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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

#421

Post by Qub3d »

visarga wrote: post #246
WhitneyLand wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad blocking strikes so deeply at the heart of Google's success, it's simply not credible to believe there is no more to the strategy than the simple defense mentioned in the article. To speculate on just one possible strategy: - First order of business, crush Ad Block plus' pay to play business. Possibly just by entering the market with resources, IP, and channel that would overwhelm them. - Continue on this path unt…

> it's simply not credible to believe there is no more to the strategy than the simple defense mentioned in the article It would be more fair if Google implemented a micropayments system that would be distributed to the websites a user is using most / where the user wants to tip. Google already has payments integrated through the app store. If they created a new kind of "micropayments sponsored" content category, it…

Google is trialing this already, through the 'contributor' program.

Currently the program isn't accepting new users, but it is set to relaunch this year [0].

[0]: https://contributor.google.com

Re: Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

#422

Post by Qub3d »

gorhill wrote: post #420

Ads are a subset of a larger issue: the out of control data mining and tracking[1]. Focusing only on whether an ad is visually pleasant or not does not address the larger issue -- which larger issue is the foremost reason people should install a content blocker, to get back in the control seat of their user agent . [1] https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/849263615634964484 => https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8ka33oUMAAGMB…

BTW, this person is the creator of Ublock Origin.

Re: Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

#423

Post by throwaway91111 »

Arnt wrote: post #293
kesor wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "ad blocker" companies will go out of business? ARE YOU INSANE?! Google is a frigging AD MONOPOLY ... its their major business for crying out loud. And the same company that controls a HUGE portion of all the Internet Ad business is creating an "Ad Blocker". And this doesn't ring any bells anywhere? No friend, they are not trying to put "ad blocker" companies out of business. They are trying to put "competing int…

Google's an ad company, and ad companies are doing bad things, enough so that there's a backlash. So it makes sense for Google to deploy bad-stuff-blocking in Chrome and then reconfigure its own ad business to not be affected. Those who don't adapt are killed by the backlash, but that's hardly Google's fault. A concrete example: Chrome is in a position to block those who use canvas/webgl fingerprinting for user track…

Stopping fingerprinting is virtually impossible.

Re: Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

#424

Post by throwaway91111 »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #205
kesor wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "ad blocker" companies will go out of business? ARE YOU INSANE?! Google is a frigging AD MONOPOLY ... its their major business for crying out loud. And the same company that controls a HUGE portion of all the Internet Ad business is creating an "Ad Blocker". And this doesn't ring any bells anywhere? No friend, they are not trying to put "ad blocker" companies out of business. They are trying to put "competing int…

More like duopoly: It's Google and Facebook. Facebook has probably less than 1/3 of Google's ad revenue.

Does facebook serve ads outside of facebook?

Re: Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

#425

Post by onion2k »

onion2k wrote: post #336
TechRemarker wrote: post #140

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…

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. I think that guess is wrong. I think Google will block their own ads. There are a few reasons why; 1. They're not stupid. The amount of trust lost in a move like that would be immense. It wouldn't be worthwhile. 2. They don't need to. They just need…

The karma on this comment is going up and down like a thing that goes up and down a lot, so I think I should clarify what I meant by "I think Google will block their own ads."

The ad-blocking they're talking about implementing won't block every ad; they said as much. It'll only block the malicious or annoying ads. Google could block those on it's own network already (maybe they already do!). They'll start block them in the Chrome ad-blocking code. That means they'll block their own ads if adSense is serving something that fails their test. They might even use the same "is this ad bad for the user?" heuristics that they use on their servers, effectively meaning Chrome users can benefit from the work they've done in detecting bad adverts even on sites where the site owner has chosen a different ad network. I think that's a good thing.

Whether we'll ever actually see the result of when it comes to an adSense advert is a separate question - it's in Google's interest to block a bad ad at the origin and send a different one instead so they still get paid. That would mean Chrome never actually blocks an adSense advert because they know exactly what won't be displayed and never send anything that would be blocked. I still see that as Google blocking ads on their own network though, just farther up the chain.

Re: Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

#426

Post by AmIFirstToThink »

ouid wrote: post #384
tyingq wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also doesn't hurt that Google will be able to control what is considered an "ad" and what isn't. Are Google product listings ads? Google flight results? Featured destinations?

If you request it, it's not an ad. I think that's a pretty reasonable line to draw.

I didn't request the ad, I requested the page.

If you put ads on page e.g. Amazon product that relates to your content with affiliate link, that's fair and acceptable and appreciated.

If you put an ad that your audience may be interested in, unrelated to your content e.g. content creator reviewing restaurants also advertises for gyms in my area. It is fair and tolerated.

If you outsource what ad gets shown to me, leaving me at mercy of brokers and exchanges who target me with ads based on my entire profile, ads not just related to content that I requested, but ads created based on what the ad broker/exchange know about me personally. Seeing ads for athletes foot remedy that I searched for last week, when I am looking at camera reviews is not acceptable and makes me feel totally ethical when I use ad-blockers. You, the content host, is basically luring me in with promise of content and pulling bait and switch by bombarding ads on me, things like splitting content into bite size pieces across 20 pages to convert single request into 20 impressions is waste of my time, I don't have to deal with it and will use ad-blockers without any guilt on such sites.

People have trained their eyes to not register the ads, e.g. mobile ads that scroll over the page. This is similar to browsing a print magazine and not registering ads at all consciously.

The advertisers declared war on people, looking at them as crop to be harvested. Well, the people have an opinion about this and I am totally fine with the battle raging on.

Re: Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

#427

Post by Chris2048 »

solatic wrote: post #226
QuinnyPig wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine this wouldn't lead to one hell of an antitrust lawsuit...

This. Corner the ad market and then work to eliminate all your competitors? The lawsuit practically writes itself.

What if consumers want it, though? Opt-in?

Re: Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

#429

Post by bobajeff »

CoryG89 wrote: post #180
forgotpwtomain wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On mobile Chrome does not support extensions while Firefox does. Recently on acquiring a new phone I used Chrome for a few days -- I had entirely forgotten how terrible the user-experience is without UBlock!

I always suspected the reason we never got extensions in mobile Chrome is that they didn't want the ad blockers. I wasn't aware that Firefox mobile started supporting them. Going to give it a try.

Just want to point out that's there is a really old issue for this: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=113111

It's been assigned to some unknown person since 2015.

Though I'm not so sure the reason for it's delay in coming to Android isn't technical rather than organizational.

Brave for Android is based off of Chromium and it didn't have extensions either.

It sounds like the way extension APIs were initially implemented didn't lend itself to a Android port.

"We never had the Android version compiling with extension support in the first place - in our early development internally, we hacked/commented/disabled random parts of extension code just to get the binary to compile, and we later tidied this up to disable extensions in a neater way to save binary size. So, you are basically talking about actually implementing extension support for android from scratch, including adding every thing that extensions require but aren't currently implemented for Android. This isn't likely to be especially easy. " - https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/m/#!topic/chr...

Though I don't understand why since Firefox mobile extensions are based off a similarly designed system (Jetpack) to Chromes.

It seems that if nothing else they could create a new API for extensions on Android.

Re: Google plans ad-blocking feature in Chrome browser

#430

Post by syrrim »

dvdhsu wrote: post #191
Arizhel wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is a possibility, the wrench in the works is the Firefox browser. How is Google going to get them to play along and prevent 3rd-party blockers like UBlock Origin from working? I don't see it happening. They can certainly put ABP out of business, which honestly is fine with me. But UO isn't a business AFAIK, it's a Free open-source project. That's like trying to put vim out of business; you just can't, beca…

You "kill" vim by preinstalling a friendly text editor by default, like TextEdit or Notepad. Many of my technical friends (myself included) use vim, but vim will never be used by everybody, everywhere. When most people first get a new computer and want to edit text, they use TextEdit instead of vim. The end game of ad blocking is that everybody installs one. That would be devastating to Google. Instead, they would ra…

Some operating systems (macOS, most linux) do install vim by default. The problem is that vim has a very high learning curve, and most people don't want to spend time learning to edit text. Microsoft has tried doing what you described, by installing ie/edge by default, and making it good enough for most people. Admittedly it's working to some degree, but there are still plenty of people who choose firefox/chrome over edge.
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