Recently we’ve reported Google is ready to unload ad iframes in the Chrome browser if it detects they use “an egregious amount of CPU or network bandwidth”. The feature with the name ‘Heavy Ad Intervention” is now available behind a flag for Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS and Android in Chrome 80 Canary for testing and can be enabled.
Firefox and Chromium Edge browsers allow users to block Cryptomining Scripts or resource-hungry ads via the Tracking Protection feature. The interesting thing is both these browsers use Disconnect blacklist for this. Google now also wants to offer a similar sort of protection to Chrome users to prevent bad ads from consuming their precious system resources.
Chromium team feels the bad ads spoil the user’s browsing experience by draining device battery, makes the pages slow, and consume mobile data which could be valuable to those who don’t use unlimited plans. The team cites ads that mine Cryptocurrency, ads that load large compressed images, large video file ads that load without user gesture as examples.
You can read more about the Heavy Ad Intervention feature in the Explainer page readied by Google here and you can enable the feature in Chrome on desktop and Android by following the instructions given below.
1. Ensure you’re using latest Chrome Canary
2. Visit chrome://flags page
3. Search for “Heavy ad”, in the highlighted results, for Heavy Ad Intervention
Note: The flag is available in the latest Chrome Canary on Android also.
4. Select “Enabled” and restart the browser.
Chrome browser’s built-in ad blocker already blocks abusive ads on websites and soon once the feature is enabled and rolled out to the stable version, it will “unloads ads that use too many device resources”.
