Reader jorshw was the first of a few who sent in this recent NY Times article questioning how Google would deal with the fact that people are now creating ad blocking extensions for Google’s Chrome browser. What’s really telling is the comment from a Google engineering director, Linus Upson, about why this is no big deal:
“It’s unlikely ad blockers are going to get to the level where they imperil the advertising market, because if advertising is so annoying that a large segment of the population wants to block it, then advertising should get less annoying. So I think the market will sort this out.”
This is the exact right response to this kind of question. It’s a user-centric response that doesn’t immediately rush to the “simple” answer that ad blocking somehow “takes money” away, but realizes that if people are so intent on blocking ads — then the problem isn’t with the people blocking the ads, but with the advertising itself.
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