In Allowing Ad Blockers, a Test for Google

"Ad blockers are still used by a tiny proportion of the Internet population, and these aren’t the kind of people susceptible to ads anyway," Wladimir Palant, who runs Adblock Plus on Firefox, wrote

I don't buy that in any way. We are all "susceptible to ads". In fact I believe that the smarter the user, the more they want targeted ads. I love finding new products that can help me. The key is "targeted" and now "McDonalds".

An interesting question is, could google have successfully banned adblockers as a matter of policy once it published an API? It's not like there is an Apple-esque chokehold on extension publication, and nobody signs a TOS agreement or breaks an EULA seal to use Google. They could undoubtedly refrain from publishing adblockers in any google-hosted gallery, but that's a rather different thing.