Google’s ad blocker, far from a benign offering, is another step toward dominating the internet itself.
Source: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker. Here’s What’s Really Going On.
What ads would get blocked? The ones not sold by Google, for the most part. … So this is a way for Google to crush its few remaining competitors by pre-installing an ad zapper that it controls to the most common web browser. That’s a great way for a monopoly to remain a monopoly.
It’s hard to build a coalition in favor of annoying ads. And publishers would be guaranteed a revenue stream, either through charging consumers for an ad-free experience, or from the ads themselves. So the policy aligns the interests of virtually everyone on the web content side.
Improving Google’s bottom line and crushing anyone who tries to compete is just a nice side benefit.
In a New York Times op-ed in April, author Jonathan Taplin laid out the path forward for regulators: It’s time to break up the Alphabet