AdBlock Plus BLOCKED from Google Play Google has zapped the Android app version of AdBlock Plus from its Play store. The ad giant has also kyboshed other ad-blocking applications from its online shop. Adblock Plus revealed the Chocolate Factory's snub in a blog post: In a rather surprising move, Google removed Adblock Plus and other ad blocking apps from the …
>The funny thing is I had to turn Wifi off otherwise the crap Android phone's battery wouldn't even last the day.
Upgrade to ICS if you can, and you will find 'battery saver mode' that turns off Wifi and background data when the phone is in standby. It certainly solved the major gripe RegHardware had with the Sony Xperia P when they reviewed it with its original Android version.
@El Presidente
Please, FFS grow up and stop using the word "evil" for anything you don't like. Maybe when you spend hundreds of billions of dollars building a platform you can decide to just give it away from the goodness of your heart, until then you'll have to continue being a whiney little bitch.
Just install it the regular way and stop acting all offended they don't allow apps which block their revenue stream in their own app store.
"Just install it the regular way and stop acting all offended they don't allow apps which block their revenue stream in their own app store."
No. Never.
Since when did exercising a choice make anyone a whiney [sic] little bitch?
@AC
"You know the only reason Android exists is so Google can harvest all your personal data and browsing habits while feeding you delicious adverts right?"
You know the only reason AblockPlus exists is so Google can harvest all your personal data and browsing habits while blocking the highly intrusive adverts right?
Dunno which is worse, Apple Fanbois or Google Astroturfers.
"From the goodness of your heart?"
Sorry, I hadn't realised Google spent all that time and money building Android from the goodness of their heart. I don't recall them ever saying that, but the sure did spout on about how the platform was all about being open, ideologically free and different from all the others who just wanted your money.
You don't consider Google in spirit now (and in fact later) are now backtracking on that ethos having pulled in hundreds of millions of suckers?
And while we're about it, El Presesidente didn't start spouting this "evil" shit - no that was Google at their pretentious best..
"Sorry, I hadn't realised Google spent all that time and money building Android from the goodness of their heart"
Me either, it looked for all the world like google appropriated a bunch of code from students and out of work IT pro's who should be getting paid, spent a bit of cash patching it up a bit to dress it up as their own work and then abused their dominance to destroy the mobile OS market...
"it looked for all the world like google appropriated a bunch of code from students and out of work IT pro's who should be getting paid, spent a bit of cash patching it up a bit to dress it up as their own work and then abused their dominance to destroy the mobile OS market..."
haha!! well said that man.
>>sure did spout on about how the platform was all about being open
Is their app store part of the Android platform though?
>>When a company proudly proclaims that their mantra to be "Do No Evil", they openly invite comparisons of evil to their actions - especially this one.
If you think a company trying to make money is "evil", then I suppose you're right. It's pretty clear their mantra was about not having closed standards, using their position of power to crush opposition, etc. Not having restrictions on what can be sold in their own appstore WHEN THEY ALLOW OTHER APPSTORES AND LET YOU INSTALL APPS DIRECTLY.
Sorry I'll have to bring you back to the real world but actually user lock-in is good for business. Consumer and end-user freedoms prevent companies for making cash. Try to grasp the concepts of "steady revenue stream" and "average revenue per user" and you will see that a free consumer is a bad consumer and has to be coerced by any technical and / or legal means available.
Am I a whiney bitch, or is it a cse of...
Adverts:
I don't want to see them.
I don't want to click on them.
I don't want them to pop up so I might accidentally click on them which might send me god-knows-where, potentially to a malicious site.
I'm not going to buy whatever they're touting, so why force them on me if I make the choice that I don't want them?
I understand that it is Google's business model to sell advertising space to third parties. Good on them, they've done well out of it, but I still think I should have the choice to not have information about me sold to others without my explicit consent.
And by the way, many people consider most forms of advertising to be 'evil' due to the fact that they are designed to be deliverately manipulative (the whole point is to influence you to buy something you otherwise wouldn't). They use psychologically tricks to influence you against your will. The same tricks that if someone used them on people to influence them into, for instance, having sex with them, would be considered evil by a lot more people. The fact that advertising may be a necessary evil in order to fund the internet doesn;t subtract from its evilness, but merely highlights how we don't live in a black-and-white world, and such terms are relative.
So, don't patronise us and tell us to grow up for lamenting the removal of the option to exercise choice.
@Loyal Commenter I understand that it is Google's business model to sell advertising space to third parties. Good on them, they've done well out of it, but I still think I should have the choice to not have information about me sold to others without my explicit consent.
You have that choice. Don't use services with adverts. It's that easy.
"You have that choice. Don't use services with adverts. It's that easy."
ABP users often ignore this though and try to spin it in a way that they are entitled to access the content on their terms. One of the excuses that crop up time and time again is 'I pay for internet access, why should I have to watch adverts?', I don't feel I need to point out the gaping hole in this argument. Frankly I consider the use of ABP parasitic and attempts to justify its use arrogant.
P.S. no, I don't make money from any services even remotely connected with advertising before someone tries to pull that one.
I have no problems with simple advertising, but I will never accept Flash ads (on the desktop); HTML5 ads that bounce around, play audio, play video, or otherwise distract me from what I'm trying to do and drain battery life; or ads that take up a significant portion of the display area and hinder my ability to do work. I'm fine with simple text ads like Google's or plain graphics.
At least in Firefox, AdBlock Plus even displays non-intrusive ads by default. Furthermore depending on the lists you download or rules you create, you can block only tracking syndicates, again such as Google, and take an active part in protecting your own privacy. Call me arrogant if you like, but I like being able to determine what information I divulge about myself and to whom I divulge it.
AdBlock Plus itself isn't any more parasitic than a computer or the Internet itself for enabling users to be able to do something. What the user often does with it is what you deem parasitic behavior, but that's not the tool's fault, especially since it does actually try to allow non-intrusive advertising by default. Furthermore, I try to only use services that only use advertising I deem acceptable.
I'm edging away from Skype now because of the intrusive ads Microsoft is starting to push during calls. I'll stop using any service that starts shoving advertising down my throat in the most obnoxious way they can. Meanwhile I'll pick up other publications or opt to receive advertisements from certain companies just to look at the ads.
@cybersaur
I don't watch TV. Back when I used to I didn't mute or channel hop, no. In fact advert break channel hopping bugs the hell out of me. The only time I didn't at least hear the TV adverts was if I was leaving the room to make a drink or some such.
Your analogy is somewhat flawed anyway. I'm not sure of the exact details because, as I said, I don't have any business dealings with advertising but I know there is such as thing as "cost per impression". When an advert is requested and displayed on a website it records an "impression", blocking means no request is made to get the advert so it directly costs the site owner money.
"Frankly I consider the use of ABP parasitic and attempts to justify its use arrogant."
While I consider attempting to force serving of ads to users who have clearly indicated a preference not to see them as attempting to defraud those paying for the ads.
Do you think if ABP fetched the ads but didn't render or hid them it would be less parasitic? Maybe it could even click on them and hide the results too.
@ DF11
Blocking adverts = You getting access to content you want whilst depriving the content provider of money
Dictionary definition of parasite = a person who receives support, advantage, or the like, from another or others without giving any useful or proper return, as one who lives on the hospitality of others.
I think you will find my logic, in this particular instance, is fairly grounded in reality.
It doesn't matter how po-faced your language is, your argument is still based on a subjective assumption and therefore flawed. If the model a content provider has chosen to use to fund its services and (hopefully) turn a profit is the 'paid for by advertising' one then they are effectively in competition with other sites to provide my eyes (and clicks) to their advertisers. The tired cliché is, I believe, that I am the product. In an ideal world for the advertisers my hardware, bandwidth, browsing habits and search history is used by one vendor to sell my custom to another. There is no obligation on me to provide any of those things to anyone and on the whole I choose not to. Should my actions in so blocking this behaviour cause the content provider to fail to be able to fund and/or profit from their activities then that is a failure of the ad-funded business model, not me being a parasite, no matter how you try to dress it up. There are exceptions, which is what whitelisting is for. The Reg gets this. Ars Technica (to name but one) doesn't. Hence their occasional whiny op-ed pieces saying so.
"You have that choice. Don't use services with adverts. It's that easy."
Ehhmm, ads are a feature around the whole WEB on each browser and device. And the nature of the web is the idea that is open: that I can load and display HTML and mail messages the way the client (me and my software) decides. That's the internet, that's how it's designed, that's the core philosophy like for example Google's "making money without doing evil".
So when this has become all a "service" that I can choose *not* to use? What Google is doing is to *inhibit* what is normal daily usage to millions of people because it's now "their" operating system. But what it really is: flying completely in the face of their own philosophy
http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/
Points 1, 2,3 4, 5, and 6. And that's exactly the face of deepest evil: talk like this, act like that!
I also have another choice--use technological means to not watch the adverts. If I DVR a show and fast-forward them, or am watching live and go to make myself a cup of coffee when the ads come on, I'm not doing anything wrong. They put the ads out there, I choose not to watch them. It's exactly the same when using an ad blocker in your browser, and it amazes me how people somehow equate it to wrongdoing, or state if you don't watch the ads you ought not view the content either. We've done it for ages in many different mediums.
So, don't patronise us and tell us to grow up for lamenting the removal of the option to exercise choice.
But your freedom to choose to block adverts has not been removed. It's just that the Google store has stopped stocking that app, so you have to get it from somewhere else and learn an extra trick or two to install it. To me, it's a bit like your default supermarket deciding not to stock one of your favourite products. Annoying.
If they'd made it impossible to block adverts without voiding your phone's warranty, THAT would be interfering with your freedom of choice. If they'd used cryptographic techniques so it was impossible to install anything they didn't want you to, and so they could retroactively take away something that they didn't want you to have , that would qualify as evil. Nobody could be that nasty, could they?... Oh.
Loyal Commenter: "I'm not going to buy whatever they're touting, so why force them on me if I make the choice that I don't want them?"
I think you just said "the Emperor has no clothes." Selling something on the internet? Forget about ads: they don't work, just as Loyal Commenter says. Instead of trying to lure visitors to your site selling crap, try setting up your site so that Google searches for the goods/services you offer return your pages. And make sure people can navigate to the item they might buy. Example: I buy a fair amount of body jewelry and have noted that some sites have very poor search facilities, while others have excellent ones. The distinction is simple: can a visitor to such a site tell within seconds if (say) you have circular barbells, made of stainless steel, internally threaded, with a 10mm thickness? Sometimes the answer is yes, it's easy to tell, but other times you can't be sure and keep wondering if you overlooked the item you are contemplating purchase of.
Meanwhile a pox on search aggregators that do nothing but clutter up Google results.
@Fatman
Anyone who has been around here for any length of time knows to pay sod all attention to down votes anyway. More often than not they are the result of either saying something mean that could hurt the feelings of a famboy's chosen company or the amount of inconvenient truth in a comment.
The term "sideload" amuses me when refers to Android as it actually allows you to install software from elsewhere (as long as you tick a box buried in the settings).
I always thought sideloading was used in relation to the installation of software, via an undocumented method/hack, on devices which don't specifically allow the installation of software from places other than their own app store.
Anyway, can't see the point of apps like AdBlock taking up CPU time and consuming precious elecktrickery when a perfectly good, and frequently updated, hosts file does exactly the same job with either none or very, very little extra overhead.
@ Shades = "Anyway, can't see the point of apps like AdBlock taking up CPU time and consuming precious elecktrickery when a perfectly good, and frequently updated, hosts file does exactly the same job with either none or very, very little extra overhead."
It doesn't do the same job though. With hosts you block an entire host, not just the resources you don't want your browser to grab.
That's why I use AdAway which does just that. Sadly it too appears to be gone from the Market.
I'll have to be sure to backup that .apk, along with Adobe Flash for future use.
Outta intrest isn't ABP a Firefox Plug-in? Or did the ever make an Android wide version.
I'm not even sure I ever used it on the Android version of Firefox. I can somewhat recall that long ago that Dolphin Browser had a badly broken ABP Plug-in for their Browser. Although the promised to fix it. They never did. Makes ya wonder why? then quietly let it die.
If AdAway only has One drawback to it, its that you need to reboot your phone after each update. (As to presumably load up the new Hosts.conf File to Memory I guess). I forget if the Phone also has to be rooted for it to work. My first guess would be yes it does. But, thats One of the many reasons WHY I rooted the thing to begin with,
Google can watch someone else!
This is the most important part:
With hosts you block an entire host, not just the resources you don't want your browser to grab.
When used in conjunction with Element Hiding, you can get extremely selective about what you do see, and what you don't see, even if they come from the same host.
Using a hosts file to block 'slimybigcorp.com' blocks everything; while carefully tuning Ad Block Plus to block 'slimybigcorp.com/quivering_flash_animation.flv' targets just the mentioned file. And, of cource wild cards are allowed, so blocking something like 'slimybigcorp.com/scripts/*' does what you think it ought to.
frequently updated, hosts file
Maybe you don't consider your time valuable but I consider mine to be. I have better things to do than keep updating an obscure configuration file. Computers are supposed to relieve us of drudgery and mindless tasks, not create new boring tasks for us.
AdAway does exactly that and does it automatically. It even allows for whitelists of websites to allow explicitly in your hosts file. It used to be on the Play Store, but it's open source and still available from Google Code for the meantime or from their recommended repository F-Droid, a repository of free software (FOSS) for Android.
http://code.google.com/p/ad-away/ <- AdAway's homepage
http://f-droid.org/ <- F-Droid's homepage
"Take away their income and you'll end up pushing them back towards only releasing on IOS."
You mean income from the adverts I will never click on, which will never send any cost-per-click money to Google or their Adwords partners? That income?
Advert blocking is a quite blunt but necessary demonstration of the end-user's likelihood to ever purchase what is being advertised. Personally I think the developers of apps that are on my devices, have gotten more money from me via paid-for apps than they will ever get via advertising. Especially the ones with permission-creep that get uninstalled the moment they start asking for all that bullshit (yes Rovio, I'm looking at you).
Now what was that about iOS, now with iAds?
http://adblockplus.org/en/android
As the link seems to be missing from the article (unless I missed it).
That said when I tried recently to use it again, even the localhost proxy work-around didn't work. Adblock Plus did run, but whenever I tried to open an http webpage in either Chrome, Dolphin or Firefox all I got was the tab title but an empty page. Turning off AB+ immediately allowed the pages to display properly.
Shame really as it was a useful app, albeit I guess one the Chocolate Factory felt their business model somewhat threatened by.
I must be, but I can't get it to work, with wifi on/off or a full reboot.
Adblock installed, set to port 26571 and localhost.
Was a bit mistaken earlier, it does work with Firefox, but if I try and access an http page via Chrome then I get an empty tab (but with its correct tab header). However if I try an https page then it works as well. Desktop or mobile versions of pages also don't help.
It used to work after Google did their initial messing about, but then they pushed a Chrome update and it all went south. Which I guess maybe the difference here?
Anyway, Adblock or Chrome....?
Hmm, well hello again Firefox.
Yeah a bit like their secure searching on Chrome. Now I suppose it could because they value our privacy and want to protect us but it could also be because most ad blockers can't process secure connections.
Luckily if you create a new search engine with this URL:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%s
And stay signed out you can continue insecure searching :)
That was my thought. They can remove it if they wish but they can't stop it being used so it seems rather petty and pointless to remove it. I don't tend to notice many ads on mobile sites so I hadn't bothered to install an ad blocker, methinks it's time to now just because.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention google!
>They can remove it if they wish but they can't stop it being used so it seems rather petty and pointless to remove it.
Here's a shit analogy to help explain why it isn't petty. If I gave people the use of a car in my business with the idea that they would make me money (somehow), then I found someone was actually taking money out of my bank account thanks to the the use of this car - would it be petty to stop them using my car? Sure they can use another car so perhaps I shouldn't bother. Would you like me to just post you a cheque and save the bother?
I don't think it's petty to stop helping someone to take my money - it'd be mental not to.
Yeah, I suppose if you buy something and it breaks a week later you just suck it up and bin it, all that terms and conditions bs is just for the sheeple who believe in crap like "law" and "society". Bunch of Corporate Pricks.
*Shakes head*
In the UK at least, you are protected by law, in the form of consumer rights, whether or not there are appropriate 'terms and conditions'. If electronic goods fail within a certain time (IIRC 12 months) due to a mnanufacturing defect, the manufacturer has to, by law, replace the faulty goods. No T&Cs required. What the T&Cs are actually for is to limit the responsibility of the company in question, not to strengthen the rights of the consumer. In fact, it is precisely because of things like T&Cs that we have legal concepts like 'unfair contract terms', and legally enshrined rights such as the one I describe above.
Because, at the end of the day, 'law' and 'society' are social constructs that are in place to, on the whole, protect the people. Without them, we'd have much worse corporate feudalism than even the most fevered fanboy's imagination could come up with, and we'd all be indentured to the likes of Google and Apple.
If electronic goods fail within a certain time (IIRC 12 months) due to a mnanufacturing defect, the manufacturer has to, by law
Actually no, it's not that simple. If the fault occurs within the first six months the retailer has to prove that it isn't a manufacturing defect. After that the consumer has to prove that it is. Secondly the retailer doesn't have to replace the item. That's just one of their options. They are quite at liberty to pay for a repair instead. They are also allowed to take wear and tear and usage into consideration when deciding what if anything the consumer is owed.
SOGA is good but it's not an automatic 'I win' for consumers. As noted above - it's between consumers and retailers not manufacturers.
But overall I agree with you. Everyone needs to have some respect for the law. If we pick and choose which bits we like it won't work at all.
The right thing? You're really going to claim the 'moral' high road on this?
If you want to get into philosophy then it is actually AdBlock users who are on the low side of the moral argument by accessing and using services for free but breaking the implied contract by refusing the advertisements that fund them.
That being said I use the hell out of AdBlock, it just drives me nuts when people pontificate on the moral implications of free software. There are far more things that deserve moral examination than free software.
Wrong context, fella.
There is no contract, implied or otherwise, when someone serves up adverts without a page viewers' knowledge, consent or prior agreement. It's take it or leave it as with all the other content on the page.
If 'contracts' as you define them were enforceable I'd have terms and conditions on my PC so that whenever my browser recreated a web page on my machine the page's author would owe me 10p.
I wish.
Not for the technically minded no. But for the majority of Android users it means they won't ever see this thing called AdBlock, meaning they'll probably not even think that blocking ads is a possibility. More importantly it shows Google making a choice and indicating a direction, making it clearer that ad revenue is where they are focusing.
On the one hand it's the user's device to do as they see fit. On the other it's Google's store to do with as they see fit, including removing bypass tools.
Anyway I expect these apps will appear on an apk and are not hard to install that way. I expect Google know that even if this is the case, just removing the app from the store will stop 95% of potential users from ever finding it.
>Implying that Android Market / Play Store & Apples' App Store are the harbingers of safety, and would never infect meeelions of users with duff Software before the Mob politely taps them on the Shoulder and YELLS WTF!? at them. cause ya only read about this happening on average 4x a year.
Thankfully its on Apples side most of the time, but not always!
As others have said GET THE BLODDY THING FROM A TRUSTED SOURCE!!
(i.e. Not from 4Shared.com but from abp.com (or where ever!)
On the note of "other" App Stores / Markets. Did Amazon ever manage to kick their Marketplace up a notch. I recalled looking into it once before. It must have made Microsofts Store seem like the Apple App Store by comparison. Perhaps they might start hosting ABP for those that want it. No they're not Google. But they seem like a nice Corporation.... AT FIRST!!
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to root my no-name tablet, I've been meaning to do this, and it crawls up in the todo list every time I go online (hardly ever), when I see the ad-crap and ad-supported crap trying and succeeding to make their presence known., but I don't go online often enough, and it slips down the list...
OK, I will spend 20 min of my time to root and first thing I'm gonna install is adblock plus. Yeah, I'm a thankless freetard, but also old-fashioned, if I see "free", I expect it to be free, and not attached to strings from here to Mars.
Google is using Google Play to try and lock down Android in more ways than one. I am mist concerned about the levels of DRM in Google Play apps these days, meaning that to use the app you must have Google Play (and have paid Google a nice little sum both for the app itself and then for the licence to use Google Play when you bought your phone).
We desperately need an app store that offers paid apps, but guarantees that they will be DRM-free. Developers could be attracted to such a store if it took a much smaller cut than the ridiculous 30% that Google and Apple demand.
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"they shouldn't restrict users' rights over their own devices"
They don't stop you using your device in the way you want. They've prevented some app developers from selling apps which violate the polices of the store. You can sideload, they can use a different delivery system.
"On my phone, using my bandwidth"
You agreed to download an ad-supported app from their website using their bandwidth. If you don't want the ad-supported version then pay for the ad-free version. If there is no ad-free version then get the ads or don't download the app. Why is that so hard to understand?
What about the developers of Early Bird, that turned the paid version into a "free" adware version, and "updated" all of the paying users to get hit with adverts?
Or maybe Rovio, who are the masters of permissions creep?
Sorry, but if somebody is blocking adverts then that is an indication that they are never going to buy what is advertised. Suck it up, and make a paid version. Do not assume that people will not do exactly what they wish with what is on their devices.
Damn right! Having written a number of mobile games, I was forced to swallow my pride and turn to advertising - paid with free trial proved to have less than a 1% coversion rate, and don't get me started on in-app purchasing...
Even back in the 8-bit days, people were happy taking a punt on a £1.99 or £2.99 game, and yes, quite a few of them turned out the be shit. But for weeks of work, it would be nice as a developer to get a bit of a return for my efforts.
So, if it was clearly unprofitable, why didn't you just quit developing games ? I find it a little bit strange that you're looking for a way to force people to pay for things they are not interesting in paying for. Is this what they call a business model ?
@AC 17:44 " I find it a little bit strange that you're looking for a way to force people to pay for things they are not interesting in paying for.
... and I find it strange that you seem to think that you are entitled to the rewards of someone else's work for free with no caveats. I never said I had to make a return - I write games because I enjoy writing them. However, like I said, it would be nice to get something back, and without the backing of a large marketing budget, advertising is the best way to ensure that happens.
Short version - it may be your phone and your bandwidth, but neither of those give any payment to the developer. It's the developers who decide how they want to make a return (if any) on their apps - if you want to encourage them away from monitizing via adverts then start paying. Otherwise put up and shut up.
Its not really evil or unethical for google to want to stop adblockers. Ads don't just make them money but pay the developers of the apps too. Without that income most of those apps would be pay only or not available on android at all.
The only unethical action here are the users who think that it is fair to take the apps for free and then block their part of the deal.
The same exact reasoning applies to organized crime who has to pay the thugs coming to mug you. If you don't pay, how exactly are they going to be paid ?
So companies are spending money do develop those adverts and to have them shoved at me. I don't even watch them and I never purchased anything on the Internet or in a store because as a result of an advert so how exactly are those developers going to be paid ? What if I just scrap those adverts just before they reach my eyes, does it make any difference ?
This story is odd, because the most effective Android ad blocker, Ad Away, is still there. I suspect that the point might be less a concern regarding ads (being arsed to block them apparently making you some sort of outlier), more an issue of throwing up a proxy that changes content transparently.. That would be a useful way for malware to behave.. hrm..
Anyway, the nice thing about Android is that unlike iOS, it not being approved for main store doesn't stop you installing it- though you obviously have to make actual informed decisions there :)
Actually your are wrong I can confirm as others here have already attested to above that AdAway is in fact gone, (i.e. removed) from the Play Store. Other then that I agree with everything else, you said. AdAway is the BEST! but, unlike ABP. Which up to this point my knowledge would have lead me to believe was a Firefox & Chrome Plug-in ONLY. AdAway strips Adds off everything including Ad-Warez such as but, not limited to Angry Birds.
If you ever asked yourself is it worth it to root your Device for this?
The Answer is simple. The Answer is YES!
As a rational adult with a functioning brain, I filter adverts in all formats at all times. Took me a while to blank the planet sized things on billboards, but I managed it. On an average bus or tube journey in London, I reckon the adbods are screaming in your face at least a hundred times an hour. On a bike, it's easier to resist the lure of the gigantic font and simplistic appeals to my baser instincts, because I'm mobile, and they're peripheral. Adverts may be a necessary evil in some people's eyes, but they're still evil, with one or two notable exceptions. Their relevance to my physical existence and my ability to afford the shiny is microscopic. Even film trailers fall into the "99% of everything is shite" paradigm. My default mode isn't credulous wonder, followed by instant desire.
I'd rather read a sensible balanced review than believe a blaring ad campaign. Hype is just a gobshite annoyance, and just as aggressive as pushy chuggers. For non-television watchers like me, relentless repetitive advertising seems curiously desperate. Overpriced garbage and dodgy sevices wheedling for attention. And as Ebay kindly pointed out, even the targetted version doesn't pay its way.
Maybe Google's getting its panic pants on, and manning the ramparts to defend its market share.
"adblock on stun"
ITV doesn't get this much abuse for showing adverts! The Google haters are ignorant of the following points:
1) Google has not banned you from installing this app.
That is all. It's understandable that they've removed it from the Play Store because when whiney El Presidente is FORCED [sic] to install an ad-supported app it's agreed that the developer gets paid by displaying adverts. How does it make any sense for the same store which provides er...FORCES...you with that app also to provide an easy way to circumvent that agreement? Even so, if you want to use it then go ahead. Just remember that nobody but you is doing anything evil.
El reg is so much better without the ads. I know that I'm taking food from the mouths of starving baby journalists but the ads have got too intrusive of late and adaway works .... after ridding myself of the proxy in the 3g apn. It's the internet like it used to be until google ads spoilt it for everyone!
Mines the one with the journos pay packets overflowing the pockets!
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