The information comes from a session titled “Microsoft Edge: What’s Next for Microsoft’s New Browser and Web Platform” that was held during Microsoft’s BUILD conference and spotted by Ed Bott from ZDNet.
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If the company strictly follows this roadmap, this new feature will be a replacement for Tracking Protection Lists (TPLs), one of the few popular Internet Explorer features we have known.
“We are not building a native ad blocker within [Microsoft Edge], but we will support third-party ad blockers like AdBlock and AdBlock Plus, “tweeted Jacob Rossi, an engineer on the browser team, earlier today”.
The fourth item on that list is the one that has gotten everyone excited: “Build ad blocking features into the browser”.
Rossi and Pflug said that the slide was misinterpreted.
It guess that’s that – word from the horse’s mouth which confirms the non-existence of a native ad blocker on Microsoft Edge. Unsurprisingly, Google, who rely on advertising for more than 90% of its revenue, has not released plans for its own built in adblocking software. Opera also introduced an update with built-in ad-blocking as an instrumental feature.
“I’m perfectly willing to look at ads when I’m on FiOS or some other fast connection but when I’m stuck with Time Warner in Southern California, all bets are off”, a ConsumerAffairs colleague said. Users merely click the shield icon to activate or deactivate ad blocking for a specific site. Only smaller browsers like Opera and courageous natively support ad blocking. In our hands on with courageous, we noticed ad-heavy websites loaded quicker than on Chrome and Firefox. More recently, Apple built content blocking into iOS 9, which allowed developers to create apps to block ads.
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However, you can expect to see extension support for Edge and a lot more improvements that are coming later this year in the next major update. You’ll just have to install an ad blocker extension yourself.
