Internet giants wage war on pop-up ad blockers

Maybe if the advertisements were not as intrusive as they are becoming recently people wont use this ad block programs.

I've used ad blocking software and applications for many many years. There are a handful of sites which I greatly enjoy visiting which I do not block, purely because I know they are small, rely on the income from adverting and use low key and unobtrusive advertising. There are a couple of other sites I'm happy to pay a small subscription to use ad free.

If a site insists I disable a certain piece of software in order to view its content, I just don't use the site, there is plenty of choice on the net.

As the debate goes on in the USA on Net Neutrality and the making of high speed internet lanes that customers pay for it, I would probably pay for the ability to not have to face those pop ups. They can do it since they track you by ISP any way, so those who pay to opt out, don't get them. Can you imagine if people only paid .99 cents a month to opt out of those ads the money that they could make.

You open some videos on YouTube and have to wait 30 seconds before you can shut down the ad for the Japanese home building company, or whatever it is being pushed that day. It's annoying. I'll download Adblock now, thanks for the tip.

There is a thin line between those Internet giants and Nigerian scammers.

AdBlock, NoScript, Ghostery and other extensions are free and they are working fine. Why should I pay for a service if I can get it for free and why should I enroll in a program run by companies that I do not trust at all.

Those giants -- Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo -- and more than hundred other companies are interested in your data. Once you start using their system they will know which sites you are visiting, how often you are visiting those sites and the content you are interested in. In short, they will be able to track you much more easily. The economic value of the collected information is much higher than those blocked ads.

Those giants -- Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo -- and more than hundred other companies are interested in your data.

This is very true, that is why on one hand I can understand the recording and film industry and then on the other hand I have no sympathy. They have been holding on to technology long before it hits the public, and yet stick to old business models and expect the rest of us to follow suit and continue to give them money.

I forsee a day when Facebook will begin charging for avoding ads and for those who chose not to pay they will be hit with more and more ads until they finally break down and pay. A good parody on this whole "freemium" concept as some call it would be one of the latest episodes of South Park where one of the kids gets hooked on in-app purchases in a game that are being siphoned to build Canadian infastructre. Same conecpt as what I see coming ahead in regards to ads and the option of removing ads and the war against the pop-up blockers.

Besides Adblock Plus, I use Click and Clean, Disconnect and Better Privacy. Zero popups and no tracking.

the big mistake was to let users believe the internet was free in the first place

Who ever said it was free?? I pay about $30 a month for it

I'm a guy who sells stuff online, and I hate adblockers as they rob me and my affiliates of making any money at all. I'd like them much better if they were "on by default" but you could right click to forever banish ads that offended you, like those botox ads (shudder).

I really don't see how Google taking over all the eyeballs and enriching themselves, further paupering businesses trying to do stuff online, is a good thing. Guess I'll close my business and buy Google stock instead.

I haven't bothered with ad blockers, other than setting flash items to run only when I click on them. The static ads on this site, for example, don't bother me. If they were to become pop-ups and flashing, irritating things then I might change my mind.

Hahahaha product placement ad is the way to go!

Worse when the video banner ads or blocked popups jam up your system with erroneous (or intentional) javascript. Wish the browser (firefox) would just shut down CPU time for the tab's process instead of hanging and then later asking (with its own popup!) if I want to kill the .js script.

I run a business and have ads with Google BUT i use adblocker myself, why? because I support ads on the side, where you can look at the ad if you want to but your not forced to view the ad. So if someone who actually uses google to promo my photo biz doesn't like the way they are doing things maybe they should listen, after all I understand that nobody wants to see my biz when they just want to watch a vid, after all, on the street how man ads force you to view them before getting on the train or bus, none, you should view them if you want to, not be forced to watch 30 sec to 2 min ads for something you may not want to watch anyway.

Thanks for the additional sites aside from the standby of AdBlock. TruthDig.org suddenly began sporting a slide on add to support their Facebook site. I did, but the ad keeps coming back, so I am not rewarded. Wrote to them to say I would not "like" them every blasted article or ever again. Hope these other programs can erase that junk from my eyeballs.

Merriam-Webster used to be a great site, until they installed a huge corner video of some annoying person. Completely distracting. I complained, but no action or response. Now I use freedictionary.com, a visually calm area with the same information or more.

Thinking you can bludgeon people into paying is just not going to cut it. Adversarial advertising is not going to help or work. Do not pay ever. We all pay Internet connection fees and that should be it.

If every site I went on didn't have 2-3 popups per page or every video didn't have a popup whenever I paused it to go get something I'd happily uninstall ad-block plus to allow them their revenue, but I don't stuff like that shoved in my face.

I also don't want to hear the new Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber album suddenly blaring out of my speakers on some websites, and I am certainly not going to pay to get rid of them.

Unobtrusive advertising doesn't bother me at all though, they're just like billboards, if they do their job and catch my eye instead of my ire they've worked, no?

I use the block because the webpage's are loading so slow if it has to load all those ads.

Ad blockers are a direct result of the obtrusive ways these ads keep popping up and it's getting worse. You reap what you sow.

Give the people what they want and they will come. Not being able to read an article because the whole damn page is covered by some ad is not what I want.