File-hosting site up in arms over Firefox plug-in
Found on Ars Technica on Wednesday, 07 October 2009
One of these sites, MediaFire, is bothered by a Firefox plugin called SkipScreen which automates the user straight past the ads. Instead of going after the software's developers, however, they've apparently targeted Mozilla, which hosts a link to the plugin.
Not only did it start the download without any user intervention, but as soon as the file started downloading, it replaced the MediaFire page with one of its own making that's largely an ad for SkipScreen itself, with a Google-supplied text ad thrown in as well.
People really look at the ads on filesharing sites? Many of them get blocked already, especially the really annoying Flash ads. Not to mention the blocked pop-ups. It's really nice to provide that service for free, but that doesn't mean I like my screen packed full of ads for things I have absolutely no interest in. It's that overload that made people develop the blocking tools and as a nice side-effect, they speed up browsing; especially when you block the ad/tracking stuff from Google, like Analytics, Syndication and Adsense.