cavalcade of schlock. Not a single thing happening here is being done decently. It's all a pathetic shit show. There's zero responsibility, zero adults on Google's side. They post a couple random blog posts defending themselves, but this continues to look like a broadscale massive assault on users, a massive attack on the capabilities of the web. If this happens, it will be the single most colossal restriction of capabilities the web will ever have experienced. It will radically draw down what is possible for user-agents. There are no plans, no hopes, no vision of how we can get better: this is a vast strictly regressive loss of capabilities.

Oh and by the way, JavaScript, this dynamic language? Yeah, we're just going to disable any of it's dynamic capabilities. Just like Apple outlaws interpretive code systems, Google is now outlawing interpretive code in extensions. Extensions have to have every capability baked in. No more userscript systems like GreaseMonkey: forbidden. Too much power, too dangerous. I think of systems like Yahoo Pipes (rip) or IFTTT, how they could stitch together interesting computing: that's all outlawed now. The extension has to do static, fixed actions. Google has totally rewritten the game, totally minimized the power of the extension, by fiat. The same deep cowardice, complete bullshit that Apple has pulled, but far more insidious. Against the user. One can still write programs that script safari. But the scripts we can write for Chrome are suddenly deeply deeply hobbled, no longer ever permitted to be themselves programmable systems, always only fixed dumb inert matter. All for some ultra-fascist pathetic notion of security. I spit in your face you stupid corrupt useless fucks. What degradation, what reducing of the human race you have imposed upon us! By evil vast corrupt fiat. You horrible monsters!

There has never been a more critical juncture for the web. And Google has never been so colossally irresponsive, so blanketly unable & unwilling to make even the faintest motions to make good on the changes they are imposing. Google's only sometimes done whatever they want (such as with disabling HTTP/2 push because they feel like it after ~2 years[4], having never listened to a single iota of feedback on it in the first place). Few things strike so deeply in to the heart of user-agency, so few topics are so definitional to what we the world can do with the web. And there's been zero fucking show up (the declarative api stuff admittedly sucked up a lot of the oxygen in the room, but even that seems completely unsatisfactorily in any way resolved). Absolutely nothing from Google. They've run out the clock & are going to shut down the best part of the web, because they fucking feel like it. Because it'll make it easy for them. Because they'll be able to regulate & govern conveniently by rescinding most powers.

I've been sad for the web some times. But never like this. This is truly apocalyptic destruction being wracked upon the web.

[1] https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/pull/135/files#diff-ee4...

[2] https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/72

[3] https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/134

[4] https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/http2-push-chromium-deprecation....