19 Aug 07 Ad Blocking

Free internet content is often based on advertising revenues, so some site owners are apparently blocking Firefox in response to users blocking ads, so writes Jack Scholfield at The Guardian Unlimited.

I carry ads on this very site to help offset the cost of hosting it. It would be nice to generate enough revenue to make it something I could live on, but that’s probably way over the horizon yet.

I use Firefox here. Not because I can block ads with it though. I use Firefox, because it is a far superior broswer to Internet Explorer. It’s more secure, and it’s more W3C compliant – something that annoys me greatly with IE, as a web developer. I like the plug-ins with Firefox for sure, but I don’t even have the ad-blocking plug-in installed.

In fact, although I block pop-ups, as they both annoying, and often lead to rogue sites anyway, I don’t bock ads. I don’t find ads themselves annoying. I can easily disregard them if I wish. I would much rather have web pages with ads on than receive the same content in email.

There is no free lunch in anything.