Google, an ad company, is building an ad blocker for Chrome.

The hope is that by limiting the ads you see to those that exhibit acceptable behavior (as according to an emerging better ads standard), it will encourage people to stop being so black and white on the issue so as to create a healthier internet ecosystem.

When this comes out, it may even be on by default. Currently I use Ad Block Plus which appears to be similar to the upcoming one, a good choice for now for those who realize that ad revenue is important for countless sites (as they let through those that are lightweight and are not deliverers of malware). The others like U Block Pro are too extreme in my opinion and only encourage that black & white view.

This is a reversal from last year where they said they were not planning on building, it also indicates that people who use Google’s solution may be able to access certain sites without having to turn them off. In a sense, this will allow you to continue to do your part in keeping your favorite sites free without subjecting yourself to pop-up, pop-under, data chugging, and AV triggering advertisements.

Win win or not?

on one hand

It’s anti-competitive(If google blocks yahoo ads)

on the other

It’s pro consumer.

I’m more inclined towards it being pro-consumer.
How many people use anything other than GAdsense anyway

Funny thing ad blocking. There seems to be a perception, somewhere that people simply hate adverts. It’s true, but what’s more true is that people hate intrusive adverts. If advertisers would give up on using flash based ads, give up on video ads of any other kind, give up on pop-ups, give up on iframe adverts, and just have plain jpeg images (hosted on the site they are advertising on, not with some shady ad network which switches things around in realtime for the highest bidder) with simple clear html links beside them then I wouldn’t resent adverts at all. I’ve seen quite a few things in the news about ad-blockers and advertisers being at war with one another, and I think that both sides have lost sight of the real picture. I, for one, have ad blocking set up in such a way that only adverts of the type I describe above can show in my browser, and on the occasions that they do I don’t resent them if they conform to those rules.

Hope it’ll work properly. Hate ads, especially ads targetng me for several days. It’s annoying. I wish banners with ads would be banned in city centres too.