Google Starts Bloody Campaign Against Bad Ads, But Critics Aren’t Impressed

Google and many other tech companies that thrive on advertising have always been central targets for privacy advocacy groups taking issue with the data mining that these companies do. This has led to bad ads popping up and ruining the user experience. In an attempt to clamp down on this trend, Google is now implementing a new ad blocking strategy, but critics still aren’t convinced.

As Adweek reports, the new changes that Google wants to make as the biggest search engine entity around with the most popular browser in Chrome have to do with bad ads. That is to say, ads that don’t offer anything for users and only serve to annoy them, as stated by the Coalition for Better Ads.

In any case, any auto-play video, pop-up banner, or whatever sneaky scheme used to display ads are about to get massacred by Google. Websites using such ads, for example, will be categorized as “failed” and will have all of their ads blocked when viewed on Chrome. This will be the case for 30 days until the websites and publications start following the right standards.

This is all in an attempt to provide users with a better browsing experience. At least, this is what Google is trying to convince people of.

As The Washington Post reports, however, the search engine company has its work cut out for it. Privacy groups and critics are not buying into its intentions quite so easily.

Skeptics are particularly worried about Google being able to wield such power and influence over the market, in the first place. Being the biggest search engine firm in the world and being practically synonymous with internet search, it has the clout to enforce these changes without nomination.

There’s also the fact that its ads that play before YouTube videos appear to have been exempted from the rule. This makes it as if Google was self-dealing, which it has been accused of several times before.