Google is reportedly planning to adopt built-in ad-blocking in its Chrome web browser for desktops and smartphones, which could potentially see the company take a hit to its main source of revenue.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, the ad-blocking feature may be turned on by default, and would block ads deemed unacceptable by the Coalition for Better Ads, which Google is a member of alongside companies like Facebook and News Corp.
Instead of specifically blocking the unacceptable ads on a website, the report said that Google may be planning to block all ads on a website until the unacceptable ads are removed.
Ads that do not meet the standards of the Coalition include “pop-up ads, auto-play video ads with sound, prestitial ads with countdown and large sticky ads”.
As of Q4 2016, Google’s parent company Alphabet said that advertising accounted for 85.9% of revenue. While the company’s plan to diversify saw the proportion of revenue attributable to advertising drop slightly from 89.4% a year earlier, the US$3.4 billion in revenue from other sources is still significantly lower than the $22.4 billion from advertising.
Google Chrome has more than half the market share on both desktops and mobile devices according to data from NetMarketShare.
