zlacker

>>yuvada+(OP)
At the risk of downvotes: Is anyone really surprised?

AdNauseam is silently clicking ads. This directly costs Google money. Google happens to control the extension web store for their own browser. Removing it from the store really isn't that bad. Uninstalling it from existing browsers as malware? A little more malicious, but I would still consider it self defense.

There is even a method to install it directly[1] which AFAIK Google has not blocked.

Granted, if Google were not both running the browser and the ad network, these actions probably wouldn't have been taken. But the whole attitude that this is some sort of tyrannical thing is a little over the top.

1. https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/Install-AdNauseam-on...

>>Spoom+ga
People should still be giving Google shit for decisions like that, even if they're not surprised.

>>ben0x5+sb
If you look at it as the extension performs fraud, then what Google did is completely defensible. And I feel that it does. You may not feel that way exactly, but it's certainly justifiable that the extensions actions defraud the ad network.

>>fryguy+si
Fraud? If a user wants to automate his browser to click all ads encountered as he surfs, that's fraud?

>>mattle+sj
Yes. The intent is what's important to me. If it were an extension, like in the 90's when everyone was on dial-up, that pre-loaded links, and some of those links happened to be ads then that's one thing. The goal of that extension is to load pages faster since they've already been downloaded. That's not fraud. This extension clearly understands that links are ads and that clicking them will cost the advertiser money with no benefit to them. And then clicks them. That's what makes it fraud.

>>fryguy+sx
That's not how fraud works.