In a somewhat controversial move, Google has announced that starting in 2018 their Chrome brower will have an ad “filter” installed. Ostensibly the purpose is to clean up sites that load banner ads that due to poor coding take forever to load and create a negative browsing experience. In general this is a good idea. However as Google will be the one deciding which ad types and sizes to allow, are they taking their control too far? While this appears to block many of the worst offenders including popups, popunders and pre-roll ads, some ‘okay’ ads maybe be blocked as well to the chagrin of the advertiser, ad network and website owner.
