Adblock Plus: The blissful, ad-free browsing experience

by Matt Asay February 9, 2008 3:35 PM PST

commentary

I must admit, I've completely forgotten what Internet advertising looks like. I installed Adblock Plus with Firefox a year or so ago and I haven't seen an ad since.

Not a single one.

If you have yet to declare your independence from ads, I'd encourage you to do so. It's strangely serene browsing the web without advertisements.

It's not immoral to browse ad-free, as some suggest. No, there are far better business models for the web than simply spraying ad graffiti over everything. Entrepreneurs might just have to think again - use a little creativity - to figure them out.

In the meantime, I just wish there were a way to take Adblock Plus offline....

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About The Open Road

Matt Asay is chief operating officer at Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Prior to Canonical, Matt was general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfresco, an open-source applications company. Matt brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay.

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