
Adblock Sold to Mystery Company - huntermeyer
http://www.businessinsider.com/adblock-gets-sold-acceptable-ads-2015-10
======
lorenzhs
To anyone who is concerned by this change, I recommend taking a look at μBlock
Origin [1,2]. It's blazingly fast, very flexible, and under active
development. I made the switch about a year ago and it has served me very
well.

[1] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock) [2]
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-
origin/cjpa...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-
origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm)

~~~
david-given
Just be sure NOT to install "U Block For Origin", by www.z1z2z3z4.com, which
is currently the top hit if you search the Chrome extensions store for
'ublock'.

I don't know what it does, but I bet it's not good.

~~~
malchow
Wow; that's quite malicious.

Question for HN: back in the Napster days, were there likewise Napster clones
("napster"?) that purported to allow peer to peer music downloads but in fact
had malware properties?

~~~
chc
I don't remember any, but then again, I don't know when I (or most people)
would have come across them if such a thing existed. If you wanted Napster,
you just went to napster.com and downloaded it. There wasn't a gameable
walled-garden app store like you have to go through to get uBlock Origin.

------
kazinator
Note that Adblock isn't Adblock Plus:

 _AdBlock is not to be confused with Adblock Plus. The creator of AdBlock
claims to have been inspired by the Adblock Plus extension for Firefox, which
is itself based on another extension called Adblock. But otherwise AdBlock is
unrelated to the other efforts._

[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdBlock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdBlock)]

No alarm here for ABP users. (Like me).

~~~
mfoy_
Okay _this_ is why we have registered trademarks. You're telling me that
Adblock, Adblock Plus, and AdBlock are three separate things? What the hell? I
just assumed they were all the same thing until now.

~~~
MichaelApproved
I kept rereading OP's comment and looking for the difference between Adblock
and AdBlock. It wasn't until your comment that I noticed the capital B in
Block.

Trademarks FTW. Great example of confusion in the marketplace.

~~~
0942v8653
I read through nearly the entire thread thinking that the Adblock mentioned
had a capital B.

~~~
mthoms
Coming soon: uAdblock Origin Plus+.

~~~
alex_doom
Upgrade to PRO Version for $29.99 a year.

~~~
Intermernet
Is that the one without ads?

------
raldi
This Business Insider article seems to be a thin layer of blogspam around its
more-informative source, [http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/10/02/trust-us-we-
block-ads/](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/10/02/trust-us-we-block-ads/)

~~~
beastman82
with a cringe-worthy, grammatically incorrect title

~~~
monochromatic
It's a little sloppy, but I don't think "got sold" is actually incorrect.

------
SEJeff
It would be unbelievably obvious, yet ironic, if the "anonymous" buyer of
Adblock ended up being an ad company. Why else would they want to remain
anonymous?

~~~
avn2109
That was my first thought as well. This has to be either a consortium of
advertisers or a single big player.

~~~
SEJeff
My thought would be Doubleclick^WGoogle^WAlphabet.

~~~
arthurfm
... or Cheetah Mobile [1] perhaps?

[1] [http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/08/29/popular-photo-
galler...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/08/29/popular-photo-gallery-app-
quickpic-has-been-bought-by-cheetah-mobile-and-users-are-pissed/)

------
ck2
I've always wondered what happens if a browser extension gets taken over by an
entity someday that puts in bad code after millions of people have it
installed and it gets auto-updated.

Sure it's open-source and will get noticed eventually, but there will be days
if not weeks of exposure.

Same thing for all those android apps you have installed. If it doesn't add
permissions, you'll never get a warning that something has really changed.

~~~
huntermeyer
I'm placing 80% of my bet on Google (Alphabet). The remaining 20% on Yahoo.

~~~
ck2
Didn't get that for a moment, you mean you think Google or Yahoo bought the
very product that blocks their income?

Despite all the alternatives that can be installed instantly?

~~~
cmcnally
Adblock does not block Google ads by default.

~~~
hullo
by Google ads do you mean ads on Google? Or AdSense ads placed across the web
(AFS? AFC?)? or do you mean AdSense + Doubleclick (DFA, DFP, ...) + AdExchange
+ AdMob + I could go on for a long while. Bottom line is google, more than
anyone else, has a lot of skin in this game.

------
dantillberg
I'm glad to see this here. I saw this update yesterday, and the text was so
typical of a company-acquisition-I-should- _not_ -trust.

Excerpt: "I believe this is a great thing for you users". Yet this is not
accompanied by anything that suggests how users will possibly benefit from any
of this.

Can someone suggest alternatives to Adblock that aren't controlled by
dubious/secret/obviously-sketchy third parties?

~~~
tokenizerrr
uBlock

~~~
quesera
Critically, uBlock _Origin_.

[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock)

------
greatthanks
"Adblock Plus to Allow Independent Board to Decide Which Ads Are `Acceptable’
-

Parent company Eyeo says it will no longer help decide which ads can pass
through its filters"

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/adblock-plus-to-allow-
independen...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/adblock-plus-to-allow-independent-
board-to-decide-which-ads-are-acceptable-1443553201)

[https://acceptableads.org/](https://acceptableads.org/)

~~~
kuschku
Right, because after making 30 million US$ with their "Acceptable Ads"
program, they’re set for life: [http://www.mobilegeeks.de/adblock-plus-
zahltag-30-mio-von-am...](http://www.mobilegeeks.de/adblock-plus-
zahltag-30-mio-von-amazon-ebay-google-und-yahoo/)

------
treeefzz
BE VERY CAREFUL!!! I already used another popular extension, after a few
months it was sold and the new owner just started to send EVERY PAGE users
visited to his own servers!! This extension was blocked by Google, but it was
waaaaaay too late and they was able to collected a lot of data from users like
me.

------
DigitalSea
I just switched over to uBlock Origin. The lack of transparency here worries
me.

------
beeboop
And this morning this extension gave me a popup saying they're going to have a
default whitelisting going forward. Uninstalled and switched to uBlock.

------
porsupah
Having been using Adblock for Safari for some time now, I'm a little
apprehensive about this development. Thankfully, Adblock Plus (see above -
distinct from Adblock) exists for Safari:

[https://adblockplus.org/en/safari](https://adblockplus.org/en/safari)

Duly switched over.

~~~
kuschku
AdBlock Plus does the same stuff, you might consider switching to uBlock for
Safari.

------
philtar
Curious why I can't offload this task to a DNS server?

If such a solution truly doesn't exist (and I don't mean OpenDNS), would
anyone like to talk about building something like that?

~~~
JoshTriplett
> Curious why I can't offload this task to a DNS server?

DNS doesn't provide nearly enough precision for ad blocking. Many servers
serve both ads and content. Random example: some sites host actual non-ad
video content on doubleclick.

~~~
kuschku
Could you point me to an example of non-ad content doubleclick hosts? I
haven’t ever seen such content before.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Last time I looked through EasyList, it had some comments explicitly
mentioning that they can't just block all of doubleclick because some sites
(such as news sites) host their content videos there.

------
sivanmz
Ugh. There was a time AdBlock made pleas for donations for this mom and pop
operation that won't sell out, and I donated.

------
iscrewyou
And uninstalled.

Are any of the adblockers open source? So, I can take a look at the code, and
learn how they work.

~~~
loco5niner
[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock)

~~~
mkobit
Let's hope they trademark the name... After reading the comment above about
Adblock, AdBlock, and Adblock Plus, it would be much easier to know exactly
what product the news is about.

~~~
mthoms
Too late [http://tuxdiary.com/2015/06/14/ublock-
origin/](http://tuxdiary.com/2015/06/14/ublock-origin/)

~~~
LocalPCGuy
Except uBlock Origin is actually the one you want, not uBlock itself. Some
sort of drama with the creators, one of them split off and made uBlock Origin
which is a better iteration.

------
i336_
I just append
[http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt](http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt)
to my /etc/hosts.

------
lucian1900
The most straightforward alternative is the original Adblock Plus.

~~~
LocalPCGuy
uBlock Origin is better, Adblock Plus also does the acceptable ads program
(they started it).

------
benbojangles
I don't think adblocking has gone far enough.

Adblocking for real life: [http://noad-app.com/](http://noad-app.com/)

------
reiichiroh
I donated initially when this came out because it was the only working Adblock
for OS X Safari and Chrome at the beginning.

------
reiichiroh
Oh no. I hope it's not Cheetah Mobile.

------
somerandomness
ironically "has announced via a pop-up to users"

------
Sexagesimal
Google

------
rhgraysonii
If theres a Business Insider article worth reading, you find it Hunna Fresh.

------
amelius
The next ad blocker will need to have a strong mission statement that excludes
this type of behavior.

~~~
wtallis
Nah, people just need to go back to treating their adblocking software and
their ruleset provider as separate things.

Either your adblocker blocks what you tell it to, or it doesn't. There's not a
lot of room for fishy behavior.

The rulesets are where things are open to opinion and there are grey areas and
they need a lot more maintenance and there's a lot of opportunity for abuse.

EasyList and AdBlock shouldn't be synonymous, and users should be aware that
they can opt to use something other than EasyList, and that they can make
their own rules.

