Google sometimes uses space on the Chrome browser’s New Tab Page to advertise its products, for instance, you may have seen NTP in Chrome showing a promo about Wifi Speaker in the past with a message ” Meet Google Home Max. Now in Stock” (without any option to close it). The link takes the user to Google Store for purchase. Till now, Chrome has not provided an option to get rid of these ads, in the latest Chrome 79 Canary, Chromium team has added a new flag to address this.
From now on with the new “Dismiss promos on the New Tab Page” flag activated, you can able to dismiss them immediately by clicking on close (x) button offered so that the promo never shows up again to the user.
“Add a way to dismiss a specific promo and not have it appear again. e.g simple “x” may be a good start” the bug description reads.
Keep in mind this option could be offered for non-emergency or advertising based ones only for now and doesn’t apply to emergency messages that Google shows when a disaster such as an earthquake happens.
To get started,
1. Ensure you’re using latest Chrome 79 Canary
2. Visit chrome://flags/#ntp-dismiss-promos
3. Select “Enabled” and restart the browser.
The feature comes into play when there are promotional messages displayed on NTP, Google may not does this that often, when they do, you can dismiss them by clicking the “x” icon.
Using both chrome & chromium Portable, never see ads.