French provider blocks Internet advertising for all users.

From January 1, 2013, the Internet provider Free.fr willfully turned on the default Internet advertising filter for all subscribers. Thus, 5.3 million users of the Internet provider in one day lost the opportunity to see Internet banners on websites, contextual advertising Adsense and other advertisements, due to which there is free and free content on the Internet.



Naturally, the majority of users were only pleased with this populist Internet provider innovation, but such an initiative caused widespread outrage among the Internet industry representative and online media, who recommend their readers to turn off this option . At the request of each user can opt out of the forced blocking of Internet advertising.



On the forums they write that ad blocking is carried out on the black list, which is constantly replenished. These include Google Adsense, NetAvenir, AdTech and many other ad networks.



Although this option, at first glance, seems convenient and useful for users, in fact cutting out Internet advertising at the provider level is a rather irresponsible behavior and a very dangerous precedent on the part of the ISP. If we imagine that all Internet providers will start cutting out Internet advertising, then there will be almost no free content and services on the Internet. What will make Google, Facebook and other Internet companies live? Even China with its “great firewall” did not descend to cutting advertising.

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UPD. French Digital Economy Minister Fleur Pellerin expressed a positive assessment of Free Internet provider’s decision in an interview with Le Figaro . “Now there are real problems about the distribution of costs between content providers — in particular, video content generators, which require a lot of traffic — and telecom operators,” Fleur Pelerin said. “In France and in Europe, we need to find a more consistent way to integrate Internet giants into national ecosystems.” Today, Monday, Fleur Pelerin intends to convene a meeting with the participation of stakeholders in order to find a compromise.



UPD2. The actions of Free provider and its owner Xavier Niel are regarded by many as a direct attack on Google. Although Niel himself refrains from commenting, but in previous interviews he directly expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that Free communication channels are full of Youtube content, and “no one wants to pay for the channel expansion”.



Xavier Niel is an experienced and successful IT entrepreneur, he started a business back in the days of Minitel , the French alternative to the Internet. In the last quarter, the revenue of his company Iliad (it owns the Internet provider Free, the newspaper Le Monde and the mobile operator Free) amounted to 819 million euros.