Buying your way out of ad blocking

Robert Cookson, for the Financial Times, reports that companies are paying their way out of ad-blocking:

Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Taboola have quietly paid the German start-up behind Adblock Plus, the world’s most popular software for blocking online advertising, to stop blocking ads on their sites.

John Gruber asks a pertinent question:

How is this different from an extortion racket?

It certainly blows any notion that AdBlock Plus is working for the user out of the window. The language on their site is careful – they talk about blocking “annoying ads” rather than all ads. But it still feels like holding publishers to ransom.