
It's no secret that ad blocking extensions like AdBlock, Adblock Plus, and AdBlock Pro are becoming
increasingly popular today with over 200 million active users and it's costing publishers
billions of dollars.
In fact, as I write this blog post, both AdBlock and Adblock Plus have over 50 million users. I was actually not using an adblocker until few months ago as I rarely click ads. So, I argued with myself why should I install an adblocker when it doesn't make any difference.
However, I tried AdBlock few months back --- when YouTube ads became increasingly annoying --- and immediately realized that it's a must-have for me. The only thing is... it's NOT the extension's ad blocking capability that I find interesting. But it's something else --- which I will explain below.
Adblock & Adblock Plus: A Brief History
As you probably know, the two most popular ad blockers for Google Chrome are AdBlock and Adblock Plus.
What's the difference? Well, it sounds similar but they are two different extensions
developed independently.
Apparently,
AdBlock was inspired by
Adblock Plus itself when it was just a Firefox only add-on. Now 'AdBlock Plus' is also available for Google Chrome, Android, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer, etc. and 'AdBlock' is available for Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, and iOS.
Adblock Plus is the
most popular Firefox add-on with over 21 million users (it's got the first-mover advantage on Mozilla Firefox) and
AdBlock is the most popular Chrome extension (it's got the first-mover advantage on Google Chrome).
By the way, both AdBlock and Adblock Plus claims that it's the most popular ad blocker and both have over 40 million users. However, AdBlock has almost 2x more ratings than Adblock Plus on Chrome Web Store, so I guess it's safe to assume that it's the most popular ad blocker on Google Chrome.