In what is certainly a major step forward for Internet advertising and the way these are delivered to users, Google has announced that their in-Chrome AdBlocker, which will ship embedded on the Chrome web browser, should be up, running, and being distributed in installation packages by February 15th. This move by google comes after the company joined a voluntary association in the form of the Coalition for Better Ads Experience Program, which aims to better the Internet - and its ads - on both consumers and publishers. This coalition's aim is to define standards for advertising, marking ads as either acceptable or not under the standard's rules, and will "certify web publishers that agree not to use the most disruptive ads identified in the Standards and will accredit browsers and advertising technology companies that will assess publishers' compliance with the Standards and filter digital ads based on the Standards."

Following its integration in the Better Ads Coalition, google will officially activate its AdBlocker on February 15th, whose criteria for blocking ads will be based off of the Coalition's white and black listing of websites and ads according to whether or not they conform to the body's advertising Standards. Google wrote on a developers blog post that "Starting on February 15, in line with the Coalition's guidelines, Chrome will remove all ads from sites that have a "failing" status in the Ad Experience Report for more than 30 days."Pop-up ads, auto-play video ads with sound, prestitial ads with countdowns and large sticky ads have all been identified as falling below the Better Ads Standard on desktops. For mobile environments, the Coalition has identified pop-up ads, prestitial ads, ads with density greater than 30 percent, flashing animated ads, auto-play video ads with sound, poststitial ads with countdowns, full-screen scrollover ads and large sticky ads as being non-acceptable.Google itself is taking a pretty heavy approach with the Chrome-embedded ad-blocking: a single ad on a page that is categorized as non conforming with the Coalition's Standards will push Chrome to block all ads on that page, even if all others are in compliance with the Standards. It seems that the fight against ads has received a heavy nudge in the right direction. Even so, users should always remain cautious; Google makes most of its revenue out of ads. That a Google product is now shipping with an integrated adblocker may truly fit in the company's "Do no Evil" philosophy, and have only the best intentions in mind. However, one also has to consider that with a Chrome-integrated adblocker, Google can also pick and choose exactly which ads are serviceable for their customer's (and Google's) needs or not, giving the company even more fine-grained control on what is displayed on users' screens.