Google might have introduced Googleweblight, Accelerated mobile pages, but Opera Inc believes that the major reason for slow loading websites is advertisements.
To make websites load faster, Opera Inc has added its own ad blocking technology in the latest edition of Opera 37 desktop browser.
According to Opera, when this module is active, the browser’s performance will be much better than ad-block plus extension installed Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
When you open a website, Opera 37 will notify you that it has detected advertisements and the browser will display an option to disable them. If you don’t want to be notified, visit privacy and security settings and activate the inbuilt adblocker.
The browser will not modify Windows or Linux host files. It allows you to manage exceptions. Exceptions are nothing but the websites that the browser should render as it was served by the web server. This module is easy to manage. If you’ve added a lot of hostnames, you can easily remove or rename an item in the list.
When advertisements on a web page have been blocked, the browser will display a blue color icon to the right of its address bar. If the user clicks on this icon, he’ll see a popup that displays the below information:
- The number of ads blocked till date, in the last 7 days and today.
- A graph for the above data.
- A toggle button to turn off the adblocker.
Ad-blockers are growing in popularity. Apple IOS prevented users from downloading third-party applications to disable adverts on websites. The latest versions of IOS don’t come with any such restrictions.
Will Chrome or Firefox follow the suit?
Ad-blockers might not be incorporated in Google’s software products because over 50% of Google’s revenue comes from advertisements displayed in the search results. Chrome being one of the top products of Google may never feature an inbuilt adblocker. If it manages to have one, Chrome might have a serious impact on revenue of many websites.
Firefox foundation gets a lot of money for making Bing or Google the default search engine. If the developers add an adblocker to Firefox, Google or Microsoft will not be happy with the Mozilla Foundation. The 2 tech giants may not renew the contract.
Conclusion: If you think a website has an unusual number of banners, floating or pop-up advertisements, try out the free Opera 37 desktop browser on your Windows, Mac or Linux computer.
