Google on Wednesday declared war on online advertising. Again. Well, it’s not a real, full-fledged war, and it’s nothing new compared to what we already know was coming. Starting Thursday, the Chrome browser will block some of the annoying ads you keep seeing online, but not all of them. Google is just reminding users of the incoming change.
The company is pretty adamant that your internet experience is more important than money. But money is also important, obviously.
Google’s own ad blocker isn’t a total surprise, and we already know how it works. Google is working with the Coalition for Better Ads to enforce Better Ads Standards in its browser. The search giant will stop showing disruptive ads on sites that keep showing them after they’ve been flagged. Ad experiences including videos that play automatically at “full blast,” giant pop-ups “where you can’t seem to find the exit icon,” are going away.
“It’s important to note that some sites affected by this change may also contain Google ads. To us, your experience on the web is a higher priority than the money that these annoying ads may generate—even for us,” VP of Chrome Rahul Roy-Chowdhury said in a blog post.
But money is important to both Google and the online companies that make money from advertising. And Google stresses that in its announcement. The company is mainly looking to prevent disruptive ads from derailing the entire web ecosystem.
“We’ve already seen more and more people express their discontent with annoying ads by installing ad blockers, but blocking all ads can hurt sites or advertisers who aren’t doing anything disruptive. By focusing on filtering out disruptive ad experiences, we can help keep the entire ecosystem of the web healthy, and give people a significantly better user experience than they have today,” Roy-Chowdhury said.
In other words, you might not notice Google’s war on evil ads come Thursday, as it’ll take a while for disruptive ads to be targeted well.
