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Comment by TechRemarker | Hacker News Reader

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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It's far more likely that Chrome's ad-blocking feature will be similar to the implementation of content blockers in Safari (introduced at a WWDC 2015 session)[1][2].

The new model for content blockers in Safari is faster and a lot more memory efficient because they're compiled into byte code. Content blockers are also more secure and better for privacy because they have no knowledge of the browsing that users are doing. The content-blocking rules are only provided by third parties.

Google is probably doing this because it makes their browser faster—not because of some wild conspiracy to show more advertisements.

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Ge...

[2]: https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=511

You're being downvoted, but I'd actually agree. My guess is this idea originated from the Chrome team in an effort to improve the browsing experience.

Google rarely makes unilateral decisions from the top down to product teams. They mostly operate independently.

That's true, but every Googler knows how much of their pay check and RSUs come from ad revenue.

Google rarely makes unilateral decisions from the top down to product teams.

Apart from shutting them down.

To be fair, relying on product teams to shut themselves down, in case they've hit a dead-end, probably wouldn't work.

Actually, why not? It's not like the employees get fired. You generally know when you're working on a crappy product.

Google Reader was a fantastically useful product for me. Not "crappy" at all.

That's the point parent is making: the Reader team probably wouldn't have opted for shutting down, and they would have been right.

The reader team didn't exist (and hadn't for years) at the time the decision was made to shut it down.

It's pretty clear that Google's strategy is that making the web better for everyone and everything is what will grow their ad business long term, rather than violently shoving as many ads as possible into their users faces as fast as possible. It's also pretty clear that they are capable of pursuing a long term strategy over chasing short-term cash.

Bit like how Bezos said if something is going to canniblize your business, you may as well be the one doing it

Pretty sure that line predates anyone paying attention to Bezos. It is a natural implication of the disruption model of product design, and was discussed heavily in terms of changes in the computer industry before the web existed, let alone Amazon.

None of that changes the usefulness or correctness of the idea.

If a new tech comes along that destroys your business, you should invest in that tech or you risk becoming blockbuster while Netflix rises. If Blockbuster had taken its opportunity to buy netflix or build a competitor it would still be in business today.

Same thing with all those oil companies becoming energy companies. Solar and wind are displacing coal and oil, and all the big energy companies are in on it. They don't look at risk of going under soon.

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.

By "request it", you mean typing something into the search box and hitting enter? That would mean everything on the current search results is not an ad, right?

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.

That definition would make sense only if there was a way to explicitly tell that you request ads or promoted content of some sort, most of the time you don't, you type a search query in Google's text box or click on a link to some web page, that's all. The extra content gets bundled and is loaded without asking.

That's like saying if you didn't ask for it, food is not food. You appear to be defining the nature of a thing by your internal mental state, and that only works with a relatively small number of certain things.

What makes an ad an ad has nothing to do with potential-viewer intent. Lack of viewer intent is what makes it an _unwanted_ ad.

I happen to have a certain ad framed and on my wall at home. I spent money on the ad, and more money to frame it. Pretty sure that meets the definition of 'request'.

Guess what? It is still an ad.

Interesting Question.

My Take: Redefine what ad means for web browsing, e.g. any information coming from a third party like iframes. All other types of information, paid or not paid, is part of the web page and not worth blocking.

It's not an easy problem, as the war being waged for many years now I think demonstrates. A too simple definition will have too many exceptions: a newspaper that includes an article from another reputable news site, ad? A paid piece extolling the virtues of product X, posing as a fake article, not an ad?

I think it is more about destroying the competition and also that they believe that there will be no antitrust enforcement whatseoever in the Trump Administration.

Yeah, because Google only does business in the US, and there's no political capital to be reaped anywhere in the world from standing up to rich American firms, especially when such standing up can at the same time be construed as standing up to the Trump administration. Also, Google has specifically and most certainly never been slapped around by the European Union for anticompetitive practices, so there's nothing to worry about there.

> It's pretty clear that Google's strategy is that making the web better for Google

FIFY.

I have no idea why the belief that "what's good for Google is good for the internet" persists - those days are long past. Google is best understood as a huge surveillance operation with bait services attached.

The obvious reason for them to push their own ad blocker seems most likely; it is to suck the oxygen out of the space by exploiting their privileged position as a browser maker to destroy 3rd parties that can block their ads. The ad blocker-makers are tiny, fragmented and unfortunately muddled with some crappy products that sell whitelist entries; this is a good time for Google to try to knife them, before a market leader emerges.

I didn't say "what's good for Google is good for the internet", I said, in effect, "what's good for the internet is good for Google".

And please do refrain from fixing my posts for me, I am perfectly capable of expressing my opinions without your assistance.

> what's good for the internet is good for Google

This presumes complete congruence between these two sets, which is precisely what is being criticized above.

How exactly is:

" The obvious reason for them to push their own ad blocker seems most likely; it is to suck the oxygen out of the space by exploiting their privileged position as a browser maker to destroy 3rd parties that can block their ads. "

If true, good for 'the internet' in general, rather than being good for Google primarily with some related good and harm for 'the internet' ?

Or that 'what is good for the internet' is a subset of 'what is good for Google'. Language is murky but that's a more reasonable interpretation.

It's the only interpretation after the initial clarification.

> they are capable of pursuing a long term strategy

Except when it comes to chat/text communication. In that case they run around like chickens with their heads cut off.

I'm pretty certain they can do both. Ads on Google.com are generally text based, so fast. Ads on the AMP platform are generally static, also fast.

It's not really a conspiracy, it's their whole business model. But, I have no opinion on whether the implementation will resemble Safari's or not.

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.

Opera mobile also has an integrated ad blocker but I also use a hosts file to filter just about everything.

I thought it was because most app stores didn't allow apps to download code to be executed.

Nah, that's just Apple's. Google Play has always been much less restrictive.

What app store does that other than Apple's? And a rule like that doesn't allow full web browsers so it's unrelated to the question of whether full web browsers have extensions.

Firefox for Android is really good. Most passive browsing extensions work just as well on mobile as they do on desktop.

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.

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

Moreover, Mozilla is currently actually switching to an extended version of Chrome's extension API (which Mozilla calls "WebExtensions"). They had no problem implementing that on Android Firefox. Obviously, yes, there are APIs that just don't make sense on a mobile browser, but you have a well-defined API, so just blacklist extensions that require these APIs.

Firefox is my preferred mobile browser for numerous reasons. I hope it's a good experience for you.

or do adblocking on the router level

true i took a proxy level on a desktop called privoxy. on a phone i use vpn it works with apps and everything else mostly well(i know im an ass).

Go with Brave on mobile (https://www.brave.com/). They've got an ad-blocker built in.

Also, disable javascript by default. It's really easy to turn it on per-site using the brave button in the toolbar.

The single best improvement I've made to my mobile browsing experience in years wasn't getting a new faster phone, it was installing Brave and disabling javascript.

For Firefox on Android I've been using JavaScript Toggle Enabled [1] for a while. Does what it says on the tin.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/toggle-javasc...

And if someone's too lazy to install an add-on or on an unfamiliar computer, disabling Javascript is a simple as going to about:config, typing in "java", and double-clicking "javascript.enabled" to set it to false.

I personally find Firefox way too janky to use on my mobile device. It's getting better but still needs some time in the oven.

Brave is a Chrome fork so for those of us who prefer Chrome it's a better option (for now anyway).

use firefox with the noScript (cross fingers to have uMatrix on mobile soon!)

then use your 10 top websites with whitelisted javascript access on firefox mobile, and full javascript on chrome and came back to say which one was faster.

The top 5 mobile browsers all allow ad blockers except Chrome. Samsung Internet which is based on the same chromium engine as chrome has had a similar ad block model as Safari for over 1 year now (and is the default browser on Samsung Galaxy devices - https://medium.com/samsung-internet-dev/think-you-know-the-t... )

Yes, the Samsung Internet application is recently (early 2017) available on Nexus devices as well. It's actually a great browser—Chromium under the hood, but supports content blockers, and is much smoother than Chrome itself. I've really enjoyed using it.

If you have a Samsung phone, the stock browser also supports adblockers (you can get many from the play store).

Oh yes, my biggest pain is that Firefox can't replace the webview browser, so I still get tracked and shown ads if I use the Google app or any other app with the in-app webview browser.

I would love to hear/read the dialogue that occurred when the first person pitched this idea at Google.

> Also since people wouldn't use third party blockers as much those companies would go out business more likely.

I'm sure a few might, and it'll likely discourage others from entering the market as well. But I do think that open source alternatives would live on and continue to be used if your guess is correct.

And your guess does seem very plausible.

Ublock Origin is extremely popular and it's open source model keeps it from playing favorites with some "acceptable" ads.

I do not consider dropping Ublock any time soon.

That's ok. If this plan works, a few years down the road Ublock will get dropped/disabled for you under some pretense when Google can claim they've got you covered for "ad blocking".

You're thinking far too 1984 when the answer is much more Brave New World - if the ad blocker in Chrome is good enough, people will just stop supporting UBlock.

No one supports uBlock. Browsers would have to specifically block the extension if they wanted to keep people from using it.

> Browsers would have to specifically block the extension if they wanted to keep people from using it.

Which Google have done to other extensions many times.

Yes, it's possible—I would say probable—that after introducing their "impartial" ad blocker, whose rules for acceptable ads just so happen to allow all of their ads through, and after enabling it by default on their browser, they will actively block all other ad blockers, on "privacy and security" grounds.

Naw, Google has precedent for this sort of behavior, going so far as removing plugins from their web store and quietly uninstalling them from Chrome with no notification when the plugin interfered with their business model. They actively uninstalled video download plugins without notification to the user a couple years back. Nefarious.

* Download Ublock zip

* Enable Developer Options

* Add Ublock package zip

* Enable in Incognito as well

TL;DR: Them removing it would be a dick move, but not end of the world. We can still install any packages we want.

I think you are severely misunderstanding the situation. Google can do whatever they want. They've already demonstrated that they have no problem installing things on your computer that you never would have otherwise agreed to. That, and they don't take no for an answer with updates.

Do they? I just downgraded Chrome for Android to 56, because the latest one would crash when playing live video streams. Granted, Play Store didn't have that option, so I had to download the APK from a third-party site and disable automatic updates for it, but nothing prevented me from doing either thing.

Yes, you still can on Android. But Google has shown that they don't see anything morally wrong with using misleading updating tactics. And the range of what you have control over is shrinking.

I commented about it about a month ago[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13950975

You can also use other web browsers.

Like Chromium if you happen to like Chrome. Or Iridium browser which is a privacy enhanced Chromium.

Or Brave[1], which already includes a lot of ad blocking and anti-tracking features by default.

[1] https://www.brave.com

These privacy forks generally lag behind upstream by at least a few weeks, thereby providing enormous attack surface in unfixed bugs. They're terrible for security. Chromium is just too large and fast-moving for a small team to maintain a changeset. I'd love if it was different, but the reality is that these forks do more harm than good for most users.

I can say from experience that there are plugins which Chrome actively removes even if installed this way.

I think if it is an unpacked one, it does as it assumes you don't want it all the time. Not sure why it does that if dev mode is on.

Have you tried Packing them? I have yet to experience this.

If, by any chance, someone decide that its browser is already covered as far as adblockering goes, we will simply move to a different browser/adblocker/adblocking solution.

As long as there is tech savy people there will be plenty of solutions around.

AdBlock Plus is also open-source. Same license as uBlock Origin and everything.

They just haven't pissed off anyone enough to get a big fork going. Or their code just wasn't good enough, as obviously uBlock Origin is currently doing the same and was written from scratch.

I'm not sure why everyone in this thread is just assuming this is true. The only source the article provides is "according to people familiar with the company’s plans". And it's from the WSJ... the same people that went behind Google's back and went to their advertisers trying to ruin their reputation. I don't know, I feel like this is another attempt by them to stir shit.

Surely Google will next come out with a "Fake News" filter for browsers that will just block wsj.com for all Chrome users.

The Wall Street Journal employs highly reputable journalists with excellent sources. Basic journalism standards for this would require confirmation from three separate sources before publishing. And it's the WSJ -- they don't publish it on a whim, they publish it because it's news they believe to be true.

– I just learned that there are people using our Web browser who don't see our ads. And even worse, they might be seeing our competitors' ads!

– Maybe we could act as gatekeepers so our competitors have to go through us to advertise on our browser? We could wrap it as "only letting in the nice ads" or whatever…

– Brilliant!

I have no share in Google but I have been waiting for such an ad blocker for years :

I don't want to block all ads

I want an ad blocker that protects me from popunder (is there any point to those ?) popups, autoplay videos, ad walls and other shitty ads that make my experience awful.

I don't want an adblocker that blocks everything by default and where I have to manually white list all the sites I consult regularly.

I already spent a while on some really good blogs before realizing that adblock was killing all their ads for no reason.

> popunder (is there any point to those ?)

I recall reading that the original intention of popunder ads was to provide a degree of separation between the site content and the ad, as you see the ad. isolated rather than directly next to the site content. By doing so, the ad. provider has to worry less about their brand appearing next to content they may find objectionable.

You can do this with any of the popular adblockers (including uBlock Origin) that work with filter lists. They come with a default set of lists, but you can disable those and only subscribe to lists that block annoyances, malware, or whatever else you want.

Google are the one who made me install AdBlocker. I was tired of getting the same obnoxious and annoying unskippable 30 seconds ad for a long series of 45 seconds videos on youtube.

Pay for YT Red?

Red is only available to a minuscule fraction of the world population, namely United States, Australia, Mexico, New Zealand and South Korea.

I would guess that's where the majority of youtube's users are. Kinda deceptive to use "world population" when that includes places like China where youtube isn't available

Yeah, who cares about Europe

or asia

How? Not available in my country. I'd even pay double the price, but it's just not possible.

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

I honestly doubt Google has thought of this.

Their modus operandi appears to be (1) launch edgy experimental stuff, (2) forget it exists, (3) be reminded it exists, (4) ruin it by killing it or rewriting it.

I can't shake the feeling that virtually every product decision at Google is made by an engineer.

Is that bad? Or is it just different that what we are used to?

It's potentially idiotic in a context where there are non-engineering concerns at play, such as compliance, law, marketing, PR, etc. It exposes them to massive potential liability.

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?

They don't have anything near a browser monopoly.

Their market share in display advertising would be the entry point. Or phones...The EU is already persuing antitrust action around Android.

Is it antitrust if you leverage your 50% market share in one area to help your monopoly market share in a different area? Because I wouldn't have thought so, and I don't see any way their ad market share helps them push an ad blocker.

The display advertising market share would allow them to weather the storm of an ad blocker, especially if the ad blocker were designed to be friendlier to their ads versus others. Roll it out with aggressive blocking, wait for competitors to die, then relax the rules.

Or they could use the Android entry point. The EU seems to think they have a monopoly there, which would imply a "mobile browser" monopoly.

I like how you see positive in this move, but all I can think of is this. Google will enable ads from google and block everything else. This is their way of killing the competition. I think it is unfair and risky. I don't want google or anybody else deciding what is acceptable ad for me. Even if it is not distracting or passes google's standard of 'good' ad, it should still be my choice that determines if I see it or not.

This is why I'm not going back to Chrome and not going to stop using ad blocker extensions and the network wide ad-blocker at home.

Exactly. Not wanting to bash Google, but it's not in their best interest to block Google Ads is it? What'll happen is that Google Ads will be served using some super-sophisticated cloaking setup making AdBlockers ineffective on all but Google Ads. Like https, this will put alternative ad networks out of business.

It's not even difficult to do so, by eg. serving pages from a Google-controlled CloudFlare-like proxy service and/or a high-profile Google-style HTML-to-JavaScript encoder. Google's AMP project shows they're willing to throw the decentralized web under the bus.

The real question is: are you ok with ad-financed web sites in general, but have a problem with tracking (like me)? If so, we should really come up with a community-driven criteria for Acceptable Ads, or should disable un-vetted/not-whitelisted JavaScript alltogether.

> we should really come up with a community-driven criteria for Acceptable Ads

Isn't that what ABP / Eyeo is doing? You may criticize them for the fee they ask of the Ad companies to include / review their ads, but it's not like the fees are unfair or they aren't doing work that needs to be paid somehow. They even set up a non profit to deal with this matter.

> or should disable un-vetted/not-whitelisted JavaScript alltogether.

This is already being developed by the FSF as a Firefox extension. It makes the modern web completely unusable (of course) but it's the principle that counts, right?

> Like https, this will put alternative ad networks out of business.

How did https do anything like that?

What Eyeo is doing amounts to theft or blackmail: Pay us or have your revenue reduced.

They are a venture-funded company, so they are in it for more than the community, and can find other ways to monetize their service.

Regarding fees, only large entities (those with more than 10 million additional ad impressions per month due to participation in the Acceptable Ads initiative) have to pay. For these entities, our licensing fee normally represents 30 percent of the additional revenue created by whitelisting its acceptable ads.

You are right. That fee is anything but fair. I was under the impression that they were operating their program under a non-profit, but it doesn't seem so.

Hey, official eyeo (we're written with a lower letter now because it's fancy) representative here. Just clearing things up.

As you pointed out, we're a company. That means making money to defend against lawsuits, paying employees, etc.

It's not blackmail though, because as it was also pointed out, most websites join for free. No strings attached. Well, the strings are that the ads they want to display need to meet all of the Acceptable Ads criterias, which we found most users don't mind.

That allows us to find a middle ground between "we're drinking all the beer and pay nothing" that other, more scorched-earth-like adblockers go for, and the "oh gods my eyes"-design some ad-bloated websites go for, which no one really wants.

From a publisher perspective, we're not the evil guys either. We're not reducing anyone's revenue, we're allowing publishers to recuperate some of the losses caused by the user's choice of opting out of really annoying ads.

Hope this made sense!

I appreciate the response, but it really doesn't justify what eyeo is actually doing to publishers. I've read about some of the amounts Google and others pay you and there's no justification for it to be that high. A large portion of your project is community-based, so why does it need millions to function? Other community based solutions and open-source projects fare just fine -- and yes they're still paid well.

Also, it's frustrating to still see your company play the "help us out we're broke" card by asking for donations after install even though you're a venture-funded company.

If anything, you guys should be going after the ad-networks since they are the ones allowing the malicious and rude ads to be placed - not the people whose livelihood depends on ads.

re: https I meant that men-in-the-middle advertising such as by WLAN providers and ISPs is prevented, and rightly so. OTOH, this leads us into monopolism or duopolism which at this point might be even worse. The argument in this context is that whatever action Google does isn't bad per se and absolutely defensible from a security and even privacy PoV, but at the same time is something that helps Google first and foremost. In the same way, Google can present ad-blocking support in Chrome as a pro-consumer measure, when in reality its purpose is to go after the remaining alternative ad network revenue to achieve increasingly difficult growth.

FSF's LibreJS initiative is laudible, and something I'm willing to support with what I'm offering on the web. I found that sites that have content worth reading typically aren't script-heavy and entirely usable without script, or by using either F/OSS JavaScript (including jquery) and "trivial scripts" according to FSFs definition. The notorious exceptions are Google Analytics, ReCaptcha, and maybe Disqus, for which solutions must be found. Google Analytics, and the necessity to make use of it might be a case where Google as a major sponsor of web standards are acting in conflict with a solution based on web standards.

Wrt. ABP my initial gut reaction to paid ABP acceptable ads was extremely negative, but maybe I might reconsider.

> The real question is: are you ok with ad-financed web sites in general, but have a problem with tracking (like me)?

Turns out, that (currently) involves ad blockers. For a while, I tried to use only uMatrix (i.e. blocking third-party requests), without an ad blocker. Sites broke because they assumed they could load Google Analytics. Workaround: Install uBlock Origin, because it (like NoScript) knows how to fake out specific scripts enough that a stubbed-out version of GA is used and the rest of the page runs correctly.

I would love a blocker that just stopped pop-up and display adds. They make a lot of sites literally unusable.

I don't mind ordinary display adds, I even like them in the sense that I like a web model that's sustainable.

Yep, we all have to eat, so i make a conscientious effort not to block ads, unless they are abusive (in particular autoplay and popups).

To make most commercial websites usable, I simply disabled Autoplay in FF which silenced the most abusive screaming video ads and made surfing the web pleasant again.

(about:config and set media.autoplay.enabled;false)

Oh yes, a lot of good it will do you, blocking ads after they infect you with malware. Let many starve; I'm not willing to risk it for the hunger of people that cannot find a sustainable business model other than advertisement garbage.

Rats have to eat too. That doesn't mean I should feed them and keep them around the house.

No, but if you keep them as pets you should feed them?

Not saying ad blockers are bad -I use them- just that your analogy breaks down quickly.

Pets make you more likely to buy poor quality products that you don't need or want?

No but GP likens (websites carrying ads) to (rats).

I point out that GP is in a mostly voluntarily relationship with those websites.

> Yep, we all have to eat, so i make a conscientious effort not to block ads, unless they are abusive

I find this a really weird attitude that I just can't get behind.

"Here, let me give you some money by watching something that will try to convince me to buy something that I wouldn't have otherwise bought. Just doing my civic duty here!"

That's what it sounds like to me. You want to help someone else, so you agree to be allowed to be told to buy something you didn't need or know about until you saw the ad. It's... weird. It's a very strange method to power the economy. Allowing your mind to be molded in the shape the big guy wants it for the sake of the little guy.

I myself just flat out refuse to have my mind manipulated like this. There's gotta be a better way for the little guy to make money.

Banksy:

"You owe the companies nothing. You especially don't owe them any courtesy. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs."

"...any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours, it belongs to you... its yours to take, rearrange and re use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head."

Banksy is to "attentional integrity" what Stallman is to software freedom: radical-sounding, heretical to big business, and very very right.

The article clearly says it's about blocking "bad" ads, as deemed so by the ad industry.

> 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.

> Unacceptable ad types would be those recently defined by the Coalition for Better Ads, an industry group that released a list of ad standards in March. According to those standards, ad formats such as pop-ups, auto-playing video ads with sound and “prestitial” ads with countdown timers are deemed to be “beneath a threshold of consumer acceptability.”

"Nice ad you've got there... be a shame if something were to happen to it..."

Implication: Want your ads shown to people? Don't risk another provider, serve them through Google.

I don't think it's quite as nefarious as that.

Essentially, I believe Google and a subset of their industry competitors (other ad networks) have two goals here:

1. to stem the losses imposed by 100% ad/tracking blockers, by providing a default blocker that deals with very obnoxious ads that might prompt average users to install one of the existing ad blockers.

2. to reduce their need to pay protection money to AdBlock plus etc.

So, if you happen to be using ads that are overly obnoxious (popups, autoplaying videos, etc) then yeah, your message is basically what they're saying, but not because it's non-google, just because it's making the other ad networks look bad.

I don't know how they'll implement it technically, but the fact that they are not talking about the WebKit-style content blocking using compiled pattern lists means they probably have little interest in benefitting end-users (webkit content blockers give better privacy, performance, battery life etc, compared to traditional "run this code every time a website loads" blockers)

I suspect this will lead to ads not being served via the site's code own code, but rather by Chrome overlaying the ads into the site using placeholders defined by the site.

By controlling the ad experience at this level (and this possibly being the only way to avoid being blocked), Google can enforce an ad-experience that is akin to in-feed facebook ads.

It also provides a far greater level of security around the ad unit and a far better level of accurate targeting (cookies don't get used, your login does). These two things together provide a new way to interact / monetise those ad units.

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 to make it switched off by default and 90% of users won't ever see it or use it. Only people who are interested will seek it out, and those people are already seeking ad-blocking extensions.

3. Other browsers are implementing it. Google need to include it to stop users who are interested in that feature switching browser.

4. Google need data. They get value from tracking people even if they're not seeing adverts. By blocking the ads specifically, even their own adverts, they still get to track users and derive value from that data. Other ad blocking technology will also block Google's tracking mechanisms, and they really don't want that to happen.

5. Given the fact they have a effective monopoly on adverts on the main web the lost revenue from blocked ads will have a bigger impact on their competitors than them. Google can afford to lose far more ad impressions than the next, much smaller network. They can block their own ads and still drive their competitors out of business. That said, I don't think Google are evil enough to do that. I'm just saying they don't need to let their own ads through if the plan is to kill off the competition.

> Other ad blocking technology will also block Google's tracking mechanisms, and they really don't want that to happen.

Good point. After using uBlock Origin for a while now, "ads" have become synonymous with "tracking scripts" to me. I'd bet Google's adblocker wouldn't block Google Analytics from running, like uBlock does.

Definitely they won't. I'm sticking with uBlock.

You can get a plugin to block Google Analytics right from Google: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

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.

IMO it could be a dangerous move for them, especially if they mostly block their competitor's ads and land themselves in an antitrust lawsuit or something similar.

I suspect adtech companies may partner to make better ads for consumers.

Google will probably do it in a very open way like they do when they try to enforce other web standards.

They will probably clearly post criteria for what makes an ad acceptable or not and state that Chrome will block it if it doesn't meet them. Or maybe Chrome will show them but somehow punish the webmaster like they do to sites that don't use HTTPS or have mobile friendly pages.

Sounds risky to me. It specifically says mobile, an area where current ad blocking is cumbersome and clunky.

So if it's any good at blocking Google ads, it costs them money.

If it blocks ads other than Google ones well, and allows Google ones to display, then they run the risk of lawsuits or antitrust action.

As long as it blocks the YouTube video ads, people won't install another one. Which would be an interesting move - block the most annoying ads, because otherwise people would block all your ads, but leave them there for the people who don't block ads at all.

YouTube is owned by Google so Google isn't going to block their own ads.

If only you have read the article, it is said thay will block popups, video and other annoying ads. These things are the main incentives to install a blocker. It is a smart move, and maybe a late move.

"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."

Probably a good call. I've actually suggested they do this before. I doubt it made it to them given it was on a private forum. It's amusing to see it happening, though. It's an extension of monopolistic practices where one blocks out all competition to give their own self an advantage.

Didn't they first done something like this in the early 2000s ? Remember the google toolbar with a built-in pop-up blocker ? Sure, they did not have the same share in the advertising business as today, but I don't think it will be very damaging.

> Chrome blocker would not block Google Ads because it would classify them as acceptable.

this is exactly how it would go. This is anything but benevolent, this is another one of googles blatant anti-trust maneuvers to force you deeper into their walled-garden.

I wonder if the European Commission would deem this illegal.

> It's a very risky move on Google's part

What? By know, people are accustomed to Google flip flopping on key decisions; this will be just another instance.

Adds built-in ad blocker, removes competition from Chrome extensions store/site or even blocks installing them altogether though the browser.

This is a very smart but also very slow move.

Yeah, that's what the article speculates is the plan as well.

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 internet ad companies" out of business.

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?

I don't think it's about putting "ad blockers" out of business. Hell, they're not businesses, uBlock is OSS. I think the idea is, people get so annoyed by poor ads that is in your face that they get pushed beyond their "threshold" and get an ad blocker. If ads are used with moderation, most people won't get annoyed enough to go out of their way and install a traditional ad blocker.

Bad ads ruin it for Google. They teach users to mentally block ALL ads. It's like people abusing antibiotics and building a resistance.

> Bad ads ruin it for Google.

That might be why someone proposed it. But your parent comment mentions why management approved of the risky move:

> They are trying to put "competing internet ad companies" out of business.

If there is even just a whiff of that, Google will be in very big trouble with competition authorities.

So if - and that is a big if - Google goes ahead with this plan, they will have to make absolutely sure that any blocking is based on objective and simple to understand quality criteria.

It doesn't need to be spoken out loud, it's kinda obvious. I too would make it sound like this is totally not the reason.

And for the record, I don't think everyone at Google is evil, but I imagine a few managers are in it for the money and not merely the altruistic idea of making ads better.

>It doesn't need to be spoken out loud, it's kinda obvious.

On the contrary, it is completely obvious that Google has very little to gain from shaving a few percentage points off competitors and incur the risk of regulatory action.

The greatest danger they face is ad blockers and a general decline of the Web. If Google is in it for the money they must save the Web from death by advertising.

They can probably avoid the competition issues by creating the ad-blocker but not lining it to an ad list, then providing a "choose an ad-block list" option? The same way MS created the browser-choice screen!?

Yeah I'm generally pro billboard like advertisement - websites need to earn some money off visits and that's acceptable.

Ads that drive me on a different page, cover the full page unless closed or otherwise hamper navigation unless I interact with them first can die in a firey hell.

I've uBlock but youtube and other content creators sites that so far hasn't annoyed me with ads are free to go. I.e. Looking For Group started serving to mobile page redirecting ads, so they went in the blacklist, but until then they were free to serve whatever.

Or another example of how I see ads on the internet:

You walking down the street having a guy handing out leaflets, trying to force his leaflet on you... You're most likely to get annoyed by them.

There is a little stand at the corner having leaflets, without anyone yelling in your face or handing it out, you're more likely to go grab one if the product fits you.

Walking to work every morning I have created my real life AdBlock, where I just ignore people handing stuff. (Not their fault... just businesses not understanding how to change ways)

Well here comes Google, shoving leaflets up your ass because they think their leaflets are special and more acceptable!

Google-owned YouTube is the main reason I use uBlock, though. I don't care how "good" the ad is really. 15 seconds is an eternity in this age...

> They are not trying to put "ad blocker" companies out of business. They are trying to put "competing internet ad companies" out of business.

This.

Internet is creating massive monopolies that are gathering an immense power that allow them to kill any other company that tries to compete with them. It's starting to be scary...

On one hand, I doubt Google would be so bold, considering the amount of attention they are currently getting from the European Commissioner of Competition.

If Marine le Pen wins on the other hand...

This might be so, but I don't see it primarily as a problem with Google. I see it as a problem with the European Union, which is too much about French policies and politics and way of political operation.

Perhaps electing Le Pen might actually do some good to it by forcing others to change?

I think parent meant if LePen is elected, there won't be a EU to cause trouble in the long run?

You are correct - that is what I meant.

EU is an extremely weak political construction if the change of president in one member country, via democratic election and staying in democratic system, nullifies the whole union.

A democratic political union must be based on stronger foundations than just having a couple of sister parties sharing the power in turns.

The political pendulum swings both ways.

I look forward to seeing what happens to any businesses that get too greedy and disregard what happens when the pendulum swings left again.

I wonder what would be happening now if we had a wave of left-wing populists taking office instead.

I am referring to the potential collapse of the EU after a Le Pen French exit; the pendulum will need to swing very hard to left to reconstitute the EU if it ever crumbles.

If those competing internet ad companies are the ones that take over the entire page and redirect me to other pages.. Good riddance.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out, scummy ad companies.

Project wonderful ads are a competitor to Google ads, and are, imo, vastly superior to some sorta of ads which I believe (?) are Google ads.

I think the problem Project Wonderful has is that they suffer from poor quality ads (no big company uses them) and poor quality publishers (no big numbers see them)

In my mind they're the "I can't afford Adsense" ad company, their website interface feeds into that too.

Really? To me they read as ads that are more concerned with keeping the interests of the users of the website in mind.

Also, the pricing system seems quite nice, a continuous second-price auction.

It all seems very "fair".

They can't be trying to do that, because it would be blatantly anti-competitive, as their lawyers would tell them. They might let google ads through, but if so they will let through other ad companies as well. The EU would have some choice words for them if they didn't.

Sure they can. Do first, answer questions later.

on by default but can be turned off. most things that have been argued have been locked that way in one way or another.

I agree it sounds like it /ought/ to be anti-competitive - but for years they've got away with Gmail's inscrutable spam-blocking system giving reduced deliverability to non-gmail senders.

> The EU would have some choice words for them if they didn't.

Which will take years and the fine will be a pitance of the profit. Microsoft got away with anti-competitive behavior several times in the past and they came out better than before. Google can use the time to try to kill of any competition before anyone will stop it, get a slap on the wrist and it will be back to business as usual.

This sounds like conspiracy. They can not block certain companies keep their ads unblocked. They will/should block certain type of ads, popups redirects malwares etc.

Also it is easier to block google ads with 3rd party. Since ridiculous ads will be blocked natively, performance will be better I think.

> They can not block certain companies keep their ads unblocked.

Any technical reason why they couldn't?

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 tracking, and Google's ad business can avoid being blocked by not doing that.

And indeed: "ad formats such as pop-ups, auto-playing video ads with sound and “prestitial” ads with countdown timers are deemed to be “beneath a threshold of consumer acceptability.”"

Stopping fingerprinting is virtually impossible.

Your tone would be ridiculous even if you were right.

Google already has what, 90% marketshare? They don't need to put their competitors out of business and would gain very little from doing so (their real competition is probably Facebook and they're fundamentally much harder to apply an adblocker to, since they control both the content and the advertising). Google do need to stop the existential threat to the whole industry that adblockers represent.

Grinding on 10% marketshare by just adding a new feature to one of their product ? Most company would dream of that.

Yep, but the market itself would increase in size if people start adopting a first party solution (which would certainly be the case since people are lazy), and looking at adblockers usage rates it seems like a market share too big to pass on.

In the end, it is probably true that the competition is not really an issue, but Google need not "stop the existential threat to the whole industry that adblockers represent", because if it lets too many ads pass people will simply get back to the old third party adblockers.

A good reason to use a browser not built by an ad company - Firefox or Safari - where there are no conflicts of interest.

Safari.

Firefox is overwhelmingly dependent on Yahoo for income, and Yahoo is an ad company.

Firefox have done major browser-chrome changes (unremovable buttons) in order to court financial incentives too. FF is my main browser out of habit but with their recent history I don't trust them not to try and sell out their users [again].

Can you be specific?

Overall I feel that Firefox is sufficiently customisable, that it's probably the easiest browser to protect your privacy in and control content. I like Safari, but customisation is harder to do.

Ironically, this is what Microsoft should've done if it wanted to "hurt Google" years ago when it pushed for the useless Do Not Track feature by default (which advertisers were under no obligation to respect).

*their

>where other blockers by default can easily block all Google ads

Adblock Plus, the most popular adblocker, does not block Google ads by default, because they are considered non-intrusive.

As noted in the article, Google pays Adblock Plus an undisclosed amount of money to be considered non-intrusive. Adblock Plus is clearly not a neutral evaluator here.

Adblock Plus is pretty open about it. You can disable the option easily. And Google ads are, in fact, relatively non intrusive. I don't see the problem.

I'm not opposed to an exception for acceptable ads; I think it's a good idea. My only problem is that it seems to be a serious conflict of interest to accept money from ad providers for this.

As long as the accepted ads are really non-intrusive, there's no conflict. There would be a conflict if you could pay Adblock Plus to accept browser-hijacking popups.

Reviewing ads takes time. Time is money. It's perfectly reasonable to charge for the review process.

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