Chrome readies built-in ad blocker in early version of Canary

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Gregg Keizer at Computerworld has the story. Far-reaching consequences to this one, folks.
[See the full post at: Chrome readies built-in ad blocker in early version of Canary]

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Chrome will block ads, but they won’t block scripts. In other words, they will still be tracking everything you do behind the scenes.

It seems that Opera, with its built-in ad blocker, has started something that Chrome feels compelled to follow.

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flackcatcher, BobbyB

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Brave also has a built in ad blocker, and runs pretty much the same policy Google announced. As Woody said, this is huge. In the short term this will put pressure on Mozilla, long term this changes what Microsoft and other software vendors might be able to do. This really tilts the field. In what direction is unknown.

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In the short term this will put pressure on Mozilla

Mozilla already has an add blocker. You just have to activated it. It is one of their add ins.

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There are conflicting forces at work regarding Mozilla, so it’s anyone’s guess what they would do.

Adblockers are useful and popular, so if such a feature were already a part of Firefox, it would be on the short list of things to remove so that they could replace it with some weird feature no one asked for.

On the other hand, it’s Chrome we’re talking about, and Mozilla’s primary development goal in the last few years has been to make Firefox into a copy of Chrome, so maybe if Chrome did it, they would follow.  It goes against the whole philosophy of Firefox from the beginning (make the core product a lean and mean browser with only basic core features nearly everyone will use, and let the rest of the stuff be offloaded into addons), but so does their decision to cut off the vast majority of Firefox’s addon library in favor of the far less powerful Chrome addons.  The “rest of the stuff” can only be offloaded into addons if the addons are powerful enough to accomplish the goal, and they have been since Phoenix Firebird Firefox was introduced a decade and a half ago… but that is set to change in only a few months.

It’s a testament to the truly horrible state of modern browsers that even with Mozilla doing everything I would do if I were a competitor secretly trying to destroy them from within, it’s still the only one I use (though I am counting derivatives as being part of the whole here; I am no more likely to upgrade to FF 57 than I am to Windows 10 at this point).  Without XUL addons, there’s nothing holding me to Firefox anymore– addons are the sole reason I use it anymore.  The problem is that there is nowhere else to go, since no other browser gets close to passing my minimum standard with or without addons.  Browsers, browsers everywhere, and not a one that doesn’t smell like the south end of a north bound skunk…

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They can pretend that this is for the common good as much as they want, who is buying it? Whoever wants or needs an ad-blocker, can install one on pretty much any decent browser. Google just want to pre-empt that user action and be the ones in control of the blocking. Which, according to the article, will be “per website.” So they can blacklist and whitelist sites as they please… wonder how transparent that process will be! How long would it take for the “good” and “bad” site categories to morph into “Google partners” and “Google rivals”?

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If this can help block malware that come from ads and overall improve the quality of ads in general then I’d be willing to disable uBlock. But the instant I see something like “Solve issues with Windows: Click here to download” or anything of the sort, then uBlock gets turned back on.

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Pardon my ignorance, but I’ve seen Canary mentioned (mainly in relation to Windows Insider builds) but until then, hadn’t previously heard the expression… I thought it was perhaps the phase after beta testing (as in: alpha, beta, canary), so was surprised to see it precedes beta!

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The Members of the ‘Coalition for Better Ads’ are …
https://www.betterads.org/members/

Any opposition to their decisions could lead to litigation. However, suing a Coalition would be difficult and expensive. The Collective made the decision – smart move Google.

The pruning shears are now at the ready. Let’s see what gets clipped.

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Too little too late.

The ad companies have screwed up SO big time it’s like the guy that tried to rob your house apologizing and trying to be your friend now.

NO!

The ad blocker stays put.

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flackcatcher wrote:

As Woody said, this is huge. In the short term this will put pressure on Mozilla

Sorry, I have to disagree with everyone who says this is huge. Potentially it could be but I think Google’s implementation will only ever be to their benefit. And the fact that their ad blocker is list based is lame. Hopefully they will prove me wrong.

Late on July 31, I installed Chrome Dev v61.0.3163.13 and got the “Ads” option to show up in the Content settings. I have a screenshot taken Aug. 4 of Chrome Dev v61.0.3163.25 that shows it. In the little bit that I used it, over a few days, it was totally ineffective and I could not see on any website where it was removing anything. Still saw auto-playing video ads, animated ads, interstitial and everything else. Apparently, none of the websites I visited were on the “list”. Couple other things I noticed is that it took a few minutes or maybe a browser restart to get the Ads option to show up in the settings menu. I wiped the profile folder a few times to see how often it would appear and most times it would but not always. Also, every time I signed into Chrome Sync, with or without syncing my extensions, uBlock is one of them, the Ads option in settings would Always disappear after a browser restart. I ended up manually adding the bookmarks and favicons file into the clean profile folder.

For me, the whole point of using an ad/content blocker is security and performance. I personally think of it as The Most Important security software on my computers and is the biggest reason I haven’t seen a single malware object or virus in 9+ years on any of my computers. At this point, what Google is offering is a joke. JMHO

The “Tracking Protection” option in Firefox, by itself, works 1000 times better than what I saw in Chrome Dev. I’ve been using it for a couple months and it works very well. Nightly has the option to use it all the time and it can be enabled in the settings. With Firefox stable it can can be enabled always and/or the option to enable it from the settings menu can be done in about:config.
privacy.trackingprotection.enabled = true If always on is wanted, not just in private windows.
privacy.trackingprotection.ui.enabled = true You can then change when it is enabled within the browser settings. Menu/Options/Privacy

I primarily use FF and Pale Moon but I am an equal opportunity browser basher. I also have Chrome stable and Vivaldi installed.

https://s2.postimg.org/9aaiqit0p/Chrome_Dev_Ads.png

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