Adblock Plus

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Adblock Plus

logo
Settings window for the filter rules
Setting window for the filter rules in version 1.3.9 under Windows 7
Basic data

developer Eyeo GmbH
Publishing year January 18, 2006
Current  version 3.4 (Firefox)
1.3 (Android)
3.4 (Google Chrome)
3.4 (Opera)
1.3.10 (K-Meleon)
1.6 (Internet Explorer)
1.12.13 (Safari)
3.8.4 (Edge)
programming language JavaScript , XML User Interface Language , Cascading Style Sheets
category Ad blocker
License GPLv3
German speaking Yes
adblockplus.org

Adblock Plus ( English for 'Werbesperre Plus'; ABP for short) is a commercial tool offeredby Eyeo GmbH to suppress advertising on websites, a so-called ad blocker . It enables the userto hide online advertising and not even download advertising elements from the web. In addition to graphics, Adblock Plus can alsoremove inline frames , Java applets , Flash advertising and pure text advertising .

In 2011 the "Acceptable Ads" program was introduced, which was supposed to exclude certain non-intrusive advertisements from the blockade by means of a white list that was active by default . The fact that Eyeo was charging high-reach websites to participate in the program was a repeated source of controversy.

Adblock Plus is available as an extension for various browsers ( Mozilla Firefox , Mozilla Firefox Mobile , Google Chrome , Opera , K-Meleon ), the SeaMonkey Internet suite , Internet Explorer and the Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client . Since November 2012, Adblock Plus has also been available as an app for Android devices. Since 2015, Adblock Browser has been offering its own web browser with already integrated Adblock Plus for Android.

functionality

In order to be able to block advertising at all, AdBlock Plus needs a list of filter rules. During installation, the user is presented with suggestions for suitable filter lists. The filter lists are provided by third parties.

Basically, AdBlock Plus supports two different types of filter rules. On the one hand, requests to specific web servers or requests to specific resources on a web server (so-called Uniform Resource Identifier , URL) can be blocked directly so that they are not even loaded. This is useful because many website operators include advertising on their websites via third-party servers such as DoubleClick or Google AdSense . The second type of filter consists of hiding certain elements within an HTML document, which is also known as element hiding .

In order not to have to block every element / URL individually, AdBlock Plus offers the option of using placeholders in the form of an asterisk (*). This symbol stands for any content.

Examples: 

http://de.wikipedia.org
http://*.wikipedia.org
||meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:BannerLoader?*

The first line only applies to the German-speaking part of Wikipedia, the second would block the entire portal, and the last would prevent central messages such as the donation block or technical announcements on the entire portal. There is also the option of using regular expressions . These offer a greatly expanded syntax and allow you to explicitly determine which URLs should be cleaned up, while still keeping the list short. This is particularly useful for large filter lists in order to reduce the number of entries. On the other hand, AdBlock Plus advises against using regular expressions, as their evaluation is considerably slower. Adblock Plus interprets all filters that start and end with a slash as regular expressions.

In addition to the filter lists provided by third-party providers, you can also create filter rules yourself. Among other things, this is possible with the Element Hiding Helper extension also provided by Eyeo GmbH , with which individual elements can be selected and blocked with the mouse. Websites and objects can also be whitelisted using a filter .

history

The predecessor of ABP is Adblock (not to be confused with the open source program of the same name, which was taken over by an unknown investor in 2015, see AdBlock ). Since the further development of the predecessor had stagnated since 2004, a fork was created with Adblock Plus that offers the following additional functions:

  • Subscribing to pre-made filter lists, which can also be updated automatically if required
  • Create a whitelist of pages whose content is not filtered
  • Hide unwanted HTML elements
  • Display of the total number of hits for each filter
  • Faster algorithm

discourse

Websites with ad blocker detection

In the meantime, some website operators have started to recognize the use of Adblock and take countermeasures. For example, some websites display warning messages that indicate the concept of advertising funding. Other site operators block users who use an ad blocker, which has been the case at Bild.de since October 2015, for example. In return, scripts such as the Anti-Adblock-Killer were programmed, which cancel the ad blocker detection on the listed websites, so that the website can still be used despite activated Adblock Plus. However, the site operators would also react to these measures, which would lead to a technical race.

Acceptable Ads

As of version 2.0, Adblock Plus is configured by default in such a way that individual advertisements rated as "unobtrusive" by the developer Eyeo (so-called acceptable ads ) are not blocked. A special whitelist is used for this, on which smaller websites and blogs can be entered free of charge, and websites with wider reach can be entered against payment. This should have a positive effect on the development of the World Wide Web as a whole. The function was controversially discussed before its introduction at the end of 2011 and it met with strong rejection from parts of the users.

The controversy about the acceptable ads function was revived at the end of June 2013 after research by Sascha Pallenberg , who summarized it as an “advertising network with blackmail potential”. The people behind Adblock Plus largely confirmed the research, but justified the business model in such a way that the criteria for participating in acceptable ads are the same for everyone. On July 1, 2013, Adblock Plus boss Till Faida replied, who partially contradicted the allegations raised by Pallenberg on mobilegeeks .

In October 2013, the Austrian federal competition authority accused Google of abuse of power in relation to AdBlock Plus . According to this, Google should make payments to the developers in order to avoid filtering out their own advertising by adding them to the whitelist.

At the beginning of February 2014, the conflict between Eyeo and various online marketers intensified after Pallenberg had again raised serious allegations against the business methods of the Adblock Plus operators. Companies such as Google , Amazon , eBay and Yahoo pay several million US dollars to be included in the whitelist to Adblock Plus, according to Pallenberg. Even Microsoft have such an agreement with Eyeo.

Michael Hanfeld described the approach of the Adblock Plus developer in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as “a business model in bouncer style [...] Whoever pays, gets through and can count himself among those who [place] advertisements that the column of pushers sees fit from Eyeo is harmless. "Behind Adblock Plus are" financially strong investors from the advertising industry [...] who are using the Adblocker to set up their own advertising network ". First advertising is blocked, then reactivated against payment. So you try to "destroy everyone else's advertising business and claim it for yourself."

Various marketers and publishers, including Axel Springer SE , IP Deutschland , Pro Sieben Sat 1 Media , Spiegel-Verlag and Süddeutsche Zeitung stated that they want to take legal action against Eyeo GmbH or are already taking legal action. In April 2015, the pointed Hamburg Regional Court the complaint of the Handelsblatt and the action of Time Online from, the Munich I Regional Court summoned in May 2015, the complaints of the ProSiebenSat.1 Media and RTL Interactive / IP Germany also refused. In the legal action brought by Axel Springer Verlag, the Cologne Regional Court named the Eyeo GmbH's approach as "highly questionable", but agreed with the previous judicial assessments. In March 2016, the Süddeutsche Zeitung's lawsuit at the Munich I Regional Court also failed; Adblock Plus does not represent "a specific obstruction of a competitor".

On June 24, 2016, the Cologne Higher Regional Court partially overturned the dismissing judgment of the Cologne Regional Court in the Axel Springer SE proceedings against Eyeo. While the web filtering carried out by Adblock Plus was not assessed by the Senate as anti-competitive, the whitelisting recording , which is subject to payment, is an “impermissible aggressive practice” within the meaning of the law against unfair competition . In contrast, the Munich Higher Regional Court declared the actions of the Adblock Plus operators to be fully admissible in its judgment of August 17, 2017. The three originally separate lawsuits filed by the publishers RTL Interactive, Pro Sieben Sat 1 Media and Süddeutsche Zeitung were completely unsuccessful in the Munich proceedings with their claims. In view of the different Cologne decision from the previous year, the Munich court allowed the possibility of an appeal to the Federal Court of Justice .

The BGH did not follow Springer-Verlag's argumentation. The software does not violate the freedom of the press. The use of ad blockers is permitted, including on news sites. Eyeo did not directly hinder the site provider because the software had to be installed and activated manually by the user and he could also uninstall and deactivate it at any time. In addition, the publishers have the option of excluding users of programs such as Adblock Plus from their websites if such users are undesirable.

Software with similar functionality

As a reaction to the controversial "Acceptable Ads" function, Adblock Plus was spun off , which did not take over this function, including the popular Adblock Edge extension . The developer of Adblock Edge later stopped the further development in favor of uBlock .

An ad blocker similar to Adblock Plus is AdBlock from BetaFish Incorporated (not to be confused with Adblock for Firefox, the predecessor of Adblock Plus), which despite the similar name was neither related nor allied with Adblock Plus. In 2015, AdBlock was taken over by an investor and the founder then left the company. AdBlock then joined the Acceptable Ads program.

In July 2014, a browser extension called uBlock was presented with a comparable range of functions as Adblock Plus, which, according to the developers, requires fewer resources. In April 2015, the original developer of uBlock gave up his project and then developed a spin-off called uBlock Origin .

Web links

Commons : Adblock Plus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ adblockplus.org: Imprint
  2. ↑ a b c Thomas Greiner: Adblock Plus 3.4 for Chrome, Firefox and Opera released. eyeo GmbH, October 31, 2018, accessed on November 4, 2018 .
  3. ↑ https://adblockplus.org/releases/adblock-plus-1122-for-chrome-opera-and-safari-released
  4. ↑ Adblock Plus 1.3.10 for K-Meleon released in the Adblock Plus Blog
  5. ↑ Adblock Plus 1.6 for IE released on the Adblock Plus Blog, accessed December 25, 2017
  6. ↑ https://adblockplus.org/releases/adblock-plus-1123-for-safari-released
  7. ↑ Adblock Plus 3.8.4 for Edge released on the Adblock Plus Blog, accessed June 14, 2020
  8. ↑ The adblock-plus Open Source Project on Open Hub: Languages Page . In: Open Hub . (accessed on September 3, 2018).
  9. ↑ Documentation of the project
  10. ↑ [https://adblockplus.org/en/installation installation page of the project] (no longer available, see [http://wayback.archive.org/web/20110223212807/https://adblockplus.org/en/installation archive page].
  11. ^ Opera add-ons
  12. ↑ adblockplus.org
  13. ↑ Writing Adblock Plus filters. Retrieved September 3, 2015 .
  14. ↑ Element Hiding Helper. Adblock Plus, accessed November 21, 2015 .
  15. ↑ Detection of ad blockers and countermeasures on vermarktercheck.de, October 26, 2011.
  16. ↑ Bild.de blocks users from ad blockers. golem.de , October 13, 2015, accessed on November 21, 2015 .
  17. ↑ Henning Steier: Fight against ad blockers: Click and away . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . March 23, 2016, ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed March 19, 2017]).
  18. ↑ a b Allow acceptable advertising in Adblock Plus. Adblock Plus, accessed June 4, 2015 .
  19. ↑ Activate acceptable advertising in Adblock Plus - agreements. Adblock Plus, accessed June 4, 2015 .
  20. ↑ Adblock Plus 2.0 lets non-annoying advertisements through. heise online , December 14, 2011, accessed June 4, 2015 .
  21. ↑ Wladimir Palant: Random thought on communities. Adblock Plus Blog, December 15, 2011, accessed June 4, 2015 .
  22. ^ Sascha Pallenberg : Adblock Plus Undercover. mobilegeeks.de, June 26, 2013, accessed June 4, 2015 .
  23. ↑ Volker Briegleb: Serious allegations against the ad blocker AdBlock Plus. heise online, June 26, 2013, accessed June 4, 2015 .
  24. ↑ Till Faida: #pallengate: Why Sascha Pallenberg deliberately lies. Adblock Plus Blog, July 1, 2013, accessed June 4, 2015 .
  25. ↑ Google now also makes case for Austria's competition watchdog. derStandard.at , October 28, 2013, accessed June 4, 2015 .
  26. ^ Sascha Pallenberg: Adblock Plus Payday - $ 30 million from Amazon, Ebay, Google and Yahoo. mobilegeeks.de, January 31, 2014, accessed June 4, 2015 .
  27. ↑ Adwords: Google reportedly pays $ 25 million to Adblock Plus. Golem.de , January 31, 2014, accessed June 4, 2015 .
  28. ↑ Google and Microsoft: Secret Deals with Adblock Plus. derStandard.at, February 3, 2015, accessed on June 4, 2015 .
  29. ↑ Michael Hanfeld: Business with ad blockers - advertising killers on the Internet , November 13, 2015, accessed on January 11, 2016.
  30. ↑ Acceptable Ads: Advertisers apparently want to sue Adblock Plus. heise online, February 3, 2014, accessed on June 4, 2015 .
  31. ↑ Adblock Plus: According to Focus, German advertising marketers want to sue. pcgameshardware.de, February 3, 2014, accessed June 4, 2015 .
  32. ↑ ProsiebenSat.1 withdraws application for disposition against Adblock Plus. CMS Germany, September 27, 2013, accessed June 4, 2015 .
  33. ↑ Zeit Online is also suing Adblock Plus mother Eyeo. horizont.net , December 17, 2014, accessed June 4, 2015 .
  34. ^ Start of the process in Cologne - Adblock Plus: Axel Springer sues Eyeo. Internet World Business, March 11, 2015, accessed March 15, 2015 .
  35. ↑ Süddeutsche also complains against Adblock Plus. Internet World Business, March 13, 2015, accessed March 15, 2015 .
  36. ↑ Hamburg District Court, 16th Chamber for Commercial Matters, judgment of April 21, 2015, 416 HKO 159/14 (anonymized)
  37. ↑ Ben Williams: Restating the obvious: adblocking declared legal. In: Adblock Plus and (a little) more. April 21, 2015, accessed October 25, 2015 .
  38. ↑ Hamburg District Court: Adblock Plus can continue to block. heise online, April 21, 2015, accessed April 30, 2015 .
  39. ↑ Juliane Paperlein: Munich Regional Court rejects the lawsuit / Pro Sieben Sat 1 wants to examine appeal . In: Horizont , May 27, 2015
  40. ↑ Sascha Bjørn Greier: Pro7 Sat1 loses against ad blockers! RA Greier explains the background . June 9, 2015, accessed May 12, 2020 .
  41. ↑ meedia.de: Eyeo also wins at Cologne Regional Court: Springer appeals against AdBlock Plus , September 29, 2015
  42. ↑ golem.de: Süddeutsche Zeitung loses lawsuit against Eyeo , March 30, 2016
  43. ↑ cf. Section 4a (1) sentence 1 UWG
  44. ↑ http://www.internetworld.de/onlinemarketing/adblocker/adblock-plus-so-in-deutschland-vertritten-1109728.html
  45. ↑ Press release of the OLG Cologne: Springer achieves partial success against Adblock Plus ( memento from August 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), June 24, 2016, accessed on June 25, 2016.
  46. ↑ Court allows AdBlock. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , August 17, 2017, accessed on August 18, 2017.
  47. ↑ FAZ.NET/Reuters: Ad blockers are allowed. In: FAZ.net . April 19, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018 .
  48. ↑ Popular Adblock Plus fork Adblock Edge to be discontinued. April 13, 2015, accessed January 9, 2017 .
  49. ↑ AdBlock is not Adblock Plus. Retrieved June 4, 2015 .
  50. ↑ uBlock for Chrome is a resource-friendly adblocker by the HTTP Switchboard author. July 24, 2014, accessed June 4, 2015 .
  51. ↑ gorhill: Performance and Efficiency. Retrieved June 4, 2015 .
  52. ↑ Update README.md April 4, 2015, accessed 19 2017