I've been using Safari exclusively since 2013, completely sidestepping all of this drama. I haven't seen an ad on YouTube in several years. I also haven't seen any hint of YouTube blocking my access to videos.

But for everyone who needs Windows, and the growing number of Linux users, FireFox seems like the only democratic option left.

always has been

Please, do not the google

Google already did the hard work, too. Just make each letter within Alphabet its own company.

No one is moving to Firefox, because most people don't care. Just like people stay on Reddit or X, they are going to stay on chrome. Google will feed them shit and they'll ask for more.

All we can do is worry about ourselves and keep trying to make alternatives viable.

They aren't forced to do anything. Manifest v3 is just a part of the WebExtensions API (which is not a standard and is really just "whatever Chrome does except we find/replace'd the word chrome to browser") which both Safari and Firefox chose to implement in order to make porting of Chrome extensions easier.

Before that, Firefox had a much more powerful extension system that allowed extensions quite a lot of access to browser internals, but that turned out to be a maintenance nightmare so they walled those APIs off (not a coincidence that Firefox started getting massive performance improvements after that, and extensions stopped breaking every other release) and decided to go the WebExtensions route. I have no clue what Safari was up to but I think they implemented it after.

If they don't implement Manifest v3, extensions that want to work across multiple browsers need to support both the older Manifest v2 and the later Manifest v3, which would be a burden not many extension authors would want to bother with, which would make them just say "yeah we're not supporting anything outside Chrome". Firefox avoids this problem by extending the v3 API to allow for the functionality necessary for powerful ad blocking Google removed in v3 (webRequestBlocking) while also implementing the new thing (declarativeNetRequest) side by side, so extensions that want to take advantage of the powerful features on Firefox can do so, while Chrome extensions that are fine with the less powerful alternative can still be ported over relatively easily.

Firefox does have it's fair share of extensions on top of the WebExtension API already (sidebar support for one), so adding one more isn't too big of a deal.

Can someone clarify why browsers other than the ones that are Chrome based are forced to adopt Manifest v3?

See, that's the thing: pretty much every browser except Firefox is Chrome-based. When people talk about browsers being forced to accept manifest v3, they're talking about all the Chrome-based browsers other than Chrome.

why browsers other than the ones that are Chrome based are forced to adopt Manifest v3?

Then the only browser left is Firefox. Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi and a long etc are all Chromium based.

There is also Safari, but Safari does not support WebExtensions in the first place so it does not apply here.

Edge is an euphemism for Microsoft Chrome.

Edge is the worst recommendation I've ever seen in my life

Won't Edge and all Chromium-based browsers end up with Manifest v3 and no v2? Will extension devs continue to support v2 in Firefox?

Yes it does still exist. It came preinstalled with the ThinkPad I set up for my daughter yesterday. That's why I immediately installed Firefox and made it the default browser instead.

Google makes their websites slower in Firefox. I don't think this is related to Apple at all. You'll probably have the same experience in Linux or Windows with Firefox and Google. They just want you to use Chrome.