Microsoft has slowly been adding new features to Edge, a browser that it built from the ground up for Windows 10, and while users look forward to finally get support for extensions the company has revealed that yet another much-requested feature is coming to Edge soon. At a session for web developers, the company revealed that Microsoft Edge will soon have its own ad blocker.
Ad blocking remains a controversial subject. While one has to agree that there are sites that use ads to spread malicious code, legitimate publishers rely on ads for the bulk of their income, and if visitors to their site have ad blockers then they end up losing out on revenue.
Most ad blocking software do allow users to configure a list of websites that are allowed to display ads but that’s not something a lot of people who use ad blocking software do. Nevertheless, major companies have come out in support of such software, with Apple adding support for content blocking extensions in Safari and Opera releasing a new version of its browser that has native ad blocking.
Many users demand that their favorite browsers have native ad blocking features, and even if they don’t, there is an abundance of third-party extensions that do the trick. It’s certainly not surprising that Microsoft wants to build native ad blocking right into Edge and it’s not going to get any flak for it because everybody is doing it now.