Fun with Firefox.

[Fragbait]

Would you say you had the right to tear down advertisement posters on the streets, because you don't want to watch them? Or are you saying that you insist upon the right to receive content while refusing to help the one providing it to receive some compensation for the work?[#1]

Internet ads are no different from TV commercials, newspaper and magazine advertisements, et cetera. Whether you actually watch them, or use them is of little concern, as long as they are there, they keep the cost of what you are watching down. Would you be willing to pay triple the money for your newspaper if they removed the advertising? And if yes, do you think many people would choose to do so?[#2]

Then don't visit those pages. Surely, if they only serve to advertise something and you're not interested in ads, you don't need to be there. There are many legit sites out there that do use ads - and with the introduction of Google Ads that will probably increase again, in order to raise some revenue.[#3]

And for the record, ads do not manipulate Google Search, they're simply a visual aspect on a site. If you want to cheat at Google, there are many kinds of backhand techniques, but they are not related to advertising.[#4]
There is quite a difference between allowing a site to use advertising to certain limits, and using a browser extension to block all advertising. I fully grant that actual excessive advertising through 50 banners on a page, a dozen popups and a bunch of Flash layers is something you should be able to prevent, but actively blocking every single ad - except those little "Get Firefox" advertisement pictures that pop up all over the place naturally ;) - is not ok in my opinion. [#5]
I personally know of a good few online games and good sites that went pay-to-use because advertising didn't bring in enough revenue. If a large portion of the web starts blocking ads, and sponsors behind the advertising pull out because of it, expect more sites to have that happen.[#6]
Untrue. There are many normal programs that are available for free due to having advertisements built in. On my system, I for example have Magic Workstation, Eudora and Opera, which are all adware until you register them - which I incidentally did with Opera. There are many more such programs available. None of them do anything beyond showing non-intrusive ads in the department that you're talking about.[#7]
There are many third-party ad blocking programs available for MSIE, and there have been for years.[#8]
I concur :)
Even if you disregard ads, the fact that you are still receiving them is what makes advertisement companies support the things that you do pay attention to, or at the very least bring their cost down. Not paying attention to advertising is an entirely different thing than preventing yourself from receiving it altogether :)[#9]
Thus, you agree with me. I already stated that there is a big difference between normal advertising and intrusive advertising ;)
Advertisers generally don't care about pissing you off. As long as you remember their name when you need a service they provide.[#10]
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Hail Leshy,

Sorry, but I still don't agree with you on most points.

[#1]By tearing down advertising posters on the street, I would hinder the advertisers on advertising completely, since noone could then see them when they go by. That is a completely different case. If I have ad-block not display them, this only affects me myself. It's equivalent to me ripping out ads from a magazine that I've bought, which is utterly legit.

[#2]I refer you to Lochnar, who put it quite well:'...
have Adblock download the ads but not display them. The advertiser's server has sent the ad so it assumes it was seen and the site gets credit. It has not, however, been displayed so you have not had to see it...'
I think you might have not gotten it that ad-block doesn't display the ads rather than not allowing them to get loaded.

[#3]Unfortunately, it happens quite often to me that I visit new sites that I haven't been to before. Otherwise I'd have kept to the - say 30 - sites I usually visit, and that's not really a big chunk of the internet. If I do, it happens quite frequently that I open huge sites consisting of mainly ads that I do not wish to see, and then after seeing that this isn't what I wanted, I try the next site Google brings up.

[#4]I'm aware that ads themselves don't manipulate the Google search (who do you think you're talking to...) but site constructors do. And they do it very well, just count how many spam/unrelated or even porn stuff comes up if you type in a normal search word.

[#5]Alright - you agree with me. I just define my borderies more narrow.

[#6]I know of no good sites that would prove that. I know of a counter example, though: this site.

[#7]I know of no good programs that would prove that. I know of a counter example, though: lavasoft's Ad-Aware (personal).

[#8]Forgive me if I don't know that. I've been using Mozilla and its consorts (Firefox, Thunderbird) since several years now, starting with what I think was 1.3.

[#9]Compare #2, or refer to Lochnar again.

[#10]I can't confirm that neither. While there may be companies where that is true, there are many (I think the majority) of companies that invest large amounts of money to be remembered positively. I and nobody I know would consciously buy products of entreprises that have annoyed with aggressive/ obtrusive advertisement.

Having said that, I think my point of view is clear.
Merry Christmas!

Greetings, Fragbait