Native ad-blocker appears in Chrome Canary on Android

Those who like to live life on the forefront of technology and run the Chrome Canary build on Android may have noticed an ad-blocking option appear in the settings menu.

The Canary channel for Android is an experimental and sometimes unstable version that includes some of the latest features Google are testing that are not yet ready for the prime time. Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal suggested that Google may soon include its own native ad-blocker directly inside Chrome for both mobile and desktop and it seems it may be gradually activating for some users. While the feature of an ad-blocker built native into the Chrome browser isn’t official, a few seem to have got it working.

As with anything in the Canary builds of Chrome, features can appear and disappear just as quick. Google reinforced the experimental nature and purpose of the Canary channel stating that the ad-blocker specifically was “part of our general approach of running experiments to test possible features that could provide users with the best experience on Chrome”.

Ad-blockers are not anything new and many apps or browsers either support them or have extensions that allow support for an ad blocker. The elephant in the room is that Google runs its own advertising platform of which accounts for a huge chunk of its revenue. Presumably a Google-made ad-blocker in Chrome would exclude Googles’ own AdSense ads, if such a feature was to make it into the stable build.

Google have previously expanded on the scope of the ad-blocker to suggest it will only target those ads that are intrusive to the user experience. How this is defined is yet to be seen but presumably will include pop-under and pop-over ads rather than simply blocking inline ads as traditional ad-blockers do. Despite appearing in the Canary build of Chrome for Android, a native ad-blocker is probably a while away from rolling out to the masses.

Drop us a comment below and let us know if you’d like to see an ad-blocker native in Chrome.