Clearly, Google is serious about trying to oust ad blockers from its browser, or at least those extensions with fuller (V2) levels of functionality. One of the crucial twists with V3 is that it prevents the use of remotely hosted code – as a security measure – but this also means ad blockers can’t update their filter lists without going through Google’s review process. What does that mean? Way slower updates for said filters, which hampers the ability of the ad-blocking extension to keep up with the necessary changes to stay effective.
(This isn’t just about browsers, either, as the war on advert dodgers extends to YouTube, too, as we’ve seen in recent months).
At any rate, Google is playing with fire here somewhat – or Firefox, perhaps we should say – as this may be the shove some folks need to get them considering another of the best web browsers out there aside from Chrome. Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has vowed to maintain support for V2 extensions, while introducing support for V3 alongside to give folks a choice (now there’s a radical idea).
That’s true, Mozilla’s vision of ads is much better than Google’s. But is there any reasons it will be one or the other? Is there any reason to believe that Mozilla’s ads will displace Google’s ads? Or are we just going to end up with more ads: Google’s very bad ads plus Mozilla’s less bad ads.
[edit] Just to be clear - I don’t want to sound any Mozilla. Mozilla hasn’t actually acted on this yet. Firefox is still good right now, and will continue to be good at least in the short term. It’s just that Mozilla have stated their intention to work on making ad systems. So when that actually happens, it will be bad.
Maybe they’ll replace ads on sites that let them and block them on other sites? Who knows