Chrome extensions now supports ads, might annoy users

Google’s been successful with their Chrome browser and there are a lot of things to like about it. However, the latest news about it might not please everyone. Google’s Chrome has been successful because of its very popular extension support and that might soon be used to deliver ads to your PC. Google has now added support for advertisements within extensions for the Chrome browser. The more detailed information of this addition is available on the Developers page on Google for Chrome. This of course doesn’t mean that Google will be adding ads to the browser, but an extension, for example, can choose to place ads within it.  There are of course some rules that have been set in place to make sure that the feature isn’t exploited, by the developers of extensions. For instance, the user needs to be informed that the ads are being placed within the extension and that the ad doesn’t tamper with the functionality of the site being viewed. The developer cannot also force the user to click the ad or submit personal information to it in order to access the extension.

The move to implement ads is likely to create some uproar, but hopefully, with the rules and regulations in place, Google will minimize rogue extensions that try to exploit the feature. It also opens up possibilities for extension developers, for revenue. Extensions on browsers have been free, so there’s close to no income that developers receive. This recent move might change that.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

Now featuring ads within extensions

Chrome has seen great progress over the years and extension support has been one of the reasons it’s been able to take on Firefox. We also recently reported that Chrome beat IE to become the world’s most used browser. Chrome usurped a market share of 32.43 percent, while Internet Explorer had a share of 32.12 percent. Firefox was trailing behind at a moderate 25.55 percent and is now slowly recovering from the recent dip in usage. Apple’s Safari had a share of 7.09 percent and Opera far behind with a share of 1.77 percent. Internet Explorer has been known to be the most dominant browser for a very long time, much of which is likely because Internet Explorer comes pre-bundled with the Windows operating system. Chrome has seen growth and progress over the years, which has made it the numero uno browser around. 

Chrome 20 is the latest version of the browser and was launched just a while back. We’ve seen a couple of new additions to the latest iterations of Chrome, one of the interesting ones being tab syncing. With that feature, when you’re signed in to Chrome, your open tabs are synced across all your devices, so you can quickly access them from the “Other devices” menu on the New Tab page. If you’ve got Chrome for Android Beta, you can open the same recipe tab right on your phone when you run out to the store for more ingredients. The back and forward buttons will even work, so you can pick up browsing right where you left off. Signing into Chrome also syncs your bookmarks, apps, extensions, history, themes, and other settings. That way, when you sign in to Chrome, you can have your personal Chrome experience on all your devices. While all that was brilliant, the fact that extensions could soon have ads in them may be disturbing to many users.