AdBlock

Last updated
AdBlock
Developer(s) AdBlock, Inc (owned by eyeo GmbH)
Initial releaseDecember 8, 2009;14 years ago (2009-12-08)
Stable release
Chrome:
5.4.2 / February 21, 2023;20 months ago (2023-02-21) (Google Chrome) [1]

Safari:
2.0 / February 28, 2023;20 months ago (2023-02-28) [2]

Contents

Repository github.com/betafish-inc/adblock-releases
Written inJavaScript
Platform Browser Extension
Available in51 languages [3]
Type Browser extension
License GPLv3 [1]
Website getadblock.com   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

AdBlock is an ad-blocking browser extension for Google Chrome, Apple Safari (desktop and mobile), Firefox, Samsung Internet, Microsoft Edge and Opera. [4] [5] AdBlock allows users to prevent page elements, such as advertisements, from being displayed. It is free to download and use, and it includes optional donations to the developers. [6] The AdBlock extension was created on December 8, 2009, which is the day that supports for extensions was added to Google Chrome. [7] [8] It was one of the first Google Chrome extensions that was made.[ citation needed ]

Since 2016, AdBlock has been based on the Adblock Plus source code. [9] [10]

In July 2018, AdBlock acquired uBlock, a commercial ad-blocker owned by uBlock LLC and based on uBlock Origin. [11]

In April 2021, eyeo GmbH (developer of Adblock Plus) announced its purchase of AdBlock, Inc (formerly BetaFish, Inc). [12]

Crowdfunding

Gundlach launched a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdtilt in August 2013 in order to fund an ad campaign to raise awareness of ad-blocking and to rent a billboard at Times Square. [13] After the one-month campaign, it raised $55,000. [14]

Sales and acceptable ads

AdBlock was sold to an anonymous buyer in 2015 and on October 15, 2015, Gundlach's name was taken down from the site. [15] [16] In the terms of the deal, the original developer Michael Gundlach left operations to Adblock's continuing director, Gabriel Cubbage, and as of October 2, 2015, AdBlock began participating in the Acceptable Ads program. [16] Acceptable Ads identifies "non-annoying" ads, which AdBlock shows by default. The intent is to allow non-invasive advertising, to either maintain support for websites that rely on advertising as a main source of revenue or for websites that have an agreement with the program. [16]

Filters

AdBlock uses EasyList, [17] the same filter syntax as Adblock Plus for Firefox, and natively supports the use of a number of filter lists. [18]

Partnership with Amnesty International

On March 12, 2016, in support of World Day Against Cyber Censorship, and in partnership with Amnesty International, instead of blocking ads, AdBlock replaced ads with banners linked to articles on Amnesty's website, [19] [20] [21] [22] written by prominent free speech advocates such as Edward Snowden, to raise awareness of government-imposed online censorship and digital privacy issues around the world.[ citation needed ]

The campaign was met with both praise and criticism, with AdBlock's CEO, Gabriel Cubbage, defending the decision in an essay on AdBlock's website, saying "We’re showing you Amnesty banners, just for today, because we believe users should be part of the conversation about online privacy. Tomorrow, those spaces will be vacant again. But take a moment to consider that in an increasingly information-driven world, when your right to digital privacy is threatened, so is your right to free expression." [21] Meanwhile, Simon Sharwood of The Register characterized Cubbage's position as "'You should control your computer except when we feel political', says AdBlock CEO". [23]

AdBlock for Firefox

On September 13, 2014, [24] the AdBlock team released a version for Firefox users, ported from the code for Google Chrome, released under the same free software license as the original Adblock. [25] The extension was removed on April 2, 2015, by an administrator on Mozilla Add-ons. [26]

On December 7, 2015, the official AdBlock site's knowledge base article stated that with version 44 or higher of Firefox desktop and Firefox Mobile, AdBlock will not be supported. [27] The last version of Adblock for those platforms will work on older versions of Firefox. [27]

AdBlock was released again on Mozilla Add-ons on November 17, 2016. [28]

CatBlock

On April 1, 2012, Adblock developer Michael Gundlach tweaked the code to display LOLcats instead of simply blocking ads. Initially developed as a short-lived April Fools joke, the response was so positive that CatBlock was continued to be offered as an optional add-on supported by a monthly subscription. [29]

On October 23, 2014, the developer decided to end official support for CatBlock, and made it open-source, under GPLv3 licensing, as the original extension. [30]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Firefox</span> Free and open-source web browser by Mozilla

Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and anticipated web standards. Firefox is available for Windows 10 and later versions of Windows, macOS, and Linux. Its unofficial ports are available for various Unix and Unix-like operating systems, including FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and other platforms. It is also available for Android and iOS. However, as with all other iOS web browsers, the iOS version uses the WebKit layout engine instead of Gecko due to platform requirements. An optimized version is also available on the Amazon Fire TV as one of the two main browsers available with Amazon's Silk Browser.

This is a comparison of both historical and current web browsers based on developer, engine, platform(s), releases, license, and cost.

Ad blocking or ad filtering is a software capability for blocking or altering online advertising in a web browser, an application or a network. This may be done using browser extensions or other methods.

Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) is a deprecated application programming interface (API) for web browser plugins, initially developed for Netscape Navigator 2.0 in 1995 and subsequently adopted by other browsers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adblock Plus</span> Content-filtering and ad blocking browser extension

Adblock Plus (ABP) is a free and open-source browser extension for content-filtering and ad blocking. It is developed by Eyeo GmbH, a German software company. The extension has been released for Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Safari, Yandex Browser, and Android.

Add-on is the Mozilla term for software modules that can be added to the Firefox web browser and related applications. Mozilla hosts them on its official add-on website.

Filterset.G was a third-party set of filters for ad filtering extensions such as Adblock Plus used with Firefox web browser. The filterset contained pre-made and regularly updated filters that removed ads from various ad providers.

NoScript is a free and open-source extension for Firefox- and Chromium-based web browsers, written and maintained by Giorgio Maone, a software developer and member of the Mozilla Security Group.

A browser extension is a software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow users to install a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, cookie management, ad blocking, and the custom scripting and styling of web pages.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Firefox for Android</span> Android web browser by Mozilla

Firefox for Android is a web browser developed by Mozilla for Android smartphones and tablet computers. As with its desktop version, it uses the Gecko layout engine, and supports features such as synchronization with Firefox Sync, and add-ons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Chrome</span> Web browser developed by Google

Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and also for Android, where it is the default browser. The browser is also the main component of ChromeOS, where it serves as the platform for web applications.

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uBlock Origin Web browser extension

uBlock Origin is a free and open-source browser extension for content filtering, including ad blocking. The extension is available for Chrome, Chromium, Edge, Firefox, Brave, Opera, Pale Moon, as well as versions of Safari before 13. uBlock Origin has received praise from technology websites and is reported to be much less memory-intensive than other extensions with similar functionality. uBlock Origin's stated purpose is to give users the means to enforce their own (content-filtering) choices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AdGuard</span> Ad blocking and privacy protection software

AdGuard is an ad blocking service for Microsoft Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android and iOS. AdGuard is also available as a browser extension.

References

  1. 1 2 "Index of /releases". Index of /releases. Adblock. Archived from the original on March 22, 2024. Retrieved March 2, 2023.
  2. ↑ "AdBlock for Safari on the Mac App Store". Archived from the original on March 2, 2023. Retrieved March 2, 2023.
  3. ↑ "AdBlock - Chrome Web Store". 2015-06-10. Retrieved 2015-06-18.
  4. ↑ "How to install, uninstall, or reinstall adblock". AdBlock. Archived from the original on 2024-01-06. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  5. ↑ "AdBlock vs Adblock Plus: What's the Difference, and Which is Best?". Uqnic Network Pte Ltd. 19 December 2019. Archived from the original on 2023-09-24. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  6. ↑ "AdBlock is pay-what-you-want software". AdBlock. Archived from the original on 5 August 2013. Retrieved 22 January 2016.
  7. ↑ Cohen, Noam (4 January 2010). "In Allowing Ad Blockers, a Test for Google". The New York Times . Archived from the original on 2015-09-10. Retrieved 2015-06-18.
  8. ↑ "Is AdBlock available for my iPhone, iPad, Android, or Windows Mobile device?". AdBlock. Archived from the original on 5 June 2016. Retrieved 4 May 2016.
  9. ↑ "AdBlock is a popular ad blocking extension for Chrome, Opera and Safari, now based on the Adblock Plus code". GitHub. Archived from the original on 15 February 2019. Retrieved 26 November 2018.
  10. ↑ "Unsupported, legacy code of AdBlock for Chrome, Safari, and Opera". GitHub. Archived from the original on 11 June 2018. Retrieved 26 November 2018.
  11. ↑ "An update on uBlock". ublock.org. July 13, 2018. Archived from the original on January 5, 2022. Retrieved December 4, 2019.
  12. ↑ "Teaming Up To Make More Magic:The teams behind AdBlock and Adblock Plus combine!". April 7, 2021. Retrieved January 14, 2024.
  13. ↑ This ad blocking software is getting users to pay for it to advertise Archived 2016-05-07 at the Wayback Machine Quartz, August 30, 2013
  14. ↑ "AdBlock Raises Over $55,000 for Anti-Advertising Ad Campaign". Archived from the original on 2017-10-12. Retrieved 2017-10-12.
  15. ↑ Archive.org first version without his name.
  16. 1 2 3 Williams, Owen. "Adblock extension sells to mystery buyer," Archived 2018-06-17 at the Wayback Machine thenextweb.com. Retrieved 2015-10-02
  17. ↑ "EasyList Overview". Archived from the original on 2020-02-27. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  18. ↑ "Introduction to Filter Lists". Archived from the original on 2024-01-15. Retrieved 2024-01-14.
  19. ↑ "Ai Weiwei, Snowden, Pussy Riot take place of online ads to protest censorship". Amnesty International. 11 March 2016. Archived from the original on 2017-09-12. Retrieved 2017-07-27.
  20. ↑ Walters, Joanna (2016-03-11). "Edward Snowden, Pussy Riot and Ai Weiwei protest cyber censorship". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077. Archived from the original on 2017-07-10. Retrieved 2017-07-27.
  21. 1 2 AdBlock. "Why AdBlock Is 'Un-Blocking' Amnesty Banners Today". getadblock.com. Archived from the original on 2019-12-16. Retrieved 2017-07-27.
  22. ↑ Evelyn, Elizabeth. "Quelle Handelsblatt". Archived from the original on 21 December 2023. Retrieved 14 November 2023.
  23. ↑ Sharwood, Simon (2016-03-14). "AdBlock replaced blocked ads with ads for Amnesty International". The Register . Archived from the original on 2017-06-26. Retrieved 2017-07-27.
  24. ↑ "AdBlock for Firefox". Archived from the original on 2014-09-06. Retrieved September 6, 2014.
  25. ↑ "Adblock Plus". February 2016. Archived from the original on 2017-07-04. Retrieved 2017-02-07.
  26. ↑ "AdBlock for Firefox". Mozilla Add-ons. Archived from the original on 2014-09-06.
  27. 1 2 "Why did AdBlock stop supporting Firefox?". Official Adblock support. Adblock. Archived from the original on 2016-02-01. Retrieved 19 January 2016.
  28. ↑ "AdBlock for Firefox :: Versions :: Add-ons for Firefox". addons.mozilla.org. Archived from the original on 2017-02-22. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  29. ↑ "AdBlock's Blog: CatBlock lives on". Adblockforchrome.blogspot.com. 2012-04-03. Archived from the original on 2017-06-28. Retrieved 2015-06-18.
  30. ↑ "CatBlock from AdBlock". catblock.getadblock.com. 2018-10-15. Archived from the original on 2015-05-10. Retrieved 2018-10-15.
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