from the turn-off-your-adblocker-to-see-this-content dept.
"According to people familiar with the company's plans:"
The ad-blocking feature, which could be switched on by default within Chrome, would filter out certain online ad types deemed to provide bad experiences for users as they move around the web.
[...] 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.
Google declined to comment.
The ad-blocking step may seem counter-intuitive given Google's reliance on online advertising revenue, but the move is a defensive one, people familiar with the plans said.
Uptake of online ad blocking tools has grown rapidly in recent years, with 26% of U.S. users now employing the software on their desktop devices, according to some estimates.
Source: Google Plans Ad-Blocking Feature in Popular Chrome Browser
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday April 21 2017, @05:01AM
...The ad-blocking feature, which could be switched on by default within Chrome, would filter out certain online ad types...
If they had used "all" instead of "certain" I might have considered using Chrome. If I could trust it to not phone home.
But I can't.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by cubancigar11 on Friday April 21 2017, @05:06AM (10 children)
I smell conflict of interest. The only way for another browser to compete is to have a better ad-blocking technology, which means Firefox is not going to get funded by any other advertisement company. Which means, as an end-user, we can say bye bye to all browsers except chrome, and as a business, we can say bye bye to all advertisement companies except Google?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @05:30AM (6 children)
There are plenty of other browser options, you just have to be ok with them not working on all the latest and greatest websites.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Friday April 21 2017, @06:45AM
Bring back the "Best viewed with any browser" campaign!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Friday April 21 2017, @06:51AM (2 children)
The free browsers are running on funding money, which is what I was talking about - that their funding will slowly dry.
About the latest and greatest websites, they all use same latest and greatest javascript framework that works on latest and greatest javascript engine and CSS support - both of which have their benchmarks set on chrome.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by julian on Friday April 21 2017, @03:22PM (1 child)
Mozilla has been squandering millions for years on dead end projects and useless "outreach". Maybe being forced to refocus and become a leaner, browser-focused, organization like they used to be will be good for them and for Firefox.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Saturday April 22 2017, @09:35AM
So sad and so true. Mozilla got funded by Google to squander that money instead of doing something great, like making add-on system more like a market place. They had the opportunity to become Play Store before android came along and they just decided to spend it on changing UIs and breaking stuff.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday April 21 2017, @03:20PM (1 child)
Considering the browser ecosystem seems to be converging on WebKit powering everything, one would hope not.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:04PM
That's the scary part. Webkit is dominating, and while it is open, it's basically under the control of Google who has demonstrated that they can and will throw their weight around. What isn't Webkit is mostly Microsoft's closed-source browsers which only run on Windows. The only alternative to this is the Gecko browsers which is basically Firefox and its spinoffs which are becoming less and less relevant everyday. I fear that soon we'll back where we were 15 years ago with IE6 and Microsoft, only this time it will be Chrome and Google.
(Score: 3, Touché) by darkfeline on Friday April 21 2017, @06:57AM (2 children)
There's always wget.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @02:32PM (1 child)
But wget won't help you if the "web page" consists mainly of JavaScript and if you're lucks a small notice "JavaScript is required to view this page".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @03:10PM
I have a term for websites like that: broken. If you can't be bothered to put together a properly functioning website, I can't be bothered to try to figure out what WTF you're trying to do.
Take your ECMAScript and shove it up your stdout.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Chromium_One on Friday April 21 2017, @05:12AM (1 child)
Great! Now remove phone-home features. Oh, wait, whaddaya mean you can't do that, and why are you calling me Dave?
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @05:34AM
I'm sorry Chromium One but your user level has been superseded by Level Zero. Check the binary logs for information on how to clear up your mental pathways which have resulted in this condition.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @06:06AM (3 children)
Basically, to kill off buisnesses making ad-blockers they bundle a 1st party one. This isn't a conflict of interest, this is in their best interest.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lx on Friday April 21 2017, @07:20AM (1 child)
But do you really want the biggest seller of ad space on the planet to decide which ads are acceptable for you?
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday April 21 2017, @10:52AM
Aren't they already deciding which ads to (attempt to) show you in the first place?
(Score: 2) by julian on Friday April 21 2017, @03:27PM
buisnesses making ad-blockers
The best ad-blocker is uBlock Origin, and it's free software under the GPLv3. There's not even a button asking you to donate.
Everyone else running a "business" (a generous term for a protection racket) or asking for donations is either a scam or technologically an inferior product.
I guarantee that any adblocker Chrome includes won't block Google ads, so it's defective by design.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @06:12AM
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.
This is actually pretty cool as it would provide actual financial incentive for site owners to get their shit together. Now, if it was anyone except Google implementing this thing because they also have some financial incentives..
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @07:02AM (3 children)
This screeeeeaaaaams!!!! antitrust violation. Ad blockers are not illegal, but Google blocking competitor's ads? Very illegal because they operate in the ad market.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday April 21 2017, @07:48AM (2 children)
Google provdes a service. (Data collection)
There are others who also provide this service.
Google also provides another service (search engine)
There are others who also provide this service.
Google also provides a third service (ad placement, with, or without, "boosted" search return)
There are others who also provide part of this service.
Blocking ads is not illegal.
Adblock even provides a whitelist (via a fee, which is not an extortion fee) for certain ads.
Hiding *some* ads (the ones that didn't pay the fee) is also not illegal.
Hold on - do you think net neutrality is *real*?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rivenaleem on Friday April 21 2017, @12:16PM (1 child)
But they get to decide what is and is not an acceptable ad. And I bet none of Google's ads will be considered unacceptable. My first reaction was like a mafia protection racket. "If you get your ads through us, we can guarantee they won't be blocked"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @03:15PM
The only acceptable ad is the ad I don't see that doesn't phone home. If they use a definition other than that they're pushing yet another defective web browser feature.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday April 21 2017, @06:29PM
Ad-blocking and the tug-of-war between it and advertisers only scratches the surface. Yes, you can turn off Javascript and run AdBlocker/UBlock/UMatrix/GreaseMonkey/NoScript etc, you can tune your firewall, but that's an approach that assumes advertisements are modular and separable from the content, which is assumed to have value. But the content is the advertisement. Serving ads on top of the "content" is only the advertisers greedily trying to get a two-fer, or three-fer, or n-fer. Many of us on Soylent know it instinctively, calling stuff out as shill pieces or clickbait. But I don't know if there is a general, formal awareness yet that there is very little out there that is straight-up information. Either something is a PR press release to pimp a new product or service, or a propaganda piece put out there to move public opinion and influence policy.
Sometimes it's obvious which is which, and other times not. It's why Soylent and forums like it are so valuable, because sometimes all it takes to puncture the veil is somebody with a little more information than what you yourself have.
Washington DC delenda est.