Hacker News Reader

You could look at nothing but google ads for a month and your bandwidth wouldn't be near what it'd be if you had just watched a single HD movie over netflix.

View on HN

Picking the two extremes does not prove your point. A lot of people are pissed with ads right now. Imagine if they would have to pay for them too (even pennies).

I wasn't picking extremes, simply pointing out how little ads would effect you.

Besides, doesn't Adblock work client-side? You'd still download and pay for the ads, you just wouldn't see them.

Not when the ads come from different domains (which is the case for 99% of the annoying flash ads). Adblock stops all requests to these domains. Incidentally, this is also why Adblock is a hit with privacy-conscious people - it mitigates tracking through log file analysis.

no. picture and flash ads are separate HTTP requests. AdBlock/FlashBlock work by not making those requests. You will save bandwidth, but as you have pointed out, it's a drop in the ocean compared to watching a HD movie or even a 10min youtube clip.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com