March 14, 2013
Google Removes Adblockers from Play Store

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.





Posted by Arcterex at March 14, 2013 04:13 PM