Google restored an ad blocker app for the Samsung Internet mobile browser to its Play Store on February 9, Tuesday about one week after banning the Android OS plugin. Adblock Fast was removed one day after becoming available in the app store when the Alphabet company claimed the ad blocking plugin violated its developer rules on modifications of third-party applications.
Samsung Internet is the pre-installed browser for its Android handsets. Adblock Fast is one of the new plugins that prevent ads and content from being displayed on websites.
The new application was a response to Safari's iOS 9 update, according to Cult of Android. It supports third-party content blockers on Apple's iPhone devices.
Rocketship's adblocker plugin promised to provide faster web browsing. The South Korean conglomerate was a launch partner of the application program interface (API).
Adblock Fast was the first ad blocker of its kind. That is because it stops ads on an Android device without the requirements of rooting the gadget or switching to a different browser.
After the app racked up over 50,000 downloads Google informed its developers that the software violates section 4.4 of Play Store's Developer Distribution Agreement. The original Adblock Plus app was also removed in 2013.
Similar ad-blocking apps had not been taken down from Google Play. Adblock Fast's developer Rocketship Apps quickly appealed Google's ban, which resulted in the tech giant overturning its original decision, according to The Verge.
Rocketship was informed that the app had been reinstated. The company just had to resubmit the ad-blocking app for it to appear on Google Play Store again.
Samsung handset owners running at least Android 4.0 can now download Adblock Fast from Google Play Store. The smartphone or tablet must have Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Samsung Internet 4.0 to run the ad-blocking application.
Although ad-blocking plugins can stop annoying ads, they can also slash web sites' revenue. Adobe and PageFair reported last year that $21.8 billion worldwide ad revenue had already been blocked by August 2015.
In 2009 there were only about 21 million ad blocker users. However, the figure skyrocketed to 198 million global users by June 2015, and showed 41 percent year-over-year growth.
This video addresses if ad-blocking is wrong: