News Google blocks Flash ads in Chrome update

I've been doing this for a while. I don't use adblock, because I find that scummy. But Flash ads slow down my page-loading speeds, they're intrusive, they can eat up a lot of CPU cycles, and sometimes even crash the entire page.

Regardless, this is a pretty bold move of Google. Aren't some of the ads Google is funded by based on flash?

 

This is all well and good, but what about all the OTHER annoying video-based ads? I don't give a flying fudge what format they are in, video adverts should *never* auto-play!

Slightly OT, but an increasing number of mobile websites now have embedded, auto-playing video adverts (with audio!!!) that appear in the middle of the content you're reading. Given this is on Chrome for Android, they are not flash based, but should still be blocked by default! If I'm reading a news article in the office on my lunch break, I don't want a car advert blasting out because I forgot to turn the media volume down before reading an article! I shouldn't HAVE to do that in the first place!

/rant

 

If the adverts weren't so bloody annoying and the ad-servers weren't so slow, delaying page loading while the ad-server gets around to responding, I might feel the same. As it is I do use Adblock and will continue to do so, whether the advertisers like it or not.

 

Only the flash ads cause issues. Most of the other ones (even the HTML5 ads) aren't that annoying. Get a flash blocker like I do and it solves the problem of dealing with the really pesky ads.

 

Everybody's on the flash-hate bandwagon these days but I remember a time when android fans would tell iphone fans you can't even play flash!

 

Don't Google have to be pretty careful here? Couldn't this be seen as using their influence in the browser market to hurt their competitors in the ad market?

 

I DO use adblock. I whitelist any websites that ask nicely but they soon get blacklisted again if anything's moving in said adverts and distracts me from my reading.

 

i can see now that bit-tech have stopped using intellitxt ads (the ads that are inserted into text as it used to lag the page out when it ran the script to inject links into the text) why i blocked ads on bit-tech for last year or 2

click load flash has been on for years for me (from using Opera now its really just chrome reskinned) only recently has bit-tech ad companies stopped using flash as norm i had 6 click to load boxes on the screen (which i assume is in response to chrome blocking flash now)

only thing bit-tech needs to do it REMOVE the stupid ad click bate on the sides of the page (as the empty space on the left and right is a clickable ad)

 

No one disagreed that flash sucked back then either. It was just more of a requirement to view web pages.