It was just a few days ago that we first heard about Adblock Fast, a plug-in for the mobile browser pre-installed on Samsung devices that effectively acts as an ad blocker. You can surf the web without the undesirable distraction of ads popping up every which place. Unfortunately, it looks like Google wasn’t very happy about it and has since removed the ad blocker from its Play Store.

It’s not really accurate to refer to Adblock Fast as a Samsung product, as it was developed by a startup called Rocketship Apps. Rocketship worked in partnership with Samsung, but the plug-in was not created by Samsung itself. And that might be why it was pulled from the Play Store. Apparently, it violates section 4.4 of the Developer Distribution Agreement, as it “interferes” and “disrupts” services of third parties… even if they’re actually working with the third party.

The funny thing is that Google does not have a hard and fast rule against ad blockers, even though Google makes the overwhelming majority of its revenue through advertising. If you list a browser in the Play Store and it has built-in ad blocking, that’s okay. If you list a plugin for someone else’s browser in the Play Store, it could get yanked. In this way, Samsung and Rocketship could circumvent this issue by offering Adblock Fast through the Samsung Apps store instead.

As an aside, the whole notion of using an ad blocker, whether on your computer or on your mobile device, is a bit of a controversial subject. I think most people would agree that they don’t necessarily like ads, but content producers — and that includes people who run websites like MEGATechNews — earn their livelihood through selling advertising space. Blocking ads has a direct impact on their earning potential. Something to think about.

If you’re still interested in getting Adblock Fast on your Samsung, go to their website to enter your email. You’ll get notified when and if it gets back into the Google Play Store. Adblock Fast is also available for Opera and iOS. They also offer the source code if you want to tinker with it.

Via The Verge

Share This With The World!