Saturday, February 16, 2008

Adblock or not ?

Firefox has this neat extension called Adblock. It blocks out those annoying ads on web pages. Great! Now I don't have to look at flashing smiley ads anymore. (Who the heck would want to buy smileys anyway?)

But when I installed Google AdSesnse on my blogs, sure enough, I couldn't see them. Now, ads definitely help bring the pennies in, but do they have to be so annoying that people should want to block them? Most users hate ads, as they are distracting and loud[citation needed (LOL)]. In my case, Flash ads even use up a lot of CPU. (Hopefully, Flash will be faster with Firefox 3). In comparison, Google Ads are not irritating, and are usually quite relevant.

Some people go so far as to call Adblock "Stealing", and there are a number of discussions on this topic.

So my dilemma was: whether to Adblock or not. I thought of striking a balance. I have Adblock installed, but I'm not subscribed to any of the filters. I block the irritating, flashy ads manually.

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