Google’s Chrome browser starts blocking ads Thursday, but not the way you’d think
By Dwight Silverman
If you use Google’s Chrome web browser — the most popular web browser in the world — you may start seeing fewer ads at the sites you visit starting Thursday. That’s when an ad blocker built in to the software will be switched on, but don’t expect it to behave the way most add-on blockers do.
According to a post at The Chromium Blog, the built-in blocker is targeting the worst of the worst of web ads. It’s part of an effort by Google to get sites that show very annoying ads to cut it out, and includes a warning process to the site’s operator before action is taken.
Chrome’s ad blocker takes aim at ads that violate standards set by the Coalition for Better Ads. The standards are different depending on whether the ads appear on desktop computers or mobile devices.
The bad ads Google’s concerned about on the desktop are those that autoplay video with sound, popup ads that cover content, prestitial ads with a countdown timer, and large “sticky” ads that don’t move as a user scrolls.
