The webRequest extension API -- the one that uBlock Origin uses and was removed in Manifest v3 -- was not added until 2012.
All of the things that made Chrome great for the web in 2010 are still there.
It's strange how we can kind of misremember things to fit whatever narrative we currently believe.
> All of the things that made Chrome great for the web in 2010 are still there
Something that was great in 2010 may not look great in 2026.
It's been 16 years. The Internet has moved on. Blocking ads is the norm now, and they are removing that functionality.
It's only strange because you interpreted "Chrome made the web so much better for everyone" as "Chrome had a webRequest API", which is probably not what the original poster meant.
The article we're discussing is about how extensions that didn't upgrade to Manifest v3, including uBlock Origin, are now being removed from the Chrome web store.
uBlock Origin didn't migrate to v3 because they use the webRequest API and didn't want to switch to the less-powerful replacement, declarativeNetRequest (uBlock Origin Lite uses the new API and is available in the store).
Based on this context, it seems reasonable to assume that one of the reasons the person I replied to believes Chrome isn't making the web better any more is due to the removal of uBlock Origin. And this is due to the removal of the webRequest API.