Rumors of a potential Google Chrome always-on ad blocker circulated around the online advertising industry yesterday. It was all started by this post from the WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-plans-ad-blocking-feature-in-popular-chrome-browser-1492643233
This is huge news, as it means Google might be getting serious about cracking down on some of the terrible ad experiences out there (despite being the largest advertising company in the world). In short, their adblocker looks set to block only the most annoying types of ads as discovered by the Coalition for Better Ads (an organization that includes Facebook and Google as members).
I see three possible reasons for Google pursuing this (if true, it is probably a combination of all of these):
1. They want to stop paying AdBlock Plus to get their own ads whitelisted. AdBlock Plus is the most-used adblocker worldwide with somewhere between 50-100M users. They make money via getting the largest websites to pay to be part of their "Acceptable Ads" whitelist. It is estimated that this is costing Google at least a few million per year. Putting an adblocker inside Chrome should decrease the number of people who download Adblock Plus, and in turn, decreasing the leverage they have over Google.
2. They want to force more advertisers onto the Google platform. Google running an adblocker means that they get to decide what is and isn't an OK ad. As such, the easiest way for an advertiser and a website to know that their ad will not be blocked by Google is to simply buy the ad through Google (they surely won't block their own ads). This could help grow their monopoly over the online ad industry, and may raise some anti-trust concerns
3. They genuinely care about improving the online ad experience for users. Online ads have been a major blemish for the online user-experience. Cutting out the worst offenders will instantly improve page load speeds, data privacy, and general aesthetics of the web. Chrome is by far the most popular browser at the moment, and as Chrome goes, the web at large goes.
Even if Google's main motivation isn't #3, I believe this move will have positive repercussions for all internet users. Adblocker usage has been hovering around 15-25% for a few years, and it simply isn't enough by itself to force the online ad industry to clean up its act. Chrome represents somewhere around 50% of browser usage, so would instantly create a huge problem for websites depending on terrible ads to fund their content. Ultimately, this should push advertisers to focus on the user-experience and provide tolerable ad experiences.