Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker
> Web users will quickly recognize their only options: pay to use the internet, or uninstall the ad blockers and surf the web for free.<p>Or they could disable Chrome ad blocking and install their ad blocker of choice.<p>If I'm reading this correctly then no portion of the user population is hurt by this. Power with religious objections to advertising are free to continue using them. Typical users who don't care don't have to deal with awful and broken stuff. People who feel charitable enough to pay for advertising get to do so.<p>But doesn't it hurt the advertisers? That's not a given either. This article makes it sound like all non-Google advertisers will be shut out. But that's clearly not true: plenty of non-Google advertisers are represented in the decision making process, to the point where one can be convinced that a variety of views were considered.<p>Ad blockers are a response to the absolutely worst of ads, to the detriment of better-behaved networks like Google, Facebook, and friends. While I agree it's a little creepy that an advertising company shoulda put out an ad blocker, Google is in a unique place to tackle the problem of poor advertising by filtering truly bad experiences, and doing so hurts no one except truly abusive networks.