When I first read the story that Google removes adblockers from Play Store I was ready to rail against google some more, after the previous dick move of killing Google Reader.
In all honesty, this has taken far longer than I anticipated. Google, the world’s largest internet advertising company, has removed several popular ad-blocking tools from the Play Store. While they are technically in the right to do so - they violate the Play Store developer distribution agreement - it’s still a bit of a dick move. Luckily, though, unlike some other platforms, you can easily sideload the adblockers onto your Android device.
Reading a bit more though, they do have a point.
The reasons for the removal are actually more sound than you’d think, at least for some of the removed adblockers. AdBlock Plus, for instance, used a security vulnerability to allow it to work without root access. A tool like AdAway, in the meantime, took a more ‘wholesome’ approach and edited the hosts file to block ads everywhere - in browsers and ad-supported applications.
Apple doesn’t allow these sort of apps that require low level access to the OS for exactly the same reason, so I guess I can’t fault them for wanting to make their OS more secure (especially with the more recent reports about the amounts of Malware that is already present in the Android Play store.