The Google Chrome ad blocker is coming — here’s the release date

If you use Google Chrome as your default browser, the time you spend online is about to change. After a year of work, Google is finally releasing their new built-in ad blocker tomorrow, February 15th. Starting Thursday, the Chrome browser will automatically block and filter out ads that don’t meet certain standards. Welcome, Google Chrome ad blocking!

Ad blocking is nothing new. It started gaining traction with things like AdBlock, an app and extension that does exactly what it sounds like: blocks almost all ads from websites. In April, Google announced that they were working on Google Chrome ad blocking, which will be on by default if you’re using the Chrome browser. Although the feature has been in the works for a year, small parts have been rolling out for a while, like the ability to mute autoplay videos with sound.

So how will it work? For starters, it won’t be the same as AdBlock, which blocks nearly every ad. Google’s will first block the worst, most annoying ads. Then, once they determine that a site hosts these annoying ads, they will block every single ad on that site.

Google’s ad blocker is going to be filtering out ads that don’t meet a set of criteria that has been determined by the Coalition for Better Ads.

The Coalition for Better Ads an industry group that performs research on popular forms of web advertising. It has created a list of what advertisers should avoid when creating web ads, and Google is able to strictly enforce that list with their new ad blocker.

This is great news for you, someone who goes online for fun. If you spend any time online at all, you already know that internet ads have gotten incredibly frustrating — they spit out sound without warning, they’re sometimes impossible to get rid of, and they cover content you’re trying to read, which can often turn you off completely. One thing everyone online can agree on is that ads have become too obtrusive (and to say everyone on the internet could agree is really saying something). A Chrome ad blocker has real potential to make your time spent surfing the net more satisfying. In fact, Google claims that since it announced this feature, “42% of sites which were failing the Better Ads Standards have resolved their issues and are now passing.”

https://twitter.com/udfredirect/status/963825885576122374

However, it’s not such great news for site owners. Ads allow websites to make money, and this means that they have to work harder than ever to ensure that their ads meet the correct standards — or they could risk getting blackballed by Google. That’s definitely not what anyone wants.

Be on the lookout for a Google Chrome update to become available. If you’re ready to say goodbye to the worst types of ads forever, you’re definitely going to enjoy this new feature.