The web is an incredible asset. It’s an engine for innovation, a platform for sharing, and a universal gateway to information. When we built Chrome, we wanted to create a way for people to interact with the magic that is the web, without the browser getting in the way. We created a browser that took up minimal space on your screen, made the omnibar so you could quickly search or get directly to a website, and built our pop-up blocker to help you avoid unwanted content. Since then we’ve also added features such as Safe Browsing, pausing autoplay Flash and more – all aimed at protecting your experience of the web.
Your feedback has always played a critical part in the development of Chrome. This feedback has shown that a big source of frustration is annoying ads: video ads that play at full blast or giant pop-ups where you can’t seem to find the exit icon. These ads are designed to be disruptive and often stand in the way of people using their browsers for their intended purpose – connecting them to content and information. It’s clear that annoying ads degrade what we all love about the web. That’s why starting on February 15, Chrome will stop showing all ads on sites that repeatedly display these most disruptive ads after they’ve been flagged.
Good news for those still not using an adblocker, and bad news for sites that repeatedly display annoying ads.
Sounds great, but many of these annoying–or worse yet, malicious–ads are hosted on Google’s own ad network. Are they going to block these as well? Hmmm…
No, of course not. This is about blocking *other* ad companies ads that don’t comply with the industry standards that google may or may not have taken credit for writing them.
Bingo.
The info on the article and the chromium blog linked also say it’s “based on the public EasyList filter rules” but doesn’t say whether it’s a local client check against a known list or a live check against some google service (which would be pushing the url to google). It also only says it’s BASED on easylist, not actually easylist’s list.
To be honest, I’m not sure that a browser should be involved in blocking or allowing compliant content based on some, essentially, popularity list. The browser’s job is to download and render standards compliant (or close to standards compliant) content, not make judgement calls about whether you really want to see some bit of a page.
If you want to block bad content, that should be done using an external system or using a plugin to the browser, or manually enabled optional functionality in the browser. It should require a conscious choice on behalf of the user.
The1stImmortal,
That’s a good point. I would say having a blocking feature isn’t strictly a problem, but end users must be the ones to select the lists that they choose rather than google or it’s partners.
I just tried the very latest version of chrome, and I can’t seem to find any user accessible settings to set the list or even enable/disable this feature. Did google hard code it? I don’t see a mention of this feature anywhere inside the browser.
A quick test confirms google ads are not blocked.
Thom Holwerda,
Everything that interrupts the requested content is inherently “annoying”, I can’t get over how annoying youtube has gotten without an ad blocker. If google were to take user annoyance seriously, they’d have to block their own ads as well…unless of course this is mostly a ploy to block other advertisers.
I admit, I resent most of what the advertisement industry does, including google. However putting my biases aside, I still think this crosses antitrust boundaries. Google are facing lots of criticism and boycotts from some major companies, but being able to control access to chrome and firefox users (through the adblock plus deal) gives google an insane amount of leverage over partners and competitors.
That’s why everyone jumped ship to uBlock Origin years ago.
tidux,
Well, yes we did, but do you have numbers to back up a claim that “everyone” did? I genuinely do not know, so if anyone has a link comparing market stats of the two that would be great!
Not to mention there are at least two fake “uBlock” plugins for Firefox and Chrome pretending to be the real thing, which actually track and sell off the user’s browsing habits (something I find even worse than the advertising itself).
Beyond that, I’ve seen dozens of fake ad blockers using the “uBlock” name and logo in the app stores for iOS, Android, and Windows. Who knows what nefarious intent is behind those apps.
So yes, telling all your friends to switch to uBlock Origin is great, but unless they are careful they may not be using the real thing at all, and are at even greater risk than before.
Don’t you think legitimate advertisement networks don’t actually do that already? So how is that worse, then?
I’m aware, my point was that the malicious advertising alone is bad enough; an adblocker selling off the users’ information to other advertisers is even worse.
It’s like hiring a security guard to protect your home and he burgles it instead.
Edited 2018-02-15 12:23 UTC
Ah yes, I see what you mean, they just highhack the ad-network’s malpractice under the guise of protecting the user of said things, which is misleading and thus even more disgusting.
Edited 2018-02-15 12:39 UTC
Things I can do without:
1) Ads that blast music at 100% volume, even if the ad is off-screen you have this loud noise.
2) Even while I dislike the websites that are 2/3 ads and the text you want to read is just in the middle, this is still better than those sites that want to pop-over ads and block what I want to read.
3) Ads with small and/or hide to find close buttons. Make it so the top/right hand corner always is a close button.
4) Web pages you can not exit or close. If I hit the close button on a tab – that tab should CLOSE!
4). For Firefox, in about:config, set dom.disable_beforeunload = true.
Trusting Chrome to Block ads is like trusting Sesame Street Cookie Moster to guard a Jar full of Cookies.
Nice gesture, but as long as ads can run arbitrary scripts on my computer I will keep my uBlock origin and Brave Browser, thank you.
Edited 2018-02-14 11:22 UTC
kurkosdr,
It has always bugged me when websites give 3rd parties full access to the pages (via doubleclick ads, adsence, google analytics, etc). It’s a bad security practice full stop. Yet this bad practice is very prevalent across the web, here on osnews, and I concede my own clients do it too.
Some people may think google would never abuse their access, but even assuming that’s true it may not be true of google’s advertising affiliates. Some of them have successfully attacked google’s ad networks in the past…
https://www.fastcompany.com/3062867/overlay-malware-google-adsense
https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/19/6537511/google-ad-network-exposed…
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2907492/largescale-google-malvertisi…
Maybe the risks aren’t that high most of the time, but considering the recently disclosed TLD and cache timing attacks that can work from javascript, it seems justified from a purely security point of view to preemptively block undesirable 3rd party content.
Edited 2018-02-14 14:34 UTC
Is Google starting to give me what IT thinks is better to me?
It sounds kind of Apple control tactics.
I’ve filed multiple complaints about youtube on the chrome browser. I now use brave browser for youtube. Once they resolve a few of their plugins and minor issues, then it’ll be a full replacement for chrome.
I’ve used Brave before but switched to slimjet. Both are good bt slimjet is based on chrome code and doesnt report to google. It has some other nifty features that come in handy. Builtin ad blocker and social media integration are two of many.
uBlock Origin. Works like a charm!