Better late than never... Google Chrome to kill off 'tiny' number of mobile web ads that gobble battery, CPU power
- Reference: 1589487188
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/14/chrome_bans_resource_ads/
- Source link:
Come August, Chrome will exile what it calls "heavy ads" from the browser window, in the hope fewer users will be vexed by malicious, buggy, or overly demanding pitches.
"We have recently discovered that a fraction of a percent of ads consume a disproportionate share of device resources, such as battery and network data, without the user knowing about it," said Marshall Vale, Chrome product manager, in a [1]blog post on Thursday.
"These ads (such as those that mine cryptocurrency, are poorly programmed, or are unoptimized for network usage) can drain battery life, saturate already strained networks, and cost money."
If Google only made this discovery recently, the ad-slinging biz clearly hasn't been paying attention. By 2018, cryptomining ads were widely reported on, and web page bloat has been a concern for at least a decade. The median desktop web page now tops [2]2MB and the median mobile web page is close behind at 1.9MB, up from 0.5MB and 0.2MB in 2011, respectively.
Ads only account for a portion of the weight of a web page but it's been clear for years that much of that baggage can be blocked for a better browsing experience. One of the reasons internet users have adopted ad blocking extensions is that they save network resources, "around 25- 34% savings in the amount of data transferred (on average)," according to a [3]2017 research paper [PDF] .
Stop tracking me, Google: Austrian citizen files GDPR legal complaint over Android Advertising ID [4]READ MORE
Every now and again Google and its ad industry allies acknowledge abusive ad practices with reform initiatives. In 2017, the Chocolate Factory said that Chrome in 2018 will start block ads, including its own, on websites that fail to comply with Better Ads Standards.
And last year, the biz [5]extended its certification program , through which web publishers promise not to show intrusive ads like pop-ups, worldwide.
The sub-one per cnet
Mind you, Google insists misbehaving ads are a tiny problem. Less than one per cent last year were being filtered for falling short of industry annoyance standards.
And the situation is similar, it's claimed, for heavy ads. Only 0.3 percent of ads exceed the Chrome-defined threshold for hogging resources: 4MB of network data or 15 seconds of CPU usage in any 30 second period, or 60 seconds of CPU usage total. An ad will not be deemed "heavy" if the user has interacted with it.
Nonetheless, this almost insignificant fraction of ads demand a substantial portion of available computing resources. According to Vale, the 0.3 per cent of ads defined as heavy "account for 26 per cent of network data used by ads and 28 per cent of all ad CPU usage."
To rid the world of these digital behemoths, Google intends to implement its intervention – unloading heavy ads so they don't display or run code and replacing it with an ad removed message – toward the end of August. That's when Chrome 85 is scheduled to reach the stable release channel.
Google has provided [6]technical guidance to web publishers so they can monitor for heavy ads and implement a diet protocol. ®
Sponsored: [7]Legacy Modernization: Finding Your Way With Low-Code
[1] https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/resource-heavy-ads-in-chrome.html
[2] https://www.httparchive.org/reports/state-of-the-web#bytesTotal
[3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.03193.pdf
[4] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/13/google_android_gdpr_complaint/
[5] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/09/google_ad_blockade/
[6] https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2020/05/heavy-ad-interventions
[7] https://go.theregister.co.uk/tl/1936/-8553/legacy-modernization-finding-your-way-with-low-code?td=wptl1936
Re: So nice of you, Google
But when I search for "Brave" in the Play Store, it warns "Contains ads".
Re: So nice of you, Google
What? Why trust what Google says now?
Recently
"We have recently discovered that a fraction of a percent of ads consume a disproportionate share of device resources, such as battery and network data, without the user knowing about it," (Marshall Vale)
This is great news. It isn't that Google just doesn't care and will allow anything through as long as they stand to get some money out of it. They just have a six to eight-year latency period on realizing really obvious things. And here was I thinking that they were ignoring these things on purpose. Fantastic, really. If this pattern holds, we might see the following headlines in the future:
2020: Google recently discovered that Android updates are important, and they need to do something to ensure people get them where they punish noncompliant manufacturers.
2021: Google recently found out that malware embedded in ads is concerning.
2022: Google has become aware following a bit of research that Android users would like extra security in their mobile operating system.
2023: Google recently discovered that, if you have a motto that tells you not to be evil, and you cancel that motto, it sounds really bad.
2024: Google realized not long ago that people seem to care a bit about their privacy.
2025: It has come to Google's attention that people are worried about their copying of certain information without compensating the people they copied it off, and maybe someone should come up with a method that uses neither the crazy suggestions of the original publishers or of Google.
2026: Google has come to the conclusion that becoming the market leader in product obsolescence might not be the nicest thing to do to their customers.
So what about...
the crap, slow JavaScript this ads run?
Less than 4mb...check
Not much bandwidth..check.
CPU resourcesiw...check
30 seconds to report back to mothership, match those IDs, track , locate and then serve "enhanced user experience"....yeah we'll ignore that.
Re: So what about...
A "user experience" is what you get after eight pints of heavy and a vindaloo chaser
Bugger AdBlock, it's Internet advertising that's theft.
If the mailman tried to charge you for giving you an unfranked letter and you discovered it was just advertising crap, you'd be pretty pissed.
If you were persuaded to accept a reverse charge phone call, only to find out that it was a telesales pitch, you would also be highly pissed.
So why does Google et al expect me to willingly spaff my data allowance or, indeed, paid for data, on content that turns out to be advertising?
How about no execution whatsoever?
There is no legitimate reason whatsoever for an advert to serve or execute any code at all of any kind.
A legitimate advert may contain text, an image or short video clip and one or more hyperlinks.
Anything else is an inexcusable unauthorized use of my computer, as defined in the Computer Misuse Act.
So nice of you, Google
Unfortunately, there is now a browser that simply does not allow ads. It's called Brave. And it is at least three times as fast as Chrome.
You can do your little bit on the side, but I am done using Chrome on my mobile phone. Brave gets me the page I want without any useless clutter, and it does so in record time.
You're history, Google.