Tech Brief: Google to Turn On Built-in Ad Blocking in Chrome Starting Tomorrow

Several months after murmurs of a potential built-in ad blocker in Chrome, Google has announced it will make live the feature starting tomorrow. But before you get too many ideas, it's good to bear in mind that Chrome's ad filter is not an all-out ad blocker, and is primarily designed only to weed out the most annoying ads (in accordance with Coalition for Better Ads) and force website owners to stop using them. Here is a quick list of ads that will be blocked by default going forward -

1. Pop-up ads (desktop, mobile)
2. Auto-playing video ads with sound (desktop, mobile)
3. Prestitial ads with countdown (desktop)
4. Large sticky ads (desktop, mobile)
5. Prestitial ads (mobile)
6. Postitial ads with countdown (mobile)
7. Ads taking up more than 30% of the vertical height of the page (mobile)
8. Flashing animated ads (mobile)
9. Full-screen scrollover ads (mobile)

Given Chrome's huge install base, the move is likely to attract criticism from advertisers and publishers, in addition to becoming a potential antitrust headache for Google. The world's biggest advertiser having the ability to block ads through a browser it owns sure sounds like one. But if it helps create a cleaner web and a better ad experience, I say, why not?