By Mark Hachman
Publication Date: 2026-08-12 15:14:00
Ads stink, and anyone who says that they don’t affect productivity has never turned off an adblocker and tried to surf a major media site, including our own.
Microsoft’s perspective is that the shift is one that will provide its Edge browser a “secure and performant extensions foundation.” Anyone who’s used the Web, however, knows that this is an issue of productivity: ads drag down performance, slow down your productivity, and even cut into the available memory your PC uses for other tasks. Adblockers help reduce or eliminate those ads, keeping your PC running efficiently.
The uBlock Origin adblocker is my personal favorite, and the one I use when running Microsoft Edge. Unfortunately, it still uses the older Manifest version 2 extensions, and those are on their way out.
“With 95 percent of the top MV2 [Manifest Version 2] extensions on the Edge Add-ons store already moved to MV3 [Manifest Version 3], the ecosystem has made meaningful…
