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Adblock Sold to Mystery Company

businessinsider.com

121–130 of 174 posts

Re: Adblock Sold to Mystery Company

#121
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay this is why we have registered trademarks. You're telling me that Adblock, Adblock Plus, and AdBlock are three separate things? What the hell? I just assumed they were all the same thing until now.

Don't forget about Adblock Edge, AdBlock Lite, μ Adblock, and Ad Blockerr: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=adblock

Cripes, this is starting to sound like the old phone books. Coming soon: AAAAAAA+ AdBlock?

Re: Adblock Sold to Mystery Company

#122
post #26
post #9

To anyone who is concerned by this change, I recommend taking a look at μBlock Origin [1,2]. It's blazingly fast, very flexible, and under active development. I made the switch about a year ago and it has served me very well. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock [2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...

Works great on Firefox for Android, too. No more app store popups!

TIL Firefox for Android has addons. I have apparently been living under a rock (called Chrome).

Re: Adblock Sold to Mystery Company

#123
post #9

To anyone who is concerned by this change, I recommend taking a look at μBlock Origin [1,2]. It's blazingly fast, very flexible, and under active development. I made the switch about a year ago and it has served me very well. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock [2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...

Just be sure NOT to install "U Block For Origin", by www.z1z2z3z4.com, which is currently the top hit if you search the Chrome extensions store for 'ublock'. I don't know what it does, but I bet it's not good.

I reported this malware app on both my devices and suggest everyone do the same. It's up to no good.

Re: Adblock Sold to Mystery Company

#124

Note that Adblock isn't Adblock Plus: AdBlock is not to be confused with Adblock Plus. The creator of AdBlock claims to have been inspired by the Adblock Plus extension for Firefox, which is itself based on another extension called Adblock. But otherwise AdBlock is unrelated to the other efforts. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdBlock ] No alarm here for ABP users. (Like me).

>No alarm here for ABP users. (Like me).

Why? ABP also has an "acceptable ads" program, where you can pay to have ads whitelisted if you follow certain rules:

https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-ads

They are notably not transparent about who pays what & the like.

As far as I can tell, all Adblock is doing is following in Adblock Plus's footsteps.

Re: Adblock Sold to Mystery Company

#126
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adblock would not be a trademarkable name anyway. It's a generic term that describes what the product is.

Don't tell Microsoft! (Windows, Word, Surface, etc.) Or Apple! (Pages, Numbers, etc.)

"Microsoft Word" is the trademark, not "Word".

Or is it? If Microsoft has trademarked just "Word", it is very strange that they don't enforce it against these folks:

http://www.abiword.org/

especially in the light of how, some years ago, their lawyers swooped down like hawks on a Canadian named Mike Rowe who put up a "Mike Rowe Soft" consulting business and web site.

Re: Adblock Sold to Mystery Company

#127
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't tell Microsoft! (Windows, Word, Surface, etc.) Or Apple! (Pages, Numbers, etc.)

You might have a point if those products had been called "Operating System", "Text Editor" and "Portable Computer With Touchscreen and Keyboard".

On a technicality (which is what trademark attorneys deal in), your point falls to the same fallacy. The product Adblock is an "Advertisement blocking engine" or the like. "Adblock" is a made-up word and therefore likely eligible for trademark. (Or it was before the namespace got polluted with all the variants.)

Re: Adblock Sold to Mystery Company

#128
post #9

To anyone who is concerned by this change, I recommend taking a look at μBlock Origin [1,2]. It's blazingly fast, very flexible, and under active development. I made the switch about a year ago and it has served me very well. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock [2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...

Just be sure NOT to install "U Block For Origin", by www.z1z2z3z4.com, which is currently the top hit if you search the Chrome extensions store for 'ublock'. I don't know what it does, but I bet it's not good.

It even steals the real uBlock Origin's icon. That's incredibly sketchy.

Re: Adblock Sold to Mystery Company

#129
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't tell Microsoft! (Windows, Word, Surface, etc.) Or Apple! (Pages, Numbers, etc.)

"Microsoft Word" is the trademark, not "Word". Or is it? If Microsoft has trademarked just "Word", it is very strange that they don't enforce it against these folks: http://www.abiword.org/ especially in the light of how, some years ago, their lawyers swooped down like hawks on a Canadian named Mike Rowe who put up a "Mike Rowe Soft" consulting business and web site.

"AbiWord" is a single word, which may be a factor. They might have trouble if it were "Abi Word" or "Word by Abi" or even "Word". It's implausible that another entity could market a competitor of Word (or Windows) by naming it e.g. "Apple Word" or "Apple Windows". I'm going to bet that all the common permutations are trademarked by MSFT.

Also, I'm guessing Abi's limited reach is a factor. If Abi was suddenly taking a meaningful share of usage, they would probably get an angry lawyer letter.

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