Google experiments with all kinds of improvements for the Chrome browser, but there are obviously times when some of them go wrong and certain features stop working.
This happened recently, when Google began testing out Services, a new feature for Chrome that is supposed to give users more control over the browser.
Service workers technically separate the websites you load in Google Chrome into separate processes, and this feature is possible thanks to a new flag in the browser called “Enable network service.”.
Google recently enabled this feature for a limited number of users running Chrome 72, but due to a bug in its early implementation, it may stop some extensions from working. In other words, if you previously installed something like an ad blocker on Google Chrome, ads may no longer be blocked after enabling this experiment on your device.
While Google Chrome extensions are being bypassed and thus significantly impacting the experience in the browser, the Mountain View-based search giant doesn't want to disable its experiment since it needs to test it before enabling it for all users.
As for the appearance, the issue has already been fixed in Google Chrome 73, the next stable version of the browser. Chrome 73 is currently in development and Google claims that extension makers should switch to this version to avoid the bug.
“When launching multi-year projects that impact a large portion of the codebase, it’s impossible to avoid some setbacks. We need to balance the progress made and avoid running into other setbacks by breaking some cases. The best way to avoid all of this is to use dev/beta channels,” Google says.
However, in the stable version of Google Chrome it is possible to resolve the bug simply by disabling the new experiment completely.
To do this, launch Google Chrome and in the address bar, copy and paste the following command: chrome://flags/#network-service
The description of the flag published in Google Chrome is rather simple and highlights what we discussed in detail earlier: It enables the network service, which makes network requests through a separate process. – Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android.
The flag should be set to Default and if you are part of Google's experiment, that means it is enabled. What you need to do is set the flag to Disabled and then restart the browser.
If everything works correctly, your extensions should be back to their expected settings. The easiest way to test this is for ad blockers that failed to filter ads, so simply load a website in Google Chrome to see if the content is blocked properly.
You may need to re-enable the flag when Google releases Chrome 73 and the fixes become available to all users.
At this point, it's unclear how many users are affected, but Google says that less than 0.1% of Chrome installations had the new flag enabled by default. However, given that Google runs on nearly 70% of all desktops out there, that could be a huge number, so be sure to try the instructions above if you run into issues with extensions.
Google Chrome 73 is scheduled for release on March 12, so the next stable build with a fix for broken extensions won't be out for less than three weeks. You can always try out the beta and dev versions of Chrome if you want to see what's coming in the next stable release.
