Fun with Firefox.

[Leshy]

The internet user should have the right to block everything he doesn't want to watch.

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?

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?

Many websites only exist to serve as carrier of advertisement.

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.

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.

If a website can't manage to keep its costs down without excessive advertising

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.

I don't think that much useful free content is lost if most ads are blocked by the users.

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.

Programs that rely on advertising to be free (generally known as adware) I can't support neither. In many cases you don't know the horse you bought with these programs, either they advertise something you really don't want to see, show very aggressive advertising habits or bring  malware on your pc.

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.

Today, way less than 10% of all internet users do not use Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which doesn't support ad-blocking as far as I know.

There are many third-party ad blocking programs available for MSIE, and there have been for years.

Nevertheless interesting to read a completely different opinion.

I concur :)

I don't read ads in magazines. I skip commercials on TV. I throw out the junk mail that gets in my mailbox.  No one can tell me I MUST pay attention to advertising.

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 :)

Why do you think google ads are so successful? Because it's just a little bit of text with a handful of rather small links, instead of a big chunk of my screen that will open a new window or redirect me to another page if I click anywhere in it.

Thus, you agree with me. I already stated that there is a big difference between normal advertising and intrusive advertising ;)

If it's an arms race what the advertisers want, an arms race is what they'll get. There is wisdom, however, in not trying to fight and piss off what could be considered your target audience.

Advertisers generally don't care about pissing you off. As long as you remember their name when you need a service they provide.