back to article Google, Amazon 'n' pals fork out for AdBlock Plus 'unblock' – report

Internet giants Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Taboola have reportedly paid AdBlock Plus to allow their ads to pass through its filter software. The confidential deals were confirmed by the Financial Times, the paper reported today. Eyeo GmbH, the German startup behind Adblock Plus, said it did not wish to comment. So far …

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  1. BlartVersenwaldIII
    Mushroom

    Begun the Ad Wars have

    Expect this to get very ugly, very fast, especially for browsers with curated extension stores.

    Happily using Palemoon with AdBlock Latitude, itself a fork of AdBlock Edge which was a fork of AdBlock Plus without the advert whitelists. Is the original AdBlock still around?

    1. PleebSmash

      Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

      It just means that a slice of users who managed to install AdBlock in the first place but are too lazy to change the settings or download a fork will have to see some text ads. That's worth undisclosed millions to Google and friends.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

      "AdBlock Latitude, itself a fork of AdBlock Edge which was a fork of AdBlock Plus without the advert whitelists."

      Are you saying that AdBlock Edge now ALSO accepts some ads?! Otherwise, why switch to AdBlock Lattitude?

      ref. AdBlock "revenue stream", it is pure blackmail (not that I care a bit about the the Big Boys being blackmailed). That said, it's a short lived business. As more and more boys will pay to have their ads "whitelisted", more and more ads will be displayed to those users, who stupidly believe Adblock is all for their benefit. And as they start poking around, they will realize they were fooled. Next step - they'll install an alternative that doesn't whitewash anything. Until they start seeing more ads again, at which point they'll find out that the alternatives' alternative does yellowlisting instead. At which point they'll move on to another blocker. And so it goes.

    3. Mage Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

      Adverts MAY finance some good sites.

      All advert images use up MY bandwidth cap. My cap is fixed. Or use MY data allowance on Mobile connection.

      On a TV I mute the adverts.

      1. Danny 14

        Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

        a squid proxy cache can blacklist the adservers quite effectively if you want a solution for home (great if you already use a Linux firewall or LAMP). Or install diladele if you want a more industrial filtering option. We don't see any adverts at work since I put the pair on on system - it also stops a big chunk of click though poisoned adverts.

        1. Mephistro
          Thumb Up

          Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

          I'm using Privoxy on Windows. Nice, fast and does everything I need it to do.*

          * That is, after several hours spent learning the workings of the configuration file. Sigh...

          1. asdf

            Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

            Privoxy also has the advantage of using less memory and cpu than adblock plus as well. If you use an open source router OS like OpenWRT and derivatives you can run it on your router instead of having to put it on each computer plus you can then adblock effectively on unrooted Android and IOS with no fuss as well.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

          > a squid proxy cache can blacklist the adservers

          Or just run privoxy, which is easier than full-fat squid. Or run an occasional script for dnsmasq - see http://www.debian-administration.org/article/535/Blocking_ad_servers_with_dnsmasq

          I'm not sure of the status of privoxy on android - there seem to be a number of versions with different origins, which seems dodgy. But I think there is a build for windows if you're that way inclined.

      2. J__M__M

        Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

        On a TV I mute the adverts...

        You say that like they wouldn't unmute them if they could.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

          "On a TV I mute the adverts...

          You say that like they wouldn't unmute them if they could."

          If muting ads really makes them hate me, fast forwarding them must make them want to commit murder.

        2. Martin Budden Silver badge

          Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

          On a TV I mute the adverts...

          You say that like they wouldn't unmute them if they could.

          Spotify pauses ads when you mute/lower the computer volume. This could conceivably be a feature of TV ads at some point in the future. I really really hope not.

          p.s. If your computer has external speakers with a volume control, you can mute the ads there without Spotify noticing.

      3. joejack

        Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

        > On a TV I mute the adverts.

        How will you know when a new season of Archer starts up?

        1. Martin Budden Silver badge

          Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

          > > On a TV I mute the adverts.

          > How will you know when a new season of Archer starts up?

          He said he mutes adverts, he didn't mention trailers ;-)

    4. TheVogon

      Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

      No need to use something like Ad Block on IE. Ad blocking is built in:

      • Open IE11 in Modern or Desktop mode

      • Bring up the Charms bar (swipe from the right)

      • Tap 'Settings'

      • Select 'Privacy'

      • Tap 'Add Tracking Protection Lists' and select an appropriate block list. EasyList Standard is the same list that powers the Adblock Plus plugin. Recommended also is 'Stop Google Tracking,' which gets around Google's circumventing of IE's privacy preferences.

      1. asdf

        Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

        >No need to use something like Ad Block on IE. Ad blocking is built in:

        >Open IE11 in Modern or Desktop mode

        And right there your plan falls apart for probably %80+ of the people visiting this site. Open IE for anything but the intranet? Haha good one.

        1. sabroni Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: your plan falls apart for probably %80+ of the people visiting this site

          And for the 20% who just use windows 8 like we used 7 before it, and xp before that, it's good to know. Ta!

        2. TheVogon

          Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

          "And right there your plan falls apart for probably %80+ of the people visiting this site.

          Current Internet Explorer PC desktop market share is about 58%, and probably higher for this site as many users will be using corporate desktops: http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0&qpcustomd=0

          "Open IE for anything but the intranet? Haha good one."

          The last 3 major versions of IE have all been faster (on the SunSpider benchmark) than the current release of Chrome at the time of release and have also had far fewer security vulnerabilities over time than Chrome. And more importantly to me, they don't report your browsing habits back to The Borg like Chrome does. Oh - and as above Ad Blocking is built in (and is extremely fast).

        3. Lozsta

          Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

          I only open IE to confirm product works on IE due to customers local IT incompetence and insistence on using things like IE7

      2. ashdav
        Joke

        Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

        @TheVogon

        You're using IE(insert version of choice)?

        Seriously?

        What is this Charm Bar of which you speak?

        I have real computers and none of them have magic "Charm Bars"

        I smell shill.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

        @thevogon

        I am using a pc and a mouse. could you explain what this has to do with tap settings please? i am not a plumber i just dont want no ads.

    5. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

      There are a lot of things which get past Android Adblock Plus already (even in strict mode).

      One of its greatest failings is the limited set of filter lists it can handle.

    6. streaky

      Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

      especially for browsers with curated extension stores

      Not really, Moz isn't in the business of selling Ads, and AFAIK has no plans to - any browsers that do the conflict of interest is blatant though.

      Re: privoxy and friends: we're moving to a world with much crypto, if it isn't in the browser the best-case scenario is it breaks things. Not ideal. Key is using browsers not made by people who sell ads, even if that's a fork of a browser by a company that does.

      1. phil dude
        WTF?

        Re: Begun the Ad Wars have

        Yes I agree. I have been using chromium for a while, but I am starting to look at Pale Moon. I only use chrome for gmail, since that is sort of its target...

        Privoxy can "ignore" https , and it quite good and killing some tracking tech.

        I must say I register my disgust that browser writers don't know how TOXIC some ads are and are collaborating with them.

        ANY code that runs on your CPU is a potential source of malware. The less third party code the better, especially when we are accessing secure sites.

        P.

        1. Jess

          Re: I only use chrome for gmail,

          I find the current gmail interface so horrible that I normally disable scripts for google on first use, then set it to plain html. (With Chrome the setting doesn't seem to stick when you re-enable).

          However the best fix is Thunderbird.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sigh

    If I start getting Ads from these companies I'll definitely have to look for alternatives to Adblock Plus.

    There are some of us here who really do not want to see Adverts.

    you know who you are... Those who record all the TV progs they want to watch and then skip the adverts. Some Ad breaks are as long a 6 minutes on some FreeSat channels. That is getting silly.

    soon the adverts will take up more time than the actual programme just like US Football, more time spent showing Ads that the time playing the game.

    1. Whitter

      Re: Sigh

      I recall visiting friends in Australia - we saw a film we fancied seeing that night in the TV listings, so rented it on DVD; watching any ad-wrecked film on TV in Oz is unbearable.

      1. Tom 35

        Re: Sigh

        Regular commercial TV is almost unwatchable in Canada too. And the times where you would have got a movie, or an old TV series they now run half hour ads for magic diet pills, or bowling ball sucking vacuums. And they wonder why Netflix is so popular...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Sigh

          > Regular commercial TV is almost unwatchable in Canada too.

          It's doubly galling since you have to pay for most channels worth watching, and they're not cheap either.

          As far as I'm concerned, if you're paying for it, you shouldn't have to endure ads.

          If you're getting it for free, well fair enough.

        2. Bernardo Sviso

          Re: Sigh

          Worse than that -- the stations that do play old "classic" TV shows: they trim those old, classic episodes to fit the new, smaller time-blocks that are customary now (ie. to make room for more ads).

      2. P. Lee

        Re: Sigh

        +1. We never watch anything live - always record for at least 45 minutes in Australia.

        Advertising increases as you go through the program. Near the end, you're looking at 6 minutes of programming and 6 minutes of ads. Hello MythTV, nice to see you!

        I don't mind text adverts on the web. Even small graphics are ok. It's the large, intrusive or moving graphics I despise. Noscript and flashblock screen out most offensive things without resorting to adblock.

    2. BlartVersenwaldIII

      Re: Sigh

      There's already an alternative, for firefox at least, in the form of AdBlock Edge - IIRC this itself started life as a fork of AdBlock Plus with the "Acceptable Ads" whitelist removed. Pale Moon forked that to form its own AdBlock Latitude.

      Are there such alternatives available for Chrome?

      1. Sarah Balfour

        Re: Sigh

        You answered you own question, use Firefox. Why anyone would use Chrome is beyond all understanding. Chrome is, as far as I'm concerned, just one big ad; not only have you got the sponsored results, but Google manipulates search results to shove its own products in yer face er, no ta.

        I'm not saying Mozilla doesn't harbour an agenda, but it's a lot less pushy about it than Google (perhaps I ought to be worried…), although I do wonder who powers its search - if not Google, then who…? Bing? Yahoo!?

        I'm still trying to find a decent iOS browser; tried a few, but there were things I couldn't get on with about each of them which meant I've not stuck with one for any length of time.

        I use Tor most often, but I can't say I understand it, and the config guides might as well be in Klingon for all the sense they make.

        1. Mage Silver badge
          Boffin

          Re: Sigh

          Noscript also helps protect your privacy (block privacy slurping domains) and helps against Malware. A side effect is blocking a lot of adverts.

          I block ebay.com in Noscript to avoid horrible large scrolling eBay adverts on some sites. If I need ebay.com then "temporary enable" in Noscript is enough, though I usually use ebay.co.uk and have it whitelisted.

          1. Turtle

            @Mage

            Noscript already has many of the larger parasites whitelisted. You might want to look at Noscript's Options->Whitelist tab and see who's already there courtesy of the devs (and, no doubt, large payments to those devs from the entities on the default list.)

            1. Looper
              FAIL

              @Turtle: "Noscript already has many of the larger parasites whitelisted."

              No. It most definitely does not.

              If you have any sites in your Whitelist, then you put them there yourself. There is no other way for them to be there.

              At least try to check your accusations BEFORE posting.

        2. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: Sigh

          "You answered you own question, use Firefox. "

          I would if it wasn't such a memory pig.

          1. Myself-NZ

            Re: Sigh

            When did you last try firefox ? To test your assumption I just opened up the same 13 web sites in tabs on each browser and firefox was using about 600 MB of memory, whilst chrome was using about 800 MB. Chrome not using ABP (installed but not enabled), firefox was.I think the later versions of firefox may have got the memory usage under a bit more control.

          2. asdf

            Re: Sigh

            >>You answered you own question, use Firefox. "

            >I would if it wasn't such a memory pig.

            Actually today FF is a lot better and if you don't run adblock plus and flash you might be amazed. Sadly FF picked up IE like bloat in the 2.0 to 3.5 days and really turned off a lot of people. Once FF had its ass handed to it by Chrome the devs have been pushed to make a fairly decent browser these days.

          3. jason 7

            Re: Sigh

            "I would if it wasn't such a memory pig"

            Really is that an issue in 2015?

            Sometimes you just have to come to terms with the fact that some things just won't change and live with it.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sigh

        Are there such alternatives available for Chrome?

        Yes . there is an alternative for Chromium and derivatives (Google Chrome, Opera, and I guess Vivaldi will too...). It is called uBlock (muBlock, really) and its source code is in Github[1] for you paranoiac delirant types.

        [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

        1. Uncle Slacky Silver badge

          Re: Sigh

          uBlock is available for Firefox too - it's still in beta, but it seems to work well enough (especially on certain sites with huge irrelevant lead photos and menu bars).

      3. h3

        Re: Sigh

        For Chrome (Or Opera) the best is ublock. (It is lightning fast as well).

    3. DanDanDan

      Re: Sigh

      Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Your complaint about TV advertising is not relevant. The equivalent is oversized ads getting in the way of the content you want to watch. Amazon, Google, etc. have really quite modest adverts and provide a means of income for the content generators in the world.

      I get it, you want quality stuff for free, without ads. But this is the real world, where free stuff doesn't really exist.

      If you take to banning *all* adverts, then the content generators will have to find another means of generating revenue. Either that or the content will suffer or the content generators will go out of business. I'd rather have subtle adverts alongside my content that have to pay a subscription fee to use a service.

      1. Stuart 22

        Re: Sigh

        Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

        Well there is. I don't respond to adverts. Its just an attitude I have. So they just waste my time - adblocking saves my time at no cost to the advertiser. And they haven't alienated me. So good all round.

        I do have Adsense on my websites for those who want adverts and give me some revenue. I'm happy for them to do that and I provide the service. If, like me, they choose to block the ads then great. Its supposedly a free country.

        Of course if 100% of us block 100% of ads !00% of the time then the ad model fails. A happy day for me and it would be market choice that decided it, not backroom bribes and mind manipulation.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Sigh

          Yep.

          Just like I don't buy anthing from doorstep salesdroids, give to Charity Bucket holders in shopping centres apart from the RBL (I donate about a grand a year to a few chairties that I choose), or buy anything from cold callers who get through my call filtering.

          Yes, I'm an old curmudgeon. Ad agencies (in the main) are up there with Lawyers as professinos to hate.

          Life is short enough as it is without having to see/listen to a million adverts every day.

          1. BlartVersenwaldIII

            Re: Sigh

            > Ad agencies (in the main) are up there with Lawyers as professions to hate.

            Hmm. Didn't think I would say this when I woke up this morning but I think you're being unfair to lawyers; in the past I've willingly paid legal professionals money to provide me with a valuable service.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Sigh

              [...] in the past I've willingly paid legal professionals money to provide me with a valuable service.

              Fixed that for you. No need to qualify.

        2. jason 7

          Re: Sigh

          Indeed, I've never bought CillitBang, tampons or a Nissan Juke.

          Likewise I've never clicked on anything saying "Get a free iPad here!!"

        3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Sigh

          "I don't respond to adverts."

          I do.

          Negatively.

          If I'm an actual or potential customer of a company it's worth that company's while NOT to shove ads in my face. I've moved my custom away from companies who annoyed me.

          The ideal solution would be an ad-blocker that will download a certain amount of the ad stream and consign it to /dev/null. It would need caps on volume and time. Everybody wins. The user doesn't get annoyed. The adserver thinks it's displaying ads so both the server and site get paid.

          At first it seems that the advertiser is being ripped off by paying for something that doesn't get through but the actual pay-off is in the previous statement: the user doesn't get annoyed so if the user is an existing customer the advertiser doesn't drive them away otherwise they aren't going to be excluded if the user is subsequently looking for what they're going to sell.

          1. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: Sigh

            "The ideal solution would be an ad-blocker that will download a certain amount of the ad stream and consign it to /dev/null. "

            Unsurprisingly there are plugins for FF and chrome which do exactly that.

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