Adblocking software has become increasingly more necessary as advertising interferes more and more with the online experience. Ads can interrupt the user’s goal with a blast of noise in an automatic video pitch or sprawl across a web page with a pop-up countdown clock. As a result, Google felt the need to intervene. Whether this is a step in the right direction is up for debate.

On February 15th, Google Chrome was updated to ban obnoxiously impeding ads by default...