Samsung’s Default Web Browser Now Supports Ad-Blocker Extensions

The latest version of Samsung’s smartphone browser will allow users to block ads on web pages.

Devices running Marshmallow will get the update to Samsung Internet 4.0 starting today, with an update for Lollipop coming down the road.

It’s not immediately clear how much of an impact this will have on adblocking, as it’s not clear how many people use Samsung’s default browser versus, say, a Google Chrome browser. With Samsung and Apple both baking ad blocking into their mobile devices, legitimate publishers who use ads to support their networks and stories are concerned about paying bills in a world where all ads are viewed as a bad thing. In last September, Apple made the extension available on Safari for iOS 9 mobile users.

Samsung’s ad blocking system for their browser works in a similar way to Apple’s in that it allows developers to create ad blocking extensions, rather than offering ad blocking as a native feature within the browser. Once those boxes are ticked, it’s a simple case of downloading Adblock Fast from the Play Store and enabling it. When Apple introduced ad blocking, ad blocker apps became some of the most downloaded apps from the Apple App Store. One that is now available, and among the first to make the most of the newly available API, is Adblock Fast.

According to the team behind the Adblock Fast, the app helps web pages load 51 percent faster than usual load time.

Digital advertising that once enjoyed a huge space on Internet and proliferated now seems to have been confined with ad blocking technology as well as with Google’s practice of blocking bad ads. However, there are third party browsers, like courageous, that do offer ad-blocking as an integrated feature, but it has not been as popular as Chrome.