9 ms·

An update on Better Ads (Chrome native ad-blocking)

35 points by mgiannopoulos 9y ago

secret_island 9y ago
There are no "better" ads. The only good ads are the ones I cannot see. My computer, my rules. Lately now blocking coin mining in addition to all ads, trackers, beacons, pixels, etc. I have the right to surf on my terms. Traffic to websites is a cost of doing business; don't try to recoup in ways that I never agreed to (mining), selling my data w/o my permissions, etc. You have to love the tripe in the article: "Better ads experience..." No one enjoys the experience. No one except those in a position to make money from same. Everyday IT people and others find ads intrusive, annoying, and dangerous. Ads are a major vector for malware. Again, my rules, my computer. I've not seen an ad in many years, but I do keep up with the tech and means to keep blocking all newcoming means to circumvent my own security.
- throwaway613834 9y ago
  > My computer, my rules Or maybe their website, their rules? Otherwise this is like walking into a store and telling them to take off their ads, because your eyes, your rules.
  - nasredin 9y ago
    It's like requesting a chocolate bar, paying for the delivery, and the store sends you a truck full of garbage with that chocolate bar at the bottom. Sorry I'm all out of car-themed analogies.
    - throwaway613834 9y ago
      What part of sending a GET request to view a web page corresponds to ordering chocolate bar?
      - betterunix2 9y ago
        A GET request is not a request to view a web page, it is a request to receive the page. It is up the recipient to determine if and how the page should be rendered.
        throwaway613834 9y ago
        You seem to be constantly replying in a way that looks like you disagree with me when in fact we're in agreement!
  - betterunix2 9y ago
    Sorry, but nobody ever promised to render your website in any specific way; my browser does whatever I programmed it to do. I might be using w3m. I might be using a browser you never heard of. I might be using a text-to-speech engine. Website owners do not get to set the rules on my machine, no matter how badly they want to.
    - throwaway613834 9y ago
      You can put on rose-colored glasses (or AR goggles) when you walk into a store, too. I don't really see a contradiction.
      - betterunix2 9y ago
        Exactly: you can put on AR goggles and have them draw opaque rectangles over all the ads in the store, and there is nothing wrong with that.
  - satori99 9y ago
    Not a great analogy. We all know that HTML is an opt-in language, in that user-agents are designed to render the tags that they support and ignore the ones they don't. My user-agents do not support ads at all.
    - throwaway613834 9y ago
      Your glasses (or AR goggles) when you walk into the store would correspond to the HTML renderer here.
      - satori99 9y ago
        I can't wait for the day that lightweight sun-glass frames can block real-world ads in real-time. Perhaps replacing them with classical art or even white rectangles. That sounds great.
  - byte1918 9y ago
    I don't think the analogy stands. For example: If I walk into a shoe store I won't see ads for pain meds. I might see ads for special sales or maybe for a sibling store which doesn't sell shoes, but is under the same company. These kind of ads can bypass or are not even blocked by today's adblockers because they usually don't have to be served by an ad-network. And that's perfectly fine. The problem comes when ads are not relevant to your context and are shoved into your face. I would definitely complain if ads are shoved into my face in real life (please don't misunderstand, I am aware there are ads everywhere, assume the scenario where you walk into a shoe store or an apple store). It would also be easy to argue that showing irrelevant ads in your store is distracting and even bad for business.
    - throwaway613834 9y ago
      > The problem comes when ads are not relevant to your context and are shoved into your face. That's not the problem the parent had: >> There are no "better" ads. The only good ads are the ones I cannot see.
      - byte1918 9y ago
        My apologies, you quoted just the part with > My computer, my rules So my reply was mostly about the store analogy.
        throwaway613834 9y ago
        I see. Well, there's not enough information in the mere phrase "my computer, my rules" to come up with an analogy (or even a reply). If this was about my friend using my computer without permission, the statement would well be an apt one. It's definitely worth looking into the context & main ideas of whatever people are replying to, not the mere tiny parts they quote!
  - asgioiobuio 9y ago
    Terrible analogy. It's like me putting my hand in front of my eyes to block out the view. They don't have to serve me content. But since they do, I can view it however I wish.
- nasredin 9y ago
  I had so much respect for Google about a decade ago. Now they are on the same level as Microsoft. The Orweillian attempts at redefining language is... not surprising. This is beyond regular corporate-speak. Their search results are full of spam. They take hostage Gmail accounts. It seems that everything "cool" they do... has a sinister, ulterior motive. I don't know if all the good they have done outweighs the bad.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > They take hostage Gmail accounts. > I don't know if all the good they have done outweighs the bad. Well, I wouldn't call Google outright sinister. That's just what happens when capitalism goes unchecked. Too bad that even the EU, even the mothership of regulations Germany, didn't have the guts to put some red lines (and consumer rights!) towards Google.
  - dannyw 9y ago
    The old Google Toolbar had a warning with big red font saying “THIS IS NOT YOUR USUAL YADA TADA”. It explained the page rank feature sends what domains you visit to Google for checking their pagerank, and how Google processed that specific information. It gave you the choice to enable or disable, in equally sized buttons. Today, you instal Chrome and are immediately asked to sign in without being aware this “syncs” your browsing history to Google.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  I'm sad to see you downvoted into the grey. >My computer, my rules. This is really the only thing that matters. Ads are not a working model for monetization on the web for this reason, and this is non-negotiable. Ads are a non-starter. It's as simple as that. If anyone can't find a different way to support their content, then the web is better off without them. "Better ads" is putting lipstick on a pig - I'd sooner not invite the pig into my living room, thank you.
  - secret_island 9y ago
    Thank you for your comments. You are right. What with the now ultra-cheap Amazon and Google in-home devices, it's increasingly difficult to have a "safe" space. Like you, I will not invite this nonsense into my home. I don't use Siri, won't use any Google product, and I don't have any iot devices other than my iPhone, and I don't use non-Apple apps. I use OpenBSD and Fedora Linux for the majority of my work and I heavily filter my personal and work connections. Being I run the firewall at work, I took the liberty of blocking all advertising connections to our buildings to save on bandwidth. My boss was thrilled to learn this could be done. People are horrified to learn that I, an IT veteran of now 20 years have the attitude I do towards technology. It seems everyday there is a new startup offering the same old dreck that all of them seem to offer--ways to divest you of your privacy, freedoms, etc. I never bite. I stick with the minimalism I always have.
- ovao 9y ago
  Would it make any difference to you if a site notified you that they monetize with ads before they display content?
gressquel 9y ago
An attempt by Google to take over the Adblocking market and thus maintain their own whitelist which will obviously not block Adsense ads. I have already moved over to firefox
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  > maintain their own whitelist which will obviously not block Adsense ads You make this sound like some kind of trick. The stated goal is to block especially obnoxious ads, of the kind adsense doesn't do. I can't say if it's going to be fair or not, but the way it treads adsense specifically isn't going to be the deciding factor.
  - ivanbakel 9y ago
    >The stated goal is to block especially obnoxious ads, of the kind adsense doesn't do. Either way you think the relation goes probably depends on your opinion of Google, but I would take this as thinking backwards. Google has lots of interest in preventing Adsense from being blocked as part of some broad-stroke policy, so everything they do as part of their adblocking policy has that in mind - wherever users prefer the Chrome native policy, Google wins. Whatever criteria gets picked for the adblocker is going to fit Adsense pretty well, or else Google loses. If Adsense, and the ad revenue model, weren't deciding factors in introducing these partial blockers in the first place, Google wouldn't be taking the steps to implement one.
    - jacques_chester 9y ago
      Put another way, this is an example of standard Google strategy: defend and control the approaches to the advertising river of gold. Chrome was itself just such an investment. By controlling a major browser (eventually, the dominant browser), they can prevent Mozilla or Microsoft from cutting them out. Now they want to prevent the increasing pool of ad blockers from freezing out adsense. Happily for Google, this means that advertisers will prioritise advertising through them, as they will only be guaranteed to show up in Chrome if they use adsense. Their next step will be to bundle Contributor with Chrome. Again, by happy coincidence, this blocks out anyone else from getting a good run at microsubscription. Last I checked, the design is intended to be revenue-neutral for Google. Disclosure: I have been working on a business, Robojar, intended to remove advertising and bypass paywalls in exchange for microsubscriptions. Google have a very similar model in Contributor.
bckygldstn 9y ago
So removal of ads is based on a blacklist, rather than client-side identification?
xstartup 9y ago
So, basically all ad networks like zeropark, popads, popcash, propeller ads, will soon disappear?
- droopyEyelids 9y ago
  That or we'll start seeing "this browser not supported"
revelation 9y ago
I'm not a lawyer, but it just seems like the biggest online ad peddler of the world blocking ads of exclusively it's competitors in his preinstalled browser on the most widely used mobile platform in the world is a recipe for a blockbuster anti-trust sanction.
- Kylekramer 9y ago
  I'm sure Google's employees who can say I am a lawyer reviewed this. They've been paying Ad Block Plus to do this for years. Bringing it in house can't change the legality much.
dbcooper 9y ago
Members of the "Coalition for Better Ads" are listed at the link below. Which major internet advertising providers are not listed? (I am not familiar with the market.) https://www.betterads.org/members/ https://www.betterads.org/members/
scott_karana 9y ago
How is this not a monopolistic, anticompetitive measure? The largest ad company starts a shell coalition so their largest market-share browser can use it as justification to block "non-approved" (competitor's) ads.
kodablah 9y ago
I asked before, but never really got a good answer. Is this client side only? If not, how are they querying a server? And where can I download the full list of unacceptable ads/sites? And if I can't, why not? And finally, why does this have to be native instead of an extension? Edit: I guess another question, why aren't the answers to obvious questions like these readily available? Or am I just ignorant?
- dedalus 9y ago
  I believe this is a hybrid. Chrome sends telemetry data to their server and they already know what kind of sites and ads are blocked. I think they need correlation of ads shown followed by an adblocker extension install so that they want to block such ads to prevent the growth in adblockers
sharpercoder 9y ago
I really hope a service will be created where I can pay for adfree content internetwide.
- dedalus 9y ago
  you already have that here: https://contributor.google.com/v/beta https://contributor.google.com/v/beta
  - hktrl 9y ago
    available only in the US
phil248 9y ago
At this point, I'm dealing with so many pop-ups asking me to turn off my ad-blocker that the original purpose of the ad-blocker (don't bother me) is becoming moot. If this effort by Google can somehow raise the quality of online ads from horrendous to just terrible, I'll reluctantly support it.
- pishpash 9y ago
  What happened to ad block blocker blockers? Also it was bound to happen, ad blocker/privacy co.'s selling out to block ad blockers/sell personal info, drawing from a very typical criminal enterprise behavioral pattern.
- dedalus 9y ago
  >If this effort by Google can somehow raise the quality of online ads from horrendous to just terrible, I'll reluctantly support it I think the rationale for this move is to stem the growth of adblockers rather than anything else. Google Chrome on Mobile does not allow any extension so thats safe for their monetization. Its only on desktop which is dwindling and they are using this opportunity to make sure this is contained
  - scarface74 9y ago
    Only on Android does this save Google. iOS has had the ability to install content blockers for a few years. They not only work in the browser but also the newer embedded Web Views (WebViewController?)
- dedalus 9y ago
  >At this point, I'm dealing with so many pop-ups asking me to turn off my ad-blocker that the original purpose of the ad-blocker (don't bother me) is becoming moot. Use this specific list in your adblocker to subvert those messages: https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer/blob/master/anti-adblock-killer-filters.txt https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer/blob/master/anti...

35 points by mgiannopoulos 9y ago

There are no "better" ads. The only good ads are the ones I cannot see. My computer, my rules. Lately now blocking coin mining in addition to all ads, trackers, beacons, pixels, etc. I have the right to surf on my terms. Traffic to websites is a cost of doing business; don't try to recoup in ways that I never agreed to (mining), selling my data w/o my permissions, etc. You have to love the tripe in the article: "Better ads experience..." No one enjoys the experience. No one except those in a position to make money from same. Everyday IT people and others find ads intrusive, annoying, and dangerous. Ads are a major vector for malware. Again, my rules, my computer. I've not seen an ad in many years, but I do keep up with the tech and means to keep blocking all newcoming means to circumvent my own security.

throwaway613834 9y ago
> My computer, my rules Or maybe their website, their rules? Otherwise this is like walking into a store and telling them to take off their ads, because your eyes, your rules.
- nasredin 9y ago
  It's like requesting a chocolate bar, paying for the delivery, and the store sends you a truck full of garbage with that chocolate bar at the bottom. Sorry I'm all out of car-themed analogies.
  - throwaway613834 9y ago
    What part of sending a GET request to view a web page corresponds to ordering chocolate bar?
    - betterunix2 9y ago
      A GET request is not a request to view a web page, it is a request to receive the page. It is up the recipient to determine if and how the page should be rendered.
      - throwaway613834 9y ago
        You seem to be constantly replying in a way that looks like you disagree with me when in fact we're in agreement!
- betterunix2 9y ago
  Sorry, but nobody ever promised to render your website in any specific way; my browser does whatever I programmed it to do. I might be using w3m. I might be using a browser you never heard of. I might be using a text-to-speech engine. Website owners do not get to set the rules on my machine, no matter how badly they want to.
  - throwaway613834 9y ago
    You can put on rose-colored glasses (or AR goggles) when you walk into a store, too. I don't really see a contradiction.
    - betterunix2 9y ago
      Exactly: you can put on AR goggles and have them draw opaque rectangles over all the ads in the store, and there is nothing wrong with that.
- satori99 9y ago
  Not a great analogy. We all know that HTML is an opt-in language, in that user-agents are designed to render the tags that they support and ignore the ones they don't. My user-agents do not support ads at all.
  - throwaway613834 9y ago
    Your glasses (or AR goggles) when you walk into the store would correspond to the HTML renderer here.
    - satori99 9y ago
      I can't wait for the day that lightweight sun-glass frames can block real-world ads in real-time. Perhaps replacing them with classical art or even white rectangles. That sounds great.
- byte1918 9y ago
  I don't think the analogy stands. For example: If I walk into a shoe store I won't see ads for pain meds. I might see ads for special sales or maybe for a sibling store which doesn't sell shoes, but is under the same company. These kind of ads can bypass or are not even blocked by today's adblockers because they usually don't have to be served by an ad-network. And that's perfectly fine. The problem comes when ads are not relevant to your context and are shoved into your face. I would definitely complain if ads are shoved into my face in real life (please don't misunderstand, I am aware there are ads everywhere, assume the scenario where you walk into a shoe store or an apple store). It would also be easy to argue that showing irrelevant ads in your store is distracting and even bad for business.
  - throwaway613834 9y ago
    > The problem comes when ads are not relevant to your context and are shoved into your face. That's not the problem the parent had: >> There are no "better" ads. The only good ads are the ones I cannot see.
    - byte1918 9y ago
      My apologies, you quoted just the part with > My computer, my rules So my reply was mostly about the store analogy.
      - throwaway613834 9y ago
        I see. Well, there's not enough information in the mere phrase "my computer, my rules" to come up with an analogy (or even a reply). If this was about my friend using my computer without permission, the statement would well be an apt one. It's definitely worth looking into the context & main ideas of whatever people are replying to, not the mere tiny parts they quote!
- asgioiobuio 9y ago
  Terrible analogy. It's like me putting my hand in front of my eyes to block out the view. They don't have to serve me content. But since they do, I can view it however I wish.
nasredin 9y ago
I had so much respect for Google about a decade ago. Now they are on the same level as Microsoft. The Orweillian attempts at redefining language is... not surprising. This is beyond regular corporate-speak. Their search results are full of spam. They take hostage Gmail accounts. It seems that everything "cool" they do... has a sinister, ulterior motive. I don't know if all the good they have done outweighs the bad.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > They take hostage Gmail accounts. > I don't know if all the good they have done outweighs the bad. Well, I wouldn't call Google outright sinister. That's just what happens when capitalism goes unchecked. Too bad that even the EU, even the mothership of regulations Germany, didn't have the guts to put some red lines (and consumer rights!) towards Google.
- dannyw 9y ago
  The old Google Toolbar had a warning with big red font saying “THIS IS NOT YOUR USUAL YADA TADA”. It explained the page rank feature sends what domains you visit to Google for checking their pagerank, and how Google processed that specific information. It gave you the choice to enable or disable, in equally sized buttons. Today, you instal Chrome and are immediately asked to sign in without being aware this “syncs” your browsing history to Google.
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
I'm sad to see you downvoted into the grey. >My computer, my rules. This is really the only thing that matters. Ads are not a working model for monetization on the web for this reason, and this is non-negotiable. Ads are a non-starter. It's as simple as that. If anyone can't find a different way to support their content, then the web is better off without them. "Better ads" is putting lipstick on a pig - I'd sooner not invite the pig into my living room, thank you.
- secret_island 9y ago
  Thank you for your comments. You are right. What with the now ultra-cheap Amazon and Google in-home devices, it's increasingly difficult to have a "safe" space. Like you, I will not invite this nonsense into my home. I don't use Siri, won't use any Google product, and I don't have any iot devices other than my iPhone, and I don't use non-Apple apps. I use OpenBSD and Fedora Linux for the majority of my work and I heavily filter my personal and work connections. Being I run the firewall at work, I took the liberty of blocking all advertising connections to our buildings to save on bandwidth. My boss was thrilled to learn this could be done. People are horrified to learn that I, an IT veteran of now 20 years have the attitude I do towards technology. It seems everyday there is a new startup offering the same old dreck that all of them seem to offer--ways to divest you of your privacy, freedoms, etc. I never bite. I stick with the minimalism I always have.
ovao 9y ago
Would it make any difference to you if a site notified you that they monetize with ads before they display content?

gressquel 9y ago

An attempt by Google to take over the Adblocking market and thus maintain their own whitelist which will obviously not block Adsense ads. I have already moved over to firefox

Dylan16807 9y ago
> maintain their own whitelist which will obviously not block Adsense ads You make this sound like some kind of trick. The stated goal is to block especially obnoxious ads, of the kind adsense doesn't do. I can't say if it's going to be fair or not, but the way it treads adsense specifically isn't going to be the deciding factor.
- ivanbakel 9y ago
  >The stated goal is to block especially obnoxious ads, of the kind adsense doesn't do. Either way you think the relation goes probably depends on your opinion of Google, but I would take this as thinking backwards. Google has lots of interest in preventing Adsense from being blocked as part of some broad-stroke policy, so everything they do as part of their adblocking policy has that in mind - wherever users prefer the Chrome native policy, Google wins. Whatever criteria gets picked for the adblocker is going to fit Adsense pretty well, or else Google loses. If Adsense, and the ad revenue model, weren't deciding factors in introducing these partial blockers in the first place, Google wouldn't be taking the steps to implement one.
  - jacques_chester 9y ago
    Put another way, this is an example of standard Google strategy: defend and control the approaches to the advertising river of gold. Chrome was itself just such an investment. By controlling a major browser (eventually, the dominant browser), they can prevent Mozilla or Microsoft from cutting them out. Now they want to prevent the increasing pool of ad blockers from freezing out adsense. Happily for Google, this means that advertisers will prioritise advertising through them, as they will only be guaranteed to show up in Chrome if they use adsense. Their next step will be to bundle Contributor with Chrome. Again, by happy coincidence, this blocks out anyone else from getting a good run at microsubscription. Last I checked, the design is intended to be revenue-neutral for Google. Disclosure: I have been working on a business, Robojar, intended to remove advertising and bypass paywalls in exchange for microsubscriptions. Google have a very similar model in Contributor.

bckygldstn 9y ago

So removal of ads is based on a blacklist, rather than client-side identification?

xstartup 9y ago

So, basically all ad networks like zeropark, popads, popcash, propeller ads, will soon disappear?

droopyEyelids 9y ago
That or we'll start seeing "this browser not supported"

revelation 9y ago

I'm not a lawyer, but it just seems like the biggest online ad peddler of the world blocking ads of exclusively it's competitors in his preinstalled browser on the most widely used mobile platform in the world is a recipe for a blockbuster anti-trust sanction.

Kylekramer 9y ago
I'm sure Google's employees who can say I am a lawyer reviewed this. They've been paying Ad Block Plus to do this for years. Bringing it in house can't change the legality much.

dbcooper 9y ago

Members of the "Coalition for Better Ads" are listed at the link below. Which major internet advertising providers are not listed? (I am not familiar with the market.) https://www.betterads.org/members/ https://www.betterads.org/members/

scott_karana 9y ago

How is this not a monopolistic, anticompetitive measure? The largest ad company starts a shell coalition so their largest market-share browser can use it as justification to block "non-approved" (competitor's) ads.

kodablah 9y ago

I asked before, but never really got a good answer. Is this client side only? If not, how are they querying a server? And where can I download the full list of unacceptable ads/sites? And if I can't, why not? And finally, why does this have to be native instead of an extension? Edit: I guess another question, why aren't the answers to obvious questions like these readily available? Or am I just ignorant?

dedalus 9y ago
I believe this is a hybrid. Chrome sends telemetry data to their server and they already know what kind of sites and ads are blocked. I think they need correlation of ads shown followed by an adblocker extension install so that they want to block such ads to prevent the growth in adblockers

sharpercoder 9y ago

I really hope a service will be created where I can pay for adfree content internetwide.

dedalus 9y ago
you already have that here: https://contributor.google.com/v/beta https://contributor.google.com/v/beta
- hktrl 9y ago
  available only in the US

phil248 9y ago

At this point, I'm dealing with so many pop-ups asking me to turn off my ad-blocker that the original purpose of the ad-blocker (don't bother me) is becoming moot. If this effort by Google can somehow raise the quality of online ads from horrendous to just terrible, I'll reluctantly support it.

pishpash 9y ago
What happened to ad block blocker blockers? Also it was bound to happen, ad blocker/privacy co.'s selling out to block ad blockers/sell personal info, drawing from a very typical criminal enterprise behavioral pattern.
dedalus 9y ago
>If this effort by Google can somehow raise the quality of online ads from horrendous to just terrible, I'll reluctantly support it I think the rationale for this move is to stem the growth of adblockers rather than anything else. Google Chrome on Mobile does not allow any extension so thats safe for their monetization. Its only on desktop which is dwindling and they are using this opportunity to make sure this is contained
- scarface74 9y ago
  Only on Android does this save Google. iOS has had the ability to install content blockers for a few years. They not only work in the browser but also the newer embedded Web Views (WebViewController?)
dedalus 9y ago
>At this point, I'm dealing with so many pop-ups asking me to turn off my ad-blocker that the original purpose of the ad-blocker (don't bother me) is becoming moot. Use this specific list in your adblocker to subvert those messages: https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer/blob/master/anti-adblock-killer-filters.txt https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer/blob/master/anti...