If you’re sick of bad ads on websites then Google’s Chrome browser is apparently set to help you out with a report from the Wall Street Journal saying that Google is looking into building an ad-blocker into the browser.
In the report, the WSJ says that ‘according to people familiar with the company’s plans’ Google is looking to build an ad-blocker into both the mobile and desktop versions of Chrome which would block ‘bad’ ads as defined by the Coalition for Better Ads. The Coalition for Better Ads released a report back in March which outlined standards for advertising, and it’s understood that this list of bad ads, which includes pop-up ads, sites containing ads with auto-playing video with sound and more, is where Google will be basing their blocking from.
The WSJ believes that the feature could be ready to launch in just a few weeks, though as with any Google product in development it could also not ever see the light of day.
As a company who’s yearly profits are very much derived from selling advertising, Google has an interest in ensuring that advertising is an effective tool, not an annoying experience that forces users to use ad-blockers. Sites, very much like Ausdroid, rely on ads in order to keep the lights on, so we’re also keen to keep the advertising minimal here, as well as, as ‘good’ an experience as you can get.
It’s still just a rumour from the WSJ, however they do have fairly decent contacts, so we’ll probably have to wait a while more to see where this goes.
Bit worrying, seems like this feature could be exploited to take over internet advertising.
Interesting to read that they would look at blocking all ads on websites that display “bad” ads.
The issue with that is that even Ausdroid has, from time to time (though rarely), fallen victim to a “bad” ad displaying – and that’s nothing to do with Ausdroid, and everything to do with Google’s own ad network displaying dodgy ads. And if Google are going to allow their own ad networks through, it won’t prevent the bad ads from displaying.
I’ve never seen a popup or auto playing video or sound on this site.
I am not sure something like this is going to happen as they would not want to block any of their advertising and if they were to just block every other advertising companies adverts then they would have an anti-competitive law suit on their hands. If it only blocked video, adult and other noisy ones I guess that would be ok if the company could the replace it was one that was not going to be blocked.
If you read the article they would only be blocking ads that don’t agree with industry standards.