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Adblock Fast Returns To Google Play a Week After Being Pulled

Posted by timothy on from the permission-ping-pong dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A week ago, Google suddenly removed Adblock Fast from its Android app store. Today, the ad blocker has been reinstated, enabling Samsung users to download it once again from Google Play. Late last month, the browser preinstalled on Samsung's Android phones gained support for content-blocking plugins, and the first plugin to support the functionality was a free and open-source solution called Adblock Fast. Rocketship Apps, the maker of Adblock Fast, uploaded the Android plugin on January 29, but Google rejected an app update on February 1. The app hit Google Play's top spot for free, new productivity apps on February 2, and was pulled by Google on the same day.

6 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. You need an adblocker by The-Ixian · · Score: 2

    Just to load the androidheadlines.com page... even on a full computer it takes forever to load.

    Anyway, Google is free to ban, pull, push, whatever any app they want... it's their store...

    --
    My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
    1. Re:You need an adblocker by Tony+Isaac · · Score: 2

      Google IS currently free to do what they want. But should they be?

      I'd like to see alternate app stores become available, giving users a real choice. Yes, I know Amazon and Samsung have their own stores, but they are available only to users of their own branded devices. Of course, you can side-load apps, but then you open the door to all kinds of security issues. What I want is alternative stores that are completely integrated. THAT would give us some true competition, and maybe some better rates for developers.

  2. How to measure ad traffic? by jc42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's widely believed that ads have taken over (from porn ;-) as the main traffic on the Web. This is rather significant if even close to true, it's likely one of the main reasons that our handy little portable gadgets (that many of us hardly ever actually use as phones) run so slowly and eat up so much bandwidth.

    But a problem with even discussing this is that, as far as I've found, there's no reliable app available to actually measure our bandwidth use, classify it, and tell us what's eating it up. I do know that my android gadget is often running warm, eating batter and bandwidth, when it's just sitting "idle" in my pocket.

    Yeah, I know; part of that is the tracking software. ;-) But whatever; I can't really say with any authority what's causing its activity. The one thing I can actually see is apps that stay running in the background, and the gadget's power usage app does report that "innocent" apps like mail/message readers and web browsers are using battery when "nothing is happening". Investigating does often show that some of their windows contain video ads that are running. The power-usage app does let me kill apps, but that's not very useful in measuring the source of the power/bandwidth usage.

    So is there a good way to actually measure the traffic, classify it, etc., so we can actually determine what's really eating up the battery and bandwidth? Are there good google keywords to learn about it? There are a few good unix/linux tools for examining network traffic, but I haven't found them for android, ios, etc. Anyone know what they might be, and how we might verify that they're not just trojans?

    (And yes, I'm also aware that the marketers are going to read this and be major sources of replies that try to reassure us without answering anything. Maybe we can moderate them down? ;-)

    --
    Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
  3. Now that our advertisers have reviewed it... by Sparowl · · Score: 2
    You can have your ad-blocker back! Our Advertisers have had time to review it, find work arounds, and will be adjusting their revenue streams accordingly.

    Additional ads may now be implanted into your program.

    We appreciate your addition to our revenue!

  4. Re:Stop with the crappy proxies by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 3, Informative

    I use Firefox on Android with adblock plus, searchonymous, and google redirects fixer installed. Clunky browser overall but it's better than dealing with the usual shit that most websites (slashdot included) have. I used the Ghostery addon before, but after seeing how much better privacy badger is (or rather, how it doesn't break websites like most privacy addons do) I just use that on desktop and hope they might make it available for Android. For now, I mostly just rely on the setting to make third party cookies be session only.

  5. More information about Google's decision by JoeyRox · · Score: 2

    http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/...