Google Chrome update will save users’ battery lives and punish advertisers



Chrome is going to start automatically blocking ads (Picture Getty) Google has announced an incoming change to its Google Chrome web browser that should improve users’ battery lives by ditching adverts.

The company has said that from August 2020, Chrome will start to limit the resources that advertisers can use to display their message.

The adverts in question are ones that are badly programmed and not optimised, therefore consuming valuable computing power and causing browsing speeds to drop.

‘We have recently discovered that a fraction of a percent of ads consume a disproportionate share of device resources, such as battery and network data, without the user knowing about it,’ explained Marshall Vale, the product manager for Chrome at Google.

‘These ads (such as those that mine cryptocurrency, are poorly programmed, or are unoptimized for network usage) can drain battery life, saturate already strained networks, and cost money.’ 

He continued: ‘In order to save our users’ batteries and data plans, and provide them with a good experience on the web, Chrome will limit the resources a display ad can use before the user interacts with the ad.

‘When an ad reaches its limit, the ad’s frame will navigate to an error page, informing the user that the ad has used too many resources.’

When an advert is removed, users will simply see a greyed-out box.

Users will see a greyed-out box where the advert used to be (Google) Google says it will be experimenting with this new approach over the next few months. Users should start to notice the effects from the end of August.

‘Our intent with this extended rollout is to give appropriate time for ad creators and tool providers to prepare and incorporate these thresholds into their workflows,’ Vale said.

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