Chrome can touch sites dealing with "abusive experiences" with total blocking of ads

Google warned website owners that its Chrome browser would drop the hammer by blocking all ads if the website hosted what the search giant is calling "abusive experiences".

"As of December 2018, Chrome 71 will remove all ads the small number of sites with persistent abusive experiences (added emphasis", writes Vivek Sekhar, product manager at Google, in a message posted on November 5 on a company blog.

The threat of Sekhar did not come from nowhere: Google has already allowed Chrome to experience abusive experiences before. The browser, which has been blocking unwanted ads for a long time and, more recently, restricted video playback, has stopped unauthorized redirects this summer (clicking on a link to open the destination in a new tab but inadvertently opening an unwanted page) in the old active tab) with July 68, Chrome 68. (It was not known if this had been enabled by default; to activate it, it might still be necessary to get to chrome: // flags and switch the The framebusting requires the same origin or a gesture from the user option.)

In a help document, Google described other abusive experiences, such as misleading trademark ads and phishing attempts to simulate "play" buttons and dummy system messages. All had links to online ads that Google described as dubious.

Sekhar cited the abuses as the reason why Chrome lowered the boom. "More than half of these abusive experiences are not blocked by our current set of protections and almost all involve harmful or misleading ads," he said, suggesting that Google needed to do more.

This would close the financial tap of the sites by removing all ads from their pages. Google did not specify, but only that sites with "persistent" abuse – with this undefined keyword – would be targeted.

It was unclear whether user complaints would affect Google's decision to target a site or whether the judgment was made by program. Administrators were encouraged to use Google "Report abusive experiences" to see what abusive experiences their sites contain, if any.

Google is able to weigh all its weight – to decide what is acceptable and what is not acceptable on the Web – because of the enormous power it holds with Chrome. Because an overwhelming majority of users are using Chrome – Net Applications, an analytics provider puts Chrome users' share for October at a record 66.4% on the desktop, 63% on the mobile – when Google says "skip", websites must answer "how high?" To do otherwise would be a commercial suicide.