Google, Microsoft, Amazon made confidential transactions with the developer AdBlock Plus

According to RBC , citing a publication in the Financial Times, a number of major international corporations, such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Taboola, have made confidential deals with Eyeo, which is developing a popular ad blocking browser extension AdBlock Plus.

According to the developer, the Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browser extension has been installed over 300 million times, and over 50 million people actively use the tool to block unwanted advertisements. Apparently, the main sellers of contextual and display advertising on the Internet, whose market is estimated at $ 120 billion according to 2014, are seriously concerned about the problem of ad blocking in users' browsers.

Confidential contracts, the amount and cost of services for which is not disclosed, are most likely aimed at inclusion in the so-called. The “white list” (white list) of all the advertisers mentioned. Thus, the AdBlock Plus extension will not be able to continue to block advertising messages related to these providers. Not so long ago, according to users, the extension stopped working in the Bing search engine, which is owned by Microsoft.
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German media holdings RTL and ProSiebenSat.1 have already filed lawsuits against Eyeo, seeking damages - they are also planned to be joined by French publishers. In the words of the AdBlock Plus developers themselves: “Only those sites that meet certain criteria are allowed in the program of permitted advertising, among them:“ no distortion of the advertising message ”.”

How much is "unlocking" - is unknown. An unnamed representative of one of the organizations "collaborating" with Eyeo, said that the requested fee for inclusion in the "white list" is 30% of advertising revenue from impressions and clicks on blocks blocked by the AdBlock Plus extension.

PageFair and Adobe annually collect statistics on users of extensions that block unwanted advertising, and only in the last year the number of their users in the world has increased by 70% and now has 144 million active users.