[comex]

They've done nothing of the sort. The ZDNet article quotes:

> "Another clarification is that the webRequest API is not going to be fully removed as part of Manifest V3," said Chrome engineer Devlin Cronin [emphasis his].

But the full quote shows what he's talking about:

> Another clarification is that the webRequest API is not going to be fully removed as part of Manifest V3. In particular, there are currently no planned changes to the observational capabilities of webRequest (i.e., anything that does not modify the request). We are also continually listening to and evaluating the feedback we’re receiving, and we are still narrowing down proposed changes to the webRequest API.

The only commitment is to not modify the read-only "observational capabilities".

[ccnafr]

Actually that's the API feature that current ad blockers were using.

[roca]

How can that be? You can't block loads using only observational capabilities.

[xkapastel]

No, what they're doing is nerfing webRequest so that the ad blockers cannot use it to block ads anymore.