If true, a nice defensive move -but a frought one which could raise the eyebrows of anti-competition watchdogs. That's some potentially thin ice.

An ad company blocking ads, o the irony...

On further thought, I think this actually makes sense for Google.

(I'm a novice about the ad industry, so please correct me if the following is wrong)

Aren't google ads often just relevant text ads?

The problem is that other ad networks are getting more and more aggressive in their ads, and is hurting the public perception of ALL ads. And that ultimately hurts Google.

So my guess is that Google (like others) is trying to stop the negative experience that ads are causing. It's the same reason Facebook has also joined that coalition. Both networks actually have pretty unobtrusive text ads when planted on pages.

I don't think google's ad network even supports things like interstitial ads. Do they?

The related posts suggest that this is being done in order block only those annoying and huge ads that cover the browser and other such ads that don't comply with some standard. This, they believe will allow reasonable ads like that in gmail to not be blocked indiscriminately and stabilize revenue (for Google). More like a measure to remove malignant and malicious ads. So google ads won't be blocked as they are usually small and concise and related.

P.S Even if it works I will continue to use ublock origin (like that one cuz is foss and not corporate)

Translation: Google finds a way to charge their customers more for advertisement. "Oh, this ad would typically get blocked by our ad-blocker, unless you ..."

"Translation"? While that is something that could happen, I don't see how it logically follows. The default route is for google to continue not offering those worse categories of ads at all.

I suppose under the circumstances, this is the best case outcome. On one hand this means that Google is being anti-competitive, but on the other hand, as a user who doesn't work in the industry I support this move, even though I'm no fan of Google.

Let me see if it blocks Google Ads.