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How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

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Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#61

Post by carlosrg »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #22
carlosrg wrote: post #15

This is a good thing. Advertising is one of the most effective ways companies have to let people know about their products - I'd say they're essential in free market economies. But having ads is one thing and completely disrupting the user experience is another. Finding a balance is a better approach than blocking all ads.

Advertising is very seldom information based. Advertising is primarily about making you buy a product from a particular company, whether it's a good product or not, whether it's right for you or not. If it were about letting people know your products then 'Nide' would have "if you want these for cross-training the best show are 'Reebob' Cross2" on the advert for their training shoes. Advertising is almost orthogonal…

>Advertising is primarily about making you buy a product from a particular company, whether it's a good product or not, whether it's right for you or not.

That a pretty simplistic view. I never said ads are 100% true and want the best for you. Ads are informational as they inform you of the existence of a product and their basic characteristics. Small, well-targeted ads can be the only way someone that's just starting could have to let people know about the existence of their product. They don't hold a gun at you to force you to buy a product, they don't remove competition between companies, they don't prevent third-party review sites from existing. Buying or not buying them is up to each individual.

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#62

Post by jacquesm »

Santosh83 wrote: post #53
jacquesm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should not see this as a Google vs Mozilla thing but as a Google vs adblockers and Google vs its competing advertising networks issue. Then it makes much more sense.

Well, I have Mozilla's back personally since I've always used only Firefox ever since version 1 and never used Chrome except for trying it out for a test drive from time to time, but the millions of Firefox users worldwide will now have one more reason to jump ship to Chrome and that's something Firefox can't afford at this point. Built-in ad blocking is just too good to pass up. Firefox needs to implement their own…

That I agree with, but installing an ad blocker is fairly painless in firefox.

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#63

Post by jasode »

d2wa wrote: post #60
jasode wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the article but it doesn't clarify whether or not Google will hardcode a "whitelist" that will ignore EasyList entries for AdSense, DoubleClick, GoogleAnalytics, etc. A comparable situation would be Windows 10 ignoring users' manually edited HOSTS file that attempts to block telemetry.[1] Microsoft has hardcoded hostname-to-ip resolution inside the networking stack (inside dnsapi.dll). If Google decides that C…

It does say in the article that AdSense and Analytics is on the blocklist.

That article's sentence that you're pointing to does not explicitly address the specific whitelist scenario I laid out.

The article's sentence: "Google appears to be shipping the entirety of EasyList and EasyPrivacy; which includes blocking rules for Google’s own AdSense and DoubleClick advertisement platforms as well as Google Analytics,"

... is only talking about the existence of AdSense on EasyList -- because the entirety of EasyList entries is shipped. It does not talk about (or even speculate) whether Chrome will have a programming code that implements a whitelist to ignore certain entries.

Those are 2 different concepts.

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#64

Post by kodablah »

d2wa wrote: post #59
kodablah wrote: post #26

Which is it, the super secret consortium that won't even let you download the full list of bad sites, or Easy List/Privacy? Why don't they just use EasyList and report offenders there instead of this new consortium? The answer to that rhetorical question will let you know why I'll remain on uBO. They didn't need to build this in, but they did and gave the current ad-blocking community the finger instead of support.

Read the article. They do use EasyList + EasyPrivacy.

I did read the article. That's why I included it in my comment. It should be exclusive. Not using only some of that list (e.g. no cosmetic blockers) and then using some super secret list the world doesn't have access to. Shouldn't have half of one and half of the other without the possibility of fine-tuned configurability. Otherwise, you are just an opaque piece of the system that I will supplement with a more transparent version.

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#65

Post by mastax »

kodablah wrote: post #26

Which is it, the super secret consortium that won't even let you download the full list of bad sites, or Easy List/Privacy? Why don't they just use EasyList and report offenders there instead of this new consortium? The answer to that rhetorical question will let you know why I'll remain on uBO. They didn't need to build this in, but they did and gave the current ad-blocking community the finger instead of support.

>Which is it, the super secret consortium that won't even let you download the full list of bad sites, or Easy List/Privacy? Why don't they just use EasyList and report offenders there instead of this new consortium?

The lists serve different purposes. EasyList is a lit of ad-serving URLs to block. The uh, consortium list is a black/white list of which sites don't follow the standards. The standards are not about bad ads, but about sites that use ads in bad ways. The standards can't be automatically enforced since software can't reliably determine if an ad is a popunder or otherwise intrusive due to placement. Sites would quickly use CSS/JS hacks to work around the classifier.

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#66

Post by oldcynic »

afandian wrote: post #58
jacquesm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when Google claimed that paid inclusion was one of the worst sins a search engine could commit? One so bad that it made it claim other search engines were evil?

I'd love to see the original claim. Got an archive link?

This gives a fair coverage of the history, and hypocrisy:

https://marketingland.com/once-deemed-evil-google-now-embrac...

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#67

Post by jacquesm »

afandian wrote: post #58
jacquesm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when Google claimed that paid inclusion was one of the worst sins a search engine could commit? One so bad that it made it claim other search engines were evil?

I'd love to see the original claim. Got an archive link?

https://marketingland.com/once-deemed-evil-google-now-embrac...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paid_inclusion#History_of_paid...

References directly the founders letter, I do not have a link to that but I am not making this up.

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#68

Post by lern_too_spel »

jacquesm wrote: post #33
chaz6 wrote: post #20

I wouldn't trust a burglar to install my security system. I won't trust Google to block ads.

You can trust a burglar to install a security system that will keep other burglars out, but you can be 100% sure that you will not be able to keep the installer out, in fact you are just about giving them an incentive to rob you blind at the first opportunity. Google will do an amazing job at blocking competitor ads.

Then why did the competitors, including the top competitors in terms of revenue, sign up to be part of the consortium?

I see this as a shot at piracy sites, if anything. Since they cannot join reputable ad networks, they join disreputable ones that don't even try to police their ads or publishers and show shady and misleading ads. Those will all be blocked now, choking the piracy sites of revenue.

The primary beneficiaries are content producers. The secondary beneficiaries are Internet companies that are hit by botnets.

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#69

Post by MereInterest »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #27
MereInterest wrote: post #13

Google's incentives here are still antithetical to my own, so I'm going to stick with uBlock. For example, on Google search, ads masquerade as legitimate search results. These used to be highlighted in light yellow, clearly marking them as different from organic search results. Now, they only have the word "Ad" in light grey text. This notice is on the right, intentionally where it will be overlooked when reading thr…

> These used to be highlighted in light yellow, clearly marking them as different from organic search results. The specific shade of yellow was indiscernible from background white on a cheap laptop at almost any angle. I wish I'd taken a photo when I noticed. I knew people who had never even noticed the yellow, at all, let alone understood it was ads. I know, Never Attribute To Malice and all that, but hot damn, that…

> I know, Never Attribute To Malice and all that, but hot damn, that must have been a massive multi million dollar move of "ignorance".

I think that this saying gets misapplied quite frequently. If you are talking to someone one on one, then you should assume that they are simply mistaken. Otherwise, you don't stand a chance of convincing them to see things another way. On the other hand, in trying to predict somebody else's actions, assuming malice can give the most accurate prediction.

On the part of Google, I don't know whether the nigh-unidentifiable ads are the result of some cackling executive trying to trick people to click on ads, or whether it is the result of overzealous A/B testing that stumbled upon a dark pattern. In the end, it doesn't matter, and either one is a good approximation of what will happen in the future.

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#70

Post by kodablah »

mastax wrote: post #65
kodablah wrote: post #26

Which is it, the super secret consortium that won't even let you download the full list of bad sites, or Easy List/Privacy? Why don't they just use EasyList and report offenders there instead of this new consortium? The answer to that rhetorical question will let you know why I'll remain on uBO. They didn't need to build this in, but they did and gave the current ad-blocking community the finger instead of support.

>Which is it, the super secret consortium that won't even let you download the full list of bad sites, or Easy List/Privacy? Why don't they just use EasyList and report offenders there instead of this new consortium? The lists serve different purposes. EasyList is a lit of ad-serving URLs to block. The uh, consortium list is a black/white list of which sites don't follow the standards. The standards are not about bad…

EasyList is also a list of ad-serving sites to block and a list of elements to hide. Can you help me understand why the blacklist can't be just placed in a normal ad blocking list like EasyList? If it's by site anyways, I'm not sure the actual difference for the blocker itself. It's not like the EasyList standards can be automatically enforced by software either.

I think "serve different purposes" could be rephrased to "serve different overseers". I can't find a reason for the tech difference.

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