Adblock Plus, a browser plugin that erases advertisements from Web pages, is a killer of a killer app -- or at least it would be if it were to become widely popular. Right now, it sits like a coyote at the edge of the Internet, quietly eyeing all the businesses it would happily devour.
A plugin is a little piece of software that adds some new feature or function to a program. Dozens of useful plugins are available for the Firefox browser, which evolved from the once ubiquitous Netscape Navigator, but Adblock Plus is perhaps the most interesting of the bunch.
As Noam Cohen recently wrote in the New York Times, it has the potential to be an "extreme menace to the online-advertising business model" because, after a quick and free installation, it "usually makes all commercial communication disappear."
economy
Since nearly the entire Internet economy relies on advertising of one form or another, the widespread use of ad blockers could well devastate many businesses, from giants like Google and Yahoo! to scores of tiny startups.
"If you believe in Web 2.0 and/or if you believe in the concept of free," writes the blogger Mark Evans, "Adblock is pure evil."
I recently gave Adblock Plus a try, along with another plugin called CustomizeGoogle, which strips ads from Google search results. I have to admit that I was impressed. Evil or not, experiencing the Web without ads -- or at least with a whole lot fewer ads -- is awfully pleasant.
Imagine that some boor has been yelling into your ear for so long that it's come to seem normal. Now imagine that he suddenly shuts up. That's the effect of ad blocking. It's like going back to the feel of the Web in the early 1990s, before it was strip-malled.
2.5 million
Some 2.5 million people already use Adblock Plus, estimates its inventor, Wladimir Palant, and the extension is being freshly downloaded betweeen 300,000 and 400,000 times a month. That's a lot of people, but it still represents only a tiny slice of the web-surfing population.
The number of users of Adblock Plus and similar plugins is not yet high enough to spur a counterattack by the big guns in Web advertising. In fact, most large Internet companies are content to ignore ad blocking for the time being. They probably fear that criticizing the plugins would only raise people's awareness of them.
When Cohen asked Google for a comment on Adblock Plus, for example, it chose to keep mum.
The company is in a particularly dicey position. The broad adoption of ad blocking software could undermine its business, yet an outright attempt to prohibit the use of such programs would run counter to its often-expressed commitment to give users what they want.
credibility
If Web users decide they don't want to see ads, Google would face an unpleasant dilemma. Either its business or its credibility would end up in tatters.
That's why Google's best course -- maybe its only course -- is to continue to avoid any mention of Adblock Plus and hope that it remains a niche product.
The odds would seem, at this point, to be in Google's favor. There's no evidence that Adblock Plus or similar products are about to go viral. In fact, there's little evidence that the masses view online ads as a nuisance.
Then again, you never know. Viral events are unpredictable.
Microsoft
One Internet giant that did give Cohen a comment is Microsoft. While the company carefully avoided any endorsement of ad blocking plugins, it didn't criticize them either.
Read its statement, in part: "Provided they have not been designed with malicious intent and do not compromise a user's privacy or security, Microsoft is pleased to see new add-ons that add to the range of options that users have for customizing their browsing experience."
Microsoft's laissez-faire attitude may seem surprising, but it reflects a cold strategic calculation. Because advertising represents a minuscule fraction of Microsoft's revenues, it knows that ad blockers pose a far greater threat to its arch-rival Google than to itself.
As they say: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
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