My thoughts as a publisher on the built in Ad Blocker in Google Chrome
Feb 16, 2018 at 2:10 PM

My thoughts as a publisher on the built in Ad Blocker in Google Chrome

A couple of days ago, Google started to block ads in Google Chrome. A lot of you may ask “Wait, what? Isn’t Google’s main source of income online ads,” and that was my first reaction as well. But after a few seconds, I realized that this is a really smart and strategic decision that hopefully will stop a lot of users from using third-party ad-blockers.

What’s the problem with traditional ad blockers, then?

Over the last 10 years, we have worked hard on AlternativeTo. We are a really small team with two full-time employees in Sweden, as well as 5-6 remote employees that work a few hours per day. 100% of our income comes from ads, and I’m guessing most small and medium sized websites around the world have a similar situation. Online ads has been an incredible way for regular people who have a vision to earn an income without having to be a slick salesperson or a venture capital hustler.

Anyway, back to the question. The problem with traditional ad blockers has been that they block everything without any consideration that particular websites are doing everything they can to not run intrusive, offensive, dangerous, or just irritating ads. I’m 100% sure that ad blockers in the long run are making the internet a worse place by both pushing more and more businesses towards proprietary platforms where ads cannot be blocked (such as app stores) while also showing more and more ads to users that do not run ad blockers. It’s a “vicious spiral” that Google is now trying to fix.

Just to be clear, I totally understand why people want and use AdBlocker. Loads of site owners are abusing ads to the extreme and have pushed users towards using ad blockers to be able to experience the web as it should be. However, this punishes the good guys as well.

So, how will the Chrome Ad Blocker fix this?

Chrome will block ads on sites that don’t comply with the guidelines from the Coalition for Better Ads' Better Ads Standards. These could be issues like high ad density, auto-playing ads, ads that block entire pages, and especially ads that try to trick users into doing bad stuff.

Hopefully, this will push site owners to show fewer, better, and less intrusive ads, and also make the internet a better place for all users by making it possible for more people to make some money off of their website and be able to spend more time making them better.

You can read more details about how it works on Google’s Chromium Blog.

And I understand that users might want to continue to run a “block all” ad blocker, but at least you may not have to install an ad blocker on your “not so tech savvy” friend’s or relative’s computer if they use Chrome just to keep them safe. This also acts as a new alternative that sits in between a "Block all" and a "Block nothing" approach.

Also, check out the interesting project Brave that has a built in ad blocker that blocks everything but encourage you to pay publishers instead.

Feb 16, 2018 by Ola Johansson

  • ...

Web browser built on an open-source platform featuring multiple account support, integrated password manager, dark mode,...

Comments

TheEmperorArt
Jun 22, 2021
0

UC Browser has been abandoned, no longer updated fyi

vborneod
Jul 7, 2020
2

Another XP PC here. I couldn´t play Twitter videos in neither Firefox and Chrome (not even open pictures in the latter) and the first browser I am testing from this list is Yandex (I´ve used this company for reverse image search in the past, I guess they are Russians?). I don´t know about security issues yet but it is working like a charm for now; Super light and fast, and it plays absolutely everything I´ve tried, so I am going to try it further than Twitter and see.

Mahdy Abdelmotaleb
Feb 13, 2020
0

Thanks! If we talk about XP , Vivaldi is pretty good, because it "light" for system

Goranko Ilic
Jul 30, 2019
2

You forgot 360 browser and Sougou. They can be used on Windows XP. Maxthon is also good.

damian101
Jul 1, 2019
6

Serpent, New Moon and Otter Browser are still updated for Windows XP and not mentioned here yet.

[Edited by damian101, July 01]

bexx
Apr 14, 2019
15

https://github.com/Feodor2/Mypal/releases

The best browser for XP which supports html5 and allows normal viewing of Youtube on the old computer is the Mypal 28.4.1 browser.

1 reply
Goranko Ilic
Jul 30, 2019

Mypal is a good browser.

alza689
Apr 10, 2019
5

Why was chromium Browser left out. Some relatively new videos may not operate due to flash player and MKV files, but the rest it is rather capable of displaying better than chrome. Slim jet is alright but since the above browser provides very little obstacles to transit through webpages, I use more of this browser than any other. Obviously the support for the same is no longer available. Yet it appears to be stable except in case of some new video files.

alza689

Show more comments
7 of 14 comments
Gu