Let me be crystal clear: I strongly agree with advertisers and the advertising industry that there are way too many consumer-unfriendly ad formats and automated bad actors running amok on the Web. Legitimate and accountable ad blocking can be a good and necessary solution.
However, as we recently learned from Wall Street Journal, “Google plans to introduce an ad-blocking feature in the mobile and desktop versions of its popular Chrome browser.”
The problems spotlighted in this piece are not with ad blocking, nor with Google participating in legitimate and accountable ad blocking. The problem is first with Google’s hypocrisy, and secondly with Google’s monopolistic behaviors involving Google Chrome, Search, Android, and advertising. Those issues raise legitimacy and accountability questions specific to Google’s ad blocking.