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Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

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Re: Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

#131

Post by pwg »

bpicolo wrote: post #66
aethr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the conflict of interest. It's hard to see how this isn't going to strengthen their position in the ad serving market. Google being able to define where the bar for "badly behaving" is set means that only their competitors will be hurt by this.

I wonder if the motivation isn't a bit more subtle than that. My guess would be they're hoping to improve ads across the web so that people turn off ad blockers in general.

This is very likely the reason this has suddenly appeared in Chrome. Google's revenue relies on ads. Too many internet users blocking too many ads directly threatens Google's revenue stream. The recent sudden upsurge in ad-blocking would, from a Google perspective, look like an existential threat to their very existence.

And what would be one reasonable response that a company reliant on ads for income who also happens to produce a browser used by a huge number of users look like when they realize this existential threat exists? Well, one reasonable response would be exactly this, a "kill the misbehaving ones" addition to that browser in hopes of heading off the threat before it becomes a true, company killing, result.

Only time will tell if this change in mindset on their part actually results in heading off the eventual outcome.

Re: Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

#132

Post by nikkwong »

hectormalot wrote: post #123
andrewmutz wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is interesting. It seems to me that it could be considered to be monopoly abuse and it also seems to be pro-consumer. A strange combination.

Not such a strange combination in my view. As i see it, Google's customers are (for a large part) advertisers, and their product is the ability to get ads in front of people (and to get people to click on them). In the economical sense you could even argue that Google users are 'suppliers' (of eyeballs and clicks) Monopoly abuse can of course impact both suppliers as well as customers, but in this case it's probably…

I think you are missing the point. In my opinion it's a valid concern that this policy could be perceived as Google effectively pushing advertisers onto AdWords over other competing platforms

Re: Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

#134

Post by freshhawk »

andrewmutz wrote: post #61
oDot wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like it too, but isn't Google in a conflict of interest here?

It is interesting. It seems to me that it could be considered to be monopoly abuse and it also seems to be pro-consumer. A strange combination.

How is it pro-consumer? Ad blocking is mainstream so Google wants people to consider this new built in "ad blocker" to be good enough, then they won't install one that blocks Google ads.

Re: Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

#136

Post by nikkwong »

rileyteige wrote: post #8
kenshaw wrote: post #4

My cynical side can't help but think they will do this first, then later disable uBlock / other ad blockers (or the APIs they rely on) and claim that "we can do it better." I can't imagine that this isn't a violation of some kind of law (RICO, antitrust, or otherwise), but I don't imagine this would ever be prosecuted.

My cynical side agrees with your cynical side, while my optimistic side thinks that a move like this would significantly boost market share for alternative browsers, myself included.

Why would end users opt for alternative browsers in this case? For end users this situation is a win: no more 'intrusive' ads. It only ends up being a loss for competing advertising platforms and possibly advertisers.

Re: Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

#137

Post by danbruc »

The »Coalition for Better Ads« is just the same as »Acceptable Ads« - we will try not annoy you with flashing ads. Both entirely fail to address privacy issues. Just search for »tracking« [1][2] or »privacy« on those sites, there is nothing at all. Not acceptable for me.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=tracking+site:betterads.org

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=tracking+site:acceptableads....

Re: Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

#138

Post by derefr »

jerf wrote: post #127
userbinator wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only issue with that is HTTPS, which Privoxy currently can't handle ( https://www.privoxy.org/faq/misc.html ) and will become even more of a problem with the current "encrypt everything" trend. Certificate pinning and all the other stuff aimed at making TLS harder to MITM also gets in the way of effective adblocking proxies. The only one I know of which can MITM SSL on Windows is Proxomitron, and you still have t…

HTTPS proxying is perfectly possible, though. IMHO it's one of those bizarre cases where the code to implement it isn't even that hard necessarily. The challenge is all in the fact that A: more people think they understand the HTTPS security model than actually understand the HTTPS security model and B: it's really easy to write code that "works" in the sense that it allows you to proxy pages, but allows you to proxy…

It'd be nice to lift out Chromium's own network stack into a library (as a continuously-rebased-from-upstream derivative fork), and then build a proxy that made requests using said network stack. Then you'd get all the HSTS/cert-pinning logic, the CORS and only-N-requests-per-host-at-a-time policies, and a very good LRU cache implementation, "for free", for your proxy daemon.

Heck, if you don't mind an extra 100MB of memory consumption, you could probably throw a "correct" proxy-daemon together in Javascript by relying on the browser network stack of a [headless] Electron instance.

Re: Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

#139

Post by amygdyl »

whyleyc wrote: post #92
aesthetics1 wrote: post #12

"In one possible application Google is considering, it may choose to block all advertising that appears on sites with offending ads, instead of the individual offending ads themselves. In other words, site owners may be required to ensure all of their ads meet the standards, or could see all advertising across their sites blocked in Chrome." I like this approach. It punishes site owners for running malicious or badly…

It may be laudable to try and lead an "industry-wide" effort to clean up ads but it stinks of hypocrisy when Google repeatedly allows all shades of garbage to permeate its' own Adsense network. We talked about this only a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14094083

I work tangentially to adtech, started with publishing when a xacto knife and bromides might be a handy skill still...

I still cannot wrap my head around publishers apparently disinterested in manually clearing ad copy for press approval.

Can anyone delineate a non obvious history to this complete laissez faire?

Re: Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

#140

Post by TechRemarker »

At first it sounds insane that Google would do such a thing since while ad blocking is growing, enabling the feature natively especially by default would incredibly increase the number of ads blocked.

My guess is, that where other blockers by default can easily block all google ads, Chrome blocker would not block Google Ads because it would classify them as acceptable. And Google would then hope that people would use their built in blocker rather than downloading a third party extension which would highly likely block there ads. And if people have a built in blocker that blocks the mostly bad ads, the people would start to hate ads less and be okay with 'good ads'. Also since people wouldn't use third party blockers as much those companies would go out business more likely.

It's a very risky move on Google's part, so would be a bit surprised if it happens. But doing nothing, is equally if not more risky in the long run for there business model.

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