Good news: Chrome debuts automatic blocking of annoying ads

Enlarge (credit: Daniel Oines)

Google developers this week debuted a long-anticipated feature in Chrome that automatically blocks one of the Internet's biggest annoyances-intrusive ads.

Starting on Thursday, Chrome started filtering ads that fail to meet a set of criteria laid out by the Coalition for Better Ads, an industry group. The organization is made up of Google and others, and it aims to improve people's experiences with online ads. In a post published Wednesday, Chrome Engineering Manager Chris Bentzel said the filtering will focus on ad types that were ranked the most intrusive by 40,000 Internet uses who participated in a survey. On computers, the ads include those involving:

• pop-ups
• auto-playing videos with audio
• "prestitials" that cover the screen that include a countdown timer
• large images that stick to the bottom of a page, regardless of efforts to scroll

For mobile devices, intrusive ads include those with:

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