I always found it somewhat contradictory and hypocritical that the very people that live off ad-based websites (webbased entrepreneurs and founders) are so highly correlated with the group of people that absolutely cannot live without adblocking software - thereby robbing the siteowners of their income model.

Note: spydez - this isn't in any way meant as a personal attack, it just seemed like the right place to put my opinion on the matter.

No offense take. I'm not an entrepreneur. ;)

But if I ever do come up with an awesome idea, I'm determined I'll create it and make money off of it without putting up adverts. I hate adverts with a burning passion and I'm not about to force them down my potential users throats.

Advertising is one of the only ways to monetize free visitor aspects and paths. Advertising is one of the last American innovative markets. As soon as you start trying to bring any type of content that that is free, I am sure you will change your ways.

Blocking ads is like anti-bacterial soap. It makes your immunity to these things much lower if that is why you are so bothered by ads. Block ads on sites that you don't frequent, but ones that you do, throw some pennies in the hat.

There are lots of ways to monetize free sites. See Kayak or TicketStumbler. There's also the freemium service.

The reality of ad blocking software (which is spreading quickly and won't stop until it's as ubiquitous as popup blocking is now) is that you'll have to find a better, more integrated business model at some point.

My hunch is that ad blocking is a huge threat to Google. So if they can control the browser space...

I still don't know why IE doesn't ship with ad blockers. Would it hurt them? Perhaps in the short run. But in the long run, it would do far more damage to G.

anti-trust

Agreed. Personally, I find advertising much less annoying than having to pay for things directly, especially online where it's still easy to phish. The only ads I block are the obnoxious Flash ones.

I'll be the first to wish you good luck :-)

I'm curious as to why you (and other people) hate ads so much. Is it just the obnoxious flashing popup 'you won a contest' ads or even text ads in general?

I use an adblocker because I find the flashing images annoying. But text ads don't really offend me in any way.

I actually like some of the ads we get in the papers\magazines\television.

Yeah, I don't hate all ads. Occasionally I see one I like and try to buy stuff from the company that's advertising as a "thank god you're sane!"... It's just the other 95% of the ads that make diving for the remote and hitting mute a subconscious maneuver and AdBlock Plus a requirement.

I tried to block onlines ads myself - I used to use AdBlock (not Plus) with no downloaded filtersets - but I could not keep up, and they just kept getting more and more and more annoying.

I hate getting yelled at, basically.

You have a point with this. I personally prefer to focus on content instead of having to ignore advertising that I will never click on unless I'm actually in a buying mode; when I'm NOT in a buying mode, there is no way in hell I'm clicking on that irritating HP flash eye-sore! If merely being exposed to an advertiser's message is the purpose of advertising on websites, then I would have to politely/respectfully say that I prefer not to be exposed to that which I am not choosing to have exposure.

I'm overwhelmed as it is...ad-blocking really helps turn down the noise. To me the whole approach of blasting users with advertisement is flawed, unless of course I'm actually in the mode of purchasing something, in which case I will gladly jump to Chrome or Safari (on my Mac at home).

I think having the freedom to turn the noise off/on as you see fit is part of a larger trend of the future where you have the option to do as you wish. Afterall, isn't freedom one of the core principles of the internet?

This really isn't fair. Since we also consist of the demographic least likely to actually click on ads. Since impressions bring in such small amounts of revenue compared to clicks we're really not shitting the scales very much. In the end advertisers have found it an effective strategy at reaching people /not/ in our demographic.

Being a small demographic that isn't the primary income for many sites doesn't justify taking away their income.

While I agree that hackers often don't click ads some do - particularly if the ads are targeted to this demographic. In this respect it's noteworthy that sites such as Reddit and Slashdot derive their income from showing ads. And their primary audience is hackers.

Personally, I only ever block ads that I find offensive or obnoxious and I try not to block any from sites I want to "support".

I could care less if ad-based websites come or go. Communities will emerge regardless.

It'll be interesting to see whether or not Google would allow ad-blocking on its own browser.

Talk about killing the golden goose.

Then again, they may decide the number of people who knew about and actually use ad block plugins is relatively small, so they may allow them.

Google's code is bsd-licensed. So while you might never have ad-blocking in Chrome, you can keep it in a derivative all you like ;)

And this strategy works out really well, too. 99% of people, the kind who will actually click on the ads, will just download Google's version and be happy. Hackers will switch to the ad-block-enabled version without any problems, and they wouldn't have clicked on the ads in any case.

Even if Google doesn't, a person/group with sufficient time and skills can just fork the whole browser and add it. It's under a BSD license.

Personally, I'd rather see the porting finished first.

Agreed. For me, NoScript is much more than an adblocking concern, it's must-have privacy and security. Browsing without NoScript is like flying blind.

I can't live without the vimperator plugin now. It's so nice to browse without using the mouse. I can't go back. If only Firefox had Opera's password storage interface I would be ecstatic.

Chrome offers nothing new right now aside from potential performance gains. If the beta version is crashing, that is worse for performance than slow-loading pages.

I love vimperator too, as well as Firebug and the delicious plugin. Until they have a Linux version, switching isn't an issue for me. I did try it on the Win box though and love it. I loaded pages with lots of JavaScript and it didn't blink.

Chrome offers nothing new right now aside from potential performance gains.

Still. The Webkit-based JavaScript engine performance gain IS something new.