The opposite, I would say. Google has strict guidelines for ad creative content and polices its ads as well; they're almost certainly above their own bar. So this is essentially threatening to block everyone else, or at least those behaving poorly.
That is the conflict of interest. It's hard to see how this isn't going to strengthen their position in the ad serving market. Google being able to define where the bar for "badly behaving" is set means that only their competitors will be hurt by this.
What we need is a Sarbanes-Oxley for the Internet. If you track users and store their data, you have to be Internet-SOX compliant to prove you're handling it in a responsible way. Especially with the anti-fraud protections on credit cards these days, storing PII and browsing history is a lot more dangerous than a credit card breach.
I wonder if the motivation isn't a bit more subtle than that. My guess would be they're hoping to improve ads across the web so that people turn off ad blockers in general.
This is very likely the reason this has suddenly appeared in Chrome. Google's revenue relies on ads. Too many internet users blocking too many ads directly threatens Google's revenue stream. The recent sudden upsurge in ad-blocking would, from a Google perspective, look like an existential threat to their very existence.
And what would be one reasonable response that a company reliant on ads for income who also happens to produce a browser used by a huge number of users look like when they realize this existential threat exists? Well, one reasonable response would be exactly this, a "kill the misbehaving ones" addition to that browser in hopes of heading off the threat before it becomes a true, company killing, result.
Only time will tell if this change in mindset on their part actually results in heading off the eventual outcome.
Perhaps it is, but if there were the case why wouldn't they start by cleaning up their own platforms?
There are several angles to be wary of. Locking out competitors, replacing competitor ads with their own, forcing sites to migrate to, or back to, Google ad networks, etc.
Working with Google ads for over seven years as a publisher, they have one of the cleanest ad networks in the game. On top of that, you can preview every single ad that is shown with your account and block accordingly.
I agree, they need to thread carefully, but things need to change, and that change needs to come from two angles: publishers whoring out their users and ad networks not taking responsibility for what they let on their networks.
> you can preview every single ad that is shown with your account and block accordingly.
Really? I've never used Google ads, so for all I know you're right, but why would none of the ~600 comments in the previous discussion [1] mention that?
I'm on the Adx platform, which was invite only a few years back. It has some differences to Adsense, but I believe ad review and transparency with what creatives are displayed is part of both cores.
If I were to guess, there were 600 people in the thread who were not actually publishers using Google ads.
Adsense has its more than fair share of low quality ads. Of course, you can't compare it to popups/sound-ads etc. but compared to the past, it's certainly way lower. (Keep in mind the experience varies wildly based on your profile. Geo etc.)
As a publisher with a significant number of ad requests monthly this would be a godsend. I just spent the last week tracking down ads that were maliciously redirecting my mobile traffic off my site.
Turns out it was coming from a network called Sovrn, which is ironically a member of betterads.org and apparently "recently added an extra layer of protection from malware and redirects, all of [their] creatives are pre-scanned before they are served."
