Chrome’s Default ‘Ad-Blocker’ is Bad News for Torrent Sites

[Batu69]

Torrent sites are having trouble maintaining a steady flow of revenue, with the increasing use of ad-blockers affecting sites right across the board. And with Google's plan to add a default ad-blocker to the Chrome browser looming, some operators fear that they might not be able to keep their sites afloat.

 

Online advertising can be quite a nuisance. Flashy and noisy banners, or intrusive pop-ups, are a thorn in the side of many Internet users.

These type of ads are particularly popular on pirate sites, so it’s no surprise that their users are more likely to have an ad-blocker installed.

 

The increasing popularity of these ad-blocking tools hasn’t done the income of site owners any good and the trouble on this front is about to increase.

A few weeks ago Google announced that its Chrome browser will start blocking ‘annoying’ ads in the near future, by default. This applies to all ads that don’t fall within the “better ads standards,” including popups and sticky ads.

 

Since Chrome is the leading browser on many pirate sites, this is expected to have a serious effect on torrent sites and other pirate platforms. TorrentFreak spoke to the operator of one of the largest torrent sites, who’s sounding the alarm bell.

 

The owner, who prefers not to have his site mentioned, says that it’s already hard to earn enough money to pay for hardware and hosting to keep the site afloat. This, despite millions of regular visitors.

 

“The torrent site economy is in a bad state. Profits are very low. Profits are f*cked up compared to previous years,” the torrent site owner says.

At the moment, 40% of the site’s users already have an ad-blocker installed, but when Chrome joins in with its default filter, it’s going to get much worse. A third of all visitors to the torrent site in question use the Chrome browser, either through mobile or desktop.

 

“Chrome’s ad-blocker will kill torrent sites. If they don’t at least cover their costs, no one is going to use money out of his pocket to keep them alive. I won’t be able to do so at least,” the site owner says.

 

It’s too early to assess how broad Chrome’s ad filtering will be, but torrent site owners may have to look for cleaner ads. That’s easier said than done though, as it’s usually the lower tier advertisers that are willing to work with these sites and they often serve more annoying ads.

 

The torrent site owner we spoke with isn’t very optimistic about the future. While he’s tested alternative revenue sources, he sees advertising as the only viable option. And with Chrome lining up to target part of their advertising inventory, revenue may soon dwindle.

 

“I’ve tested all types of ads and affiliates that are safe to work with, and advertising is the only way to cover costs. Also, most services that you can make good money promoting don’t work with torrent sites,” the torrent site owner notes.

 

Just a few months ago popular torrent site TorrentHound decided to shut down, citing a lack in revenue as one of the main reasons. This is by no means an isolated incident. TorrentFreak spoke to other site owners who confirm that it’s becoming harder and harder to pay the bills through advertisements.

 

The operator of Torlock, for example, confirms that those who are in the business to make a profit are having a hard time.

“All in all it’s a tough time for torrent sites but those that do it for the money will have a far more difficult time in the current climate than those who do this as a hobby and as a passion. We do it for the love of it so it doesn’t really affect us as much,” Torlock’s operator says.

 

Still, there is plenty of interest from advertisers, some of whom are trying their best to circumvent ad-blockers.

“Every day we receive emails from willing advertisers wanting to work with us so the market is definitely still there and most of them have the technology in place to circumvent adblockers, including Chrome’s default one,” he adds.

 

Google’s decision to ship Chrome with a default ad-blocker appears to be self-serving in part. If users see less annoying ads, they are less likely to install a third-party ad-blocker which blocks more of Google’s own advertisements.

 

Inadvertently, however, they may have also announced their most effective anti-piracy strategy to date.

If pirate sites are unable to generate enough revenue through advertisements, there are few options left. In theory, they could start charging visitors money, but most pirates go to these sites to avoid paying.

 

Asking for voluntary donations is an option, but that’s unlikely to cover the all the costs.

 

TorrentFreak

[steven36]

Google will just shoot there self  in the foot with this for being a monopoly .

 

Quote

 

Why the EU's massive antitrust fine could become a huge headache for Google

 

Google suffered a major blow on Tuesday as European competition regulators announced a massive €2.42 billion ($2.7 billion) fine against the company for abusing its “dominance” in the search engine business when consumers are looking to buy things.

 

The fine is “off the charts in terms of size,” according to Randy Picker, an antitrust law expert at the University of Chicago. Even more ominous for Google: The ruling is part of a larger antitrust investigation by European regulators.

 

In a press release describing the decision, the European Commission found that Google had illegally used its dominance of the search market to artificially boost traffic to its comparison shopping service. That was unfair to competing comparison shopping services, the commission argues, and was ultimately harmful by limiting consumer choice and innovation.

 

Comparison shopping is not a particularly important part of Google’s business, so the immediate impact from the ruling might not be that big. What makes the ruling significant is that could signal that European regulators are going to start treating Google like a dangerous monopolist, the way both US and EU regulators treated Microsoft in the 1990s and early 2000s.

 

And once you accept that premise, it raises a lot of thorny questions. Until now, Google has enjoyed a free hand to decide how present search results, and it has often decided that prominently featuring Google-owned services like Google Maps, Google News, or Google Flights was the best way to do that. Now all of those decisions could come under scrutiny from European regulators, potentially pitching Google into the kind of legal morass that ensnared Microsoft two decades ago.

 

The big challenge for regulators is figuring out how to draw a clear line between search engine features that provide a better experience for users versus those that merely give an unfair advantage to Google-owned products. Experts I talked to think the European Commission still has work to do on this front.

How a row of five ads cost Google $2.7 billion

If you go to Google and search for “flip flops,” you’ll see a page that looks something like this:

 

That strip of boxes at the top, each showing a particular flip flop model available for sale, comes from Google’s shopping service. And its placement at the top of search results is what cost the company that €2.42 billion fine.

According to the EC, competing comparison shopping services like Nextag and Foundem languish far down in Google’s search results. “The most highly ranked rival service appears on average only on page four of Google's search results, and others appear even further down,” the commission’s press release says. The EC says that Google has “included a number of criteria” in its search algorithm that push down these rival sites in search results.

But Google has a couple of plausible responses here: First, when a customer searches for “flip flops,” they want to go to a site where they can actually buy flip flops, not to another page of search results. Product search engines like Nextag and Foundem appear so far down in search results, in Google’s view, because they aren’t very relevant to users’ searches.

 

Second, Google argues, some product search engines have thrived in recent years despite Google’s allegedly anticompetitive behavior. Amazon.com, for example, has a powerful product search engine of its own — one that features not only Amazon-sold products but also third parties selling stuff through Amazon’s platform.

 

The EC wasn’t persuaded by these arguments, ruling that Google needed to give “equal treatment to rival comparison shopping services and its own service.”

 

But those Google shopping boxes are ads, Picker told me. “I can't imagine what they're thinking,” he said. “Google is in the advertising business. That's how it makes its money. It has no obligation to put other people’s ads on its website.” He said he looked forward to reading the decision once it was released to better understand the EC’s reasoning.

Google’s European ordeal is just getting started

Obviously $2.7 billion is a lot of money, even for Google. But if this were the only case Google was facing, the company could pay the fine, change how it presents shopping search results, and move on. The larger problem for Google is that the ruling represents a shift in the way European regulators think about it.

 

“Google is dominant in general internet search markets throughout the European Economic Area,” the EC press release states. So far, the EC has only concluded that Google abused that dominance to gain an advantage in the comparison shopping market, but that might just be because it hasn’t finished its work on other issues.

 

“The Commission continues to examine Google's treatment in its search results of other specialised Google search services,” the press release says.

 

One company rooting for further EU action is the consumer review site Yelp. Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman has long accused Google of giving its own lackluster local reviews product an unfair advantage over competitors like Yelp and TripAdvisor. For example, if you search for “dentist Washington, DC,” you get a results page that looks like this:

 

 

That box at the top is restricted to Google’s own local dentist listings — a service that competes directly with Yelp. Yelp argues that on a level playing field, its business listings would usually rank higher than Google’s, since it has a more vibrant community of reviewers and better reviews. Instead, Google’s results appear first, giving Google’s own service a boost.

 

“The consumer really has to dig deep to find a site like Yelp” in Google search results, Stoppelman told me in a recent interview. He argues that Google’s decision to favor its own local results over Yelp pages hampered Yelp’s growth in Europe.

 

The European Commission is also considering whether Google abused Android’s dominance in the mobile operating system or the dominance of AdSense in the online ad market. And with a sympathetic regulator in Brussels, others with complaints about the way Google’s search engine — or other dominant products like the Chrome browser — are more likely to come forward.

 

It’s easy to think of other places where conflicts of interest could arrive. Google has a flight search engine that competes with Expedia and Travelocity. The company has repeatedly clashed with news organizations over its scraping of content for Google News. Google has also been using its search traffic to pressure publishers to adopt a technology called accelerated mobile pages  that allows Google to host publishers’ content. Google’s Chrome has become the internet’s most popular browser, and the company recently announced plans to offer ad-blocking features that could disadvantage non-Google advertising networks.

 

In the past, Google has been able to preempt these kinds of issues with savvy lobbying. It has argued that it can’t be a monopolist in search because competitors like Bing are just a “click away.” Google cultivated relationships with the Obama administration, which has pushed back against European efforts to crack down on the company. Google Chair Eric Schmidt helped Hillary Clinton with campaign technology.

 

But Donald Trump’s unexpected election throws that strategy into turmoil. Republicans are not normally fans of vigorous antitrust enforcement, but the Trump administration has little reason to go to bat for a company with such deep ties to Democrats. And the “just a click away” argument has started to seem less plausible over time, as Google’s dominance in search only seems to grow.

 

Disclosure: My brother works at Google.

 

 

 

https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/6/27/15880098/google-eu-antitrust-fine

Already they pay millions of dollars  a year for ABP to whitelist there ads so a built in adblocker want block there own ads and cause many sites too not able too not make money that use other ad vendors and other ad vendors and sites that dont use them will end up suing  them on top of the EU suing them . There skeem to  control the web is backfiring on them just like it did on Microsoft back in the 90s and  early 2000s . If it's OK for Google to block ads for there own profit  it should be just fine for websites to start blocking Google Chrome user agent from  working with there site ..People who use torrent sites and things will change browsers if they had too to see these sites . It could get really ugly.   

[straycat19]

I never see Google Ads since I started using Chromodo instead of Chrome.  Matter of fact, I never see any ads.  If I was a torrent user I would rather pay to use the service and not have to worry about blocking any ads, but that is just my personal preference since I know some people don't like to pay for anything.

 

Here is what I see when I do a google search for flip flops.

[Karlston]

Some torrent sites are their own worst enemy.

 

After the ExtraTorrent demise I went hunting for a replacement and for most I got a bombardment of popups, redirections, opening new tabs, etc.

 

Not just when opening the site, but when selecting text, right-clicking somewhere, clicking a link,...(Hello to 1337x!)

 

A hell of a way to try to attract new members...

 

FWIW, I settled on the Torrenting site, they quickly get the British dramas/comedies that I'm so fond of.

[steven36]

4 hours ago, straycat19 said:

I never see Google Ads since I started using Chromodo instead of Chrome.

I never seen Google Ads since i started using ublock back when i used ABP with the default list even with acceptable turned off they leaked trough because there being paid off . Chromodo  don't have nothing too do with Google Chrome it's  just another  fork of the chromium browser and it's not even the only browser that blocks Google ads .None of these browsers matter in in the grand scheme of things as they have very low market share value.  That's not being a monopoly if a browser also blocks Google ads that's just having a built in ad blocker . The problem is Google will never block there own ads they will just block other vendors ads .

 

4 hours ago, straycat19 said:

 If I was a torrent user I would rather pay to use the service and not have to worry about blocking any ads, but that is just my personal preference since I know some people don't like to pay for anything.

It's not just about torrent sites  and  torrent sites don't make enough off  donations alone to stay afloat, It's about everything from software update like nsanedown witch  use ads down  to you're favorite  blogs even Linux sites depend on ads so you can have support to use there free software. Ads have been around since the dawn of the WWW this is what keeps the internet free and open without them most sites would simply close down and big ones would add paywalls and the internet would be mostly dead ... It's not so much about people don't like too pay for things as the reality is not every one is blessed with great paying jobs were they can afford to pay for entertainment at home they have too chose between paying bills and food . If push comes to shove we can just watch the news , TV Shows and movies on TV  and listen too Music on the Radio .. A non free internet equals too a dead internet .

 

It's should be left up too up to the individual do they want  too block ads  or not.. it should never be left up to a company who makes ads too chose what ads most people see . That's why every adblocker has a whitelist  if we chose too help a site out but if we don't want too help them out , we should not  be forced to see them and i sure don't want be helping no stinking rich company like Google  get richer they could shut down for all i care because I was just fine without them before they became the worlds largest search engine.

 

Open Source never has took advantage of the fact some people don't have money like Google does. if it were not for people not buying stuff Google would never got were they are today people would just buy there web browsers ,software  ,OS  and services  if money grew on trees. People not buying things made Google who they are today a free and open internet so you make no sense because they get rich serving you up products based on there advertisement api in the name of free  ..And you pay for it when you use things from Google whether you know it or not you pay with it with you're privacy instead of money   !

[steven36]

 

Quote

 

Google's 'Funding Choices' gives publishers way to monetize ad blockers

A new tool has been developed by Google that will give publishers the ability to provide their website visitors with a choice over how content is paid for.

Google's new tool, 'Funding Choices', hopes to strike a balance between ad blocking and charging for access to content. It hangs off a recently relaunched version of Google Contributor, which allows Internet users to buy an 'ad removal pass'. A per-page fee is deducted and paid to the website. As each publisher will set their own price, it is not yet clear how much it could cost Internet users.

 

Publishers using the tool will be able to display ad-free content to Internet users that pay for the experience. The tool enables the publishers to restrict access to content when and Internet user elects not to disable their ad blocking software.

 

"As part of our efforts to maintain a sustainable web for everyone, we want to help publishers with good ad experiences get paid for their work," said Google senior vice president for ads and commerce Sridhar Ramaswamy in a company blog. "With Funding Choices, now in beta, publishers can show a customized message to visitors using an ad blocker, inviting them to either enable ads on their site, or pay for a pass that removes all ads on that site."

 

 

The tool is being made available in five countries initially - including the U.S., U.K., and New Zealand - with more to follow later in the year.

 

http://www.bizreport.com/2017/06/googles-funding-choices-gives-publishers-way-to-monetize-ad.html

Sounds like soon you will be getting you're wish @straycat19 sites using google ads are going to try and  force you too pay or ether look at ads more reason to start boycotting sites that use google ads all together or use user scripts that can break there protection like i have a user script that breaks trough many paywalls already. You better get you're credit card out so you can surf the net ad free. Sounds like the end of 3rd party adblockers but not the end of all ads unless there are workarounds to fight back.

 

Quote

 

Google’s tool will only block ads from a site if it shows certain ad formats identified by an industry group called the Coalition for Better Ads which is only targeting a small sliver of the annoying ad types many consumers want to avoid. The Coalition’s initial list of unacceptable ad types included pop-ups, autoplay video ads with sound and “prestitial” ads that count down before displaying content.

 

Matt Maier, CEO of rival ad-blocking browser extension AdBlock, said he doesn’t expect the Chrome feature to impact the use of his company’s software in the short-term. But he did suggest that could change if online publishers more aggressively turn ad-blocking users away from their sites.

 

Google has a new feature in beta called “Funding Choices,” which allows publishers to show visitors with an ad blocker a message asking them to enable ads on their site or pay for a pass that removes all ads.

 

“I think if Google actively enforces these guidelines, and publishers put up anti-ad-block walls en masse, then we could see the adoption of ad-blocking software impacted,” Mr. Maier said. “But retargeting and malware concerns aren’t directly impacted by these proposed changes, which are big reasons why people use AdBlock.

 

The bottom line is this it doesn’t block ads from pirate sites. It only blocks certain ads, the ones Google decides are bad. And Google will never decide that Google Ads are bad. LOL. If worse comes to worse Time too start sharing our stuff without a middle man who makes money off it from ads if sites cease to exist we will have no choice but too resort too sharing outside of our web browsers again . But what will most  likely end up happening that other vendors will comply with the Coalition for Better Ads and Goggle want able too block them they will make ads to get around this adblock. They can very much get there own anti adblock tools like what Google has and block users in Google Chrome  for using built in adblock back.

 

Yahoo already spent billions on anti adblock next thing you know Bing will make a tool to block Chrome from blocking Bing ads that's if Bing ads don't already comply.

[Sylence]

if Google's adblocker is a bad news then what is ublock?  

[dcs18]

23 hours ago, straycat19 said:

I never see Google Ads since I started using Chromodo instead of Chrome.  Matter of fact, I never see any ads.  If I was a torrent user I would rather pay to use the service and not have to worry about blocking any ads, but that is just my personal preference since I know some people don't like to pay for anything.

 

Here is what I see when I do a google search for flip flops.

Here's what I see on Firefox Nightly when googling just what you did:—

 

[steven36]

I just use searx.me and i get results from Google ,Bing and Yahoo  for Flip Flops at once and i can disable adblock on it and i get no ads  the internet is bigger than just Google

Quote

 

https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/

 

 

Features

• Self hosted
• No user tracking
• No user profiling
• About 70 supported search engines
• Easy integration with any search engine
• Cookies are not used by default
• Secure, encrypted connections (HTTPS/SSL)
• Hosted by organisations, such as La Quadrature du Net, which promote digital rights

 

 

List of public Searx instances

https://github.com/asciimoo/searx/wiki/Searx-instances

 

By the way if i disable  uBlock Origin   in Firefox 52 ESR I see no ads at  the top of the page there down at the bottom of the page

 

Google Without uBlock Origin

 

Seax  without uBlock Origin

 

 

Google with uBlock Origin

 

 

I get different results  in Slimjet

What is so nasty about Google it tries to pinpoint you're location and were i'm using a vpn it's giving a  false location but it gives me ads too stores and things in the location it thinks i'm at this is in Slimjet with uBlock Origin turned off .

[dcs18]

On 7/7/2017 at 5:46 AM, straycat19 said:

I never see Google Ads since I started using Chromodo instead of Chrome.  Matter of fact, I never see any ads.  If I was a torrent user I would rather pay to use the service and not have to worry about blocking any ads, but that is just my personal preference since I know some people don't like to pay for anything.

 

Here is what I see when I do a google search for flip flops.

Here's what I see with a change in my security setup:—

 

[pc71520]

On 6/7/2017 at 0:32 PM, steven36 said:

Why the EU's massive antitrust fine could become a huge headache for Google.

Please, E.U. have some pity on the poor Google...

[nIGHT]

You all got great adblockers just don't forget to disable it on nSane.

[macnavarra]

By using another browser & hidding you´re user agent you stop Google’s own advertisements. 

 

https://developers.whatismybrowser.com/useragents/explore/software_name/chrome/