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# Buying your way out of ad blocking
- URL: https://onemanandhisblog.com/2015/02/adblock-plus-charges-display-ads/
- Published: 2015-02-04T09:24:24.000Z
- Updated: 2015-04-08T16:29:44.000Z
- Author: Adam Tinworth
- Tags: adblocking, advertising, adverts

Robert Cookson, for the *Financial Times*, reports that companies are [paying their way out of ad-blocking](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/80a8ce54-a61d-11e4-9bd3-00144feab7de.html?ref=onemanandhisblog.com):

> 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](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/02/02/adblock?ref=onemanandhisblog.com):

> How is this different from an extortion racket?

It certainly blows any notion that [AdBlock Plus](https://adblockplus.org/?ref=onemanandhisblog.com) 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.