The Web Is Not TV
By Lincoln D. Stein
Two recent articles in the business section of the New York Times have gotten me to thinking about the nature of the Web. The first (Monday June 7, 1999, page C1), reported the growing popularity of Internet ad blockers, those browser add-ons that suppress the display of banner advertisements. The second (Wednesday June 9, 1999, page C1), cited the relationship between the Excite Internet portal and the @Home cable modem network as an example of the trend by content providers to seek exclusive arrangements with Internet service providers. Under the Excite@Home deal, Excite automatically becomes the home page for all @Home subscribers. Similar deals are being made by other ISPs.
Ad blockers include products such as AtGuard, WebFilter, Internet Junkbuster, Intermute, and WebWasher, to name a few (see "
Online"). The products work by intercepting the HTTP stream between browser and server, identifying images that are likely to be advertisements, and removing them from the page that is displayed to the user. The blocked advertisement is usually replaced by a transparent GIF image of the same size as the original in order to keep the page layout intact. Some of these products operate as Web-server proxies that run independently of the browser; others are plug-ins that affect the browser's operation more directly. Most ad blockers offer other functions such as suppressing cookies, replacing animated GIFs with static ones, removing unwanted sounds from pages, turning off Java applets, and stripping referrer information from the outgoing HTTP headers.
