Google, the World’s Biggest Advertising Company, Will Block Ads Soon. Is That Good?
Chrome browser will block some ads out-of-the-box,
regardless of whether you have a separate ad blocker
installed.
That means Google, the web’s biggest advertising
company, will start deciding which ads do and don’t get
blocked in your browser. Should users be happy about this,
or apprehensive about what Google is up to?
Something Like This Was Necessary
Google isn’t blocking all ads: just the ones on sites that
“misbehave.” In the blog post announcing the change ,
Google stated they will block all ads on sites with a
certain amount of ads that violate standards from the
Coalition for Better Ads. The Coalition includes tech
companies like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook,
alongside media organizations including The Washington
Post and Reuters. Together, they’ve built a list of ad types
they consider unacceptable. Anyone who uses the web
regularly should recognize the culprits: popups, auto-
playing video ads with sound, and others will be blocked:
All of these ads are terrible, and the mobile incarnations
are arguably even worse:
These kinds of ads make browsing the web miserable, and
we’d all be better off if they went away. But it’s unlikely
that publishers would make this decision unilaterally: such
ads pay well, and that extra money is hard to resist for
media organizations already struggling to get by.
So Google has decided to force the issue.
As of February 15, Chrome’s desktop and mobile versions
will block all ads on any site that uses these sorts of
advertisements. It’s hard to overstate how devastating
this will be for sites that are blocked: Chrome is used by
over 60 percent of desktop and mobile users . Publishers
have had almost a year to make sure their site fits the
standard, and this is some serious motivation for them to
do so.
It’s easy to see the upside of this development. You, as a
user, will be able to browse the web without seeing these
horrible ads—either sites will get rid of them, or they’ll be
blocked. Without some kind of intervention, these sorts of
ads would only become even more common, making the
internet worse for everyone.
But there’s also a potential downside. Google, the world’s
biggest advertising company, will block ads to control
behavior on sites they don’t own. Whatever you think
about Google, that’s a lot of power.
This Isn’t Entirely Unprecedented
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened.
Major tech companies have always changed browsers in
order to shape the web in their image, and the results
have often been positive.
Apple, for example, famously didn’t support Flash on the
iPhone, a decision that arguably gave us the HTML5
powered Internet we all enjoy today. Early pop up
blockers, bundled in Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer,
undoubtedly hurt revenue for media organizations in the
early 2000s, but they also made the web a lot less
stressful to use (popups are a lot less common now than
they were back then). More recently, High Sierra’s tracking
prevention deletes cookies regularly to reduce online
tracking.
Google has also acted in similar ways in the past. Chrome
already blocks automatic audio ads, for example, and has
disabled Flash by default for a while now.
It’s easy to see Chrome’s upcoming ad blocker as similar
to all of these changes: a simple tweak they can make in
order to improve the web for users.
But that’s not the only reason Google is doing it.
The Market Force Awakens
Google gives a lot of things away. Chrome and Android,
for example, are freely available for anyone who wants
them. But Google isn’t a charity. Whatever blog posts and
press releases say, everything Google does is motivated
by the bottom line, a trait they share with every other for-
profit company.
Google’s software is insanely popular, but they don’t make
money. Google has basically one revenue stream: their
near total dominance of online advertising .
Ad blocking software like Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin
has threatened that revenue. Every user who installs an ad
blocker is a user that’s not making money for Google, and
ad blocking has become much more common in no small
part because the ads on websites have become so
annoying.
By punishing sites that use these terrible ads, Google likely
hopes to stem the tide of users installing ad blockers. And
Chrome’s dominance gives Google this power.
Should Google Be Trusted With This
Power?
Google is setting a precedent with this change. Now,
Google will decide which sites do and do not get revenue
from Chrome users. Instead of blocking only these
specific ads, Chrome will block all ads on any offending
site. The specific reason for this may be beneficial for
consumers in the short term, but what’s to stop Google
from abusing this power later?
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