No, I don't think that is correct. You can still stop a web request, but you can only stop it by providing chrome with a list of url patterns to block. The current method passes the url being requested to the extension, which can then decide to block it or not.
The new way has the extension give a list of patterns to block to chrome, and from there it will block any request that matches.
The stated reason is that this is for privacy, to prevent extensions from being able to gather data about every request a browser makes. Currently, a malicious extension could send every url a user visits to some central collection server. The new way prevents that.
Is the trade off worth it? I personally think no, but I do think many people don't realize that as blockers have the capability to collect every url you visit if they wanted.
It's not for privacy, the people who were saying that are either mistaken or intentionally lying. It's clear to see because the observational capabilities of the API aren't being removed -- only the blocking capabilities. So the privacy issue is still there. Supposedly, this change is just for performance.
What I mean is the fact that they are deprecating the blocking API. That wasn't an action taken for privacy's sake. Otherwise, why wouldn't they deprecate the observational API too?
The new way has the extension give a list of patterns to block to chrome, and from there it will block any request that matches.
The stated reason is that this is for privacy, to prevent extensions from being able to gather data about every request a browser makes. Currently, a malicious extension could send every url a user visits to some central collection server. The new way prevents that.
Is the trade off worth it? I personally think no, but I do think many people don't realize that as blockers have the capability to collect every url you visit if they wanted.