Eric Ravenscraft
Google makes its living off of ads, so it makes sense the company doesn’t like what people think of ads on the internet (which is to say, we hate them). To combat annoying ads—and leave its own peacefully intact—Google is adding an ad blocker to Chrome today.
If you’re using Chrome, you can update your browser today to get the new ad blocker. This new feature will block a number of the most extreme annoying ad types, including autoplaying videos with sound, pop up ads, large sticky ads (those banners that appear over the text you’re reading and won’t go away), and what are known as “prestitial ads” that have a countdown. These are the huge overlays that block a site entirely and tell you to wait a few seconds before continuing to the site you’re about to read. There are also a bunch of mobile ads that Google will start blocking according to the Coalition for Better Ads, an industry group that counts Google, Facebook, and Microsoft among its members.
Importantly, this feature doesn’t mean that you’ll never see any ads at all. Google’s goal with this ad blocker is to get rid of the most annoying offenders, but it’s also hoping that if the bad ads are gone, you won’t mind the more mild ads quite so much. Depending on your perspective, this might be a fair trade. Still, it’s hard to argue that Google has an unbiased position in this effort. If you want to read more about the ad blocker, you can check out How-To Geek’s explainer here, or you can simply update your browser and enjoy fewer (but not zero) ads now.
Source: Google
Photo credit: Jeramey Lende/Shutterstock.com.
