Adblock got sold, and nobody knows who the mystery buyer is (uk.businessinsider.com).
“Adblock, the popular extension for Chrome and Safari, has announced via a pop-up to users that it has been sold—but doesn’t mention a price or a buyer. The company was previously privately owned by its founder, Michael Gundlach. The pop-up’s main message is to reveal that Adblock is implementing the ‘Acceptable Ads’ policy that runs on Adblock Plus along with a selection of other ad blockers. Eyeo, the company behind AdBlock Plus, told Business Insider that ‘we’re very happy to welcome AdBlock users to the Acceptable Ads program.’”
Although “sources” tell that the mystery buyer was not not Eyeo, the most obvious candidate. Hmmm… why, with GoogleTube becoming a subscription service do and with it doing such a fab job stripping the must-view adverts preceeding videos on YouTube, making the fact that it actually had them a real suprise when I first viewed on a browser without… Oh hang on…
AdBlock is not to be confused with the much wider used Adblock Plus. The creator of AdBlock claims to have been inspired by the Adblock Plus extension for Firefox, which is itself based on another extension called… Adblock. But otherwise AdBlock is unrelated to the other efforts. AdBlock (Wikipedia).
Hell, that’s a circular lotta AdBlock! I suspect its appeal over its predecessor is that it also works for Apple’s Safari browser however much Apple might like to blow pips at anyone blocking their own ad reneue stream.
Regardless, “potentially endangering the revenue model of publishers and other businesses” for a while now, sites that detect use of such and depend upon that revenue model have worked all-the-more in your face around it.
Recent/related stories
- YouTube’s paid subscription offering takes shape—and it’s almost here (Pick of the Week 20th April 2015)
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