Chrome's relationship with its userbase can now be considered "coercive", honestly. After all that feedback on the extension manifest, they chose the worst of the options for users, and the best option for Google.
Given gorhill's investigation of their SEC filing and what it reveals, I do not believe anyone should be using Chrome anymore. That doesn't really matter, because once ad-blockers end up hamstrung in a future release, that will just force everyone over to Firefox or Edgeium.
It makes it abundantly clear that the public feedback they asked for on the change was nothing more than lip service to the extension developer community. I am ashamed to admit I fell for it, because the changes could have been rationalized at the time.
Now, it's abundantly clear that Google wants to exploit you, through Chrome.
Move to Firefox now. There is no better option, now that every other browser is Webkit or Blink based, or directly forked from Chromium.
@SwooshyCueb that he is