Google Paying Adblock Plus To White-list Unobtrusive Adverts

After Google recently cheesed a lot of people off by removing Ad-blocking Apps from the Google Play Store, it turns out they are now resorting to paying Adblocking App companies to white-list Google adverts. According to Horizont.at Google is funding the developers of the AdBlock Plus App to create a special white-list where Google adverts will not be blocked on Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox Adblock Plus extensions.

We don’t know how much the deal is worth to ABP but apparently numerous other companies are doing a similar thing with adblocking app and extension developers. Neither Google nor ABP decided to comment on the speculation but some Adblocking companies are known for their “Acceptable Ads Initiative” which basically states that unobstrusive advertising should remain viewable because it is vital to internet revenue generation.

I myself agree with the acceptable advertising concept but I think it should be optional. Some people may be happy to block no ads, some to block only obstrusive ads and some to block all ads. I myself am more inclined to blocking only obstrusive adverts but it is nice to be able to block all adverts. In some situations it can be critical to block all ads, such as if you are very bandwidth constrained or loading flash-based adverts detriments your PC performance.

Image courtesy of Adblock Plus