Google's ad-blocking plan for Chrome gets a start date: Beginning on February 15, web ads that don't meet standards set by the industry group Coalition for Better Ads will be blocked inside Google's Chrome browser. The move has been long expected but Google didn't provide a start date until now.
Ads who don't meet the guidelines for more than 30 days will be removed. Website owners can ask for a review and reinstatement of the ads after they address violations, Google said.
Other members of the coalition include Facebook, Unilever and Proctor and Gamble. Ad types that don't pass muster include autoplaying video ads with audio, full-screen scrollover ads and positial ads with countdown clocks.
POV: The stakes for marketers and advertisers are high indeed, given that Chrome has 60 percent of the browser market. At the same time, Google gets almost 90 percent of its revenue through advertising; what it and other coalition members say they're after is a better overall ad experience that will slow the rise of ad-blocker browser extensions such as Ad-block Plus.
Many publishers have begun their own appeal to users, asking them to "whitelist" websites, allowing ads to be displayed, in exchange for viewing content. On one hand, this is a reasonable request for sites that depend on advertising revenue to exist, but on the other, advertisers shouldn't get to run roughshod over the user experience.
What happens starting February 15 will be keen to watch. Advertisers and publishers will have had the better part of a year to prepare for the guidelines, so laggards will argubaly have little room to complain. But Google's role as a chief enforcer of the new rules is pivotal and as of yet, untested.
China's red-hot Xunlei eyes cloud debut in US, EU: One of China's most talked-about tech companies says it intends to open up shop in the United States and Europe in the first half of next year. Xunlei plans to extend its OneCloud service to the major markets in a bid to compete with Amazon Web Services and other providers.
OneCloud has an unusual setup, to say the least. Acting much like a content delivery network, it depends on users who purchase a NAS (network-attached server) from Xunlei. In exchange for authorizing the use of any idle bandwidth and storage, customers can get rewarded with a cryptocurrency called OneCoin, which is mined over Xunlei's network.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Xunlei CEO Lei Chen elaborated on the company's plans:
The model of using customers' bandwidth "will bring us capacity to provide cloud computing at a very low cost, perhaps one-third of the cost of Amazon," Chen said.
He said Xunlei is developing technology aimed at increasing security by analyzing users' data without gathering it in a central location.
"We will use artificial intelligence to process users' own data to help us to service them better, but we don't want to know what artificial intelligence understands about our users," said Chen.
POV: Needless to say, there are some obvious questions to ask about Xunlei's plans. A big one is how US and EU ISPs will react to the notion of customers trading their bandwidth to a third party company, particularly in the wake of net neutrality being overturned, a move that removed key restrictions on how ISPs must treat Internet traffic.
Then there is the question of whether enterprises outside China would want to buy cloud computing capacity that is supported in this manner. A third question is how well OneCloud performs at enterprise scale. Yet another: Will Xunlei simply offer cloud storage and content delivery, or compute as well?
One thing is for sure, and that's that OneCloud is catching on in China. More than 18 million people have ordered the required devices. How many of them are doing so in order to chase down some OneCoin is another matter.
Magic Leap finally unveils its AR headset: The secretive augmented reality startup Magic Leap, which has raised a whopping $1.9 billion from investors—including $500 million from Google—since its 2011 launch, has at last revealed the initial version of its headset.
Magic Leap One will be released sometime next year along with an SDK (software development kit) aimed at what Magic Leap calls "creators." The product consists of a set of lightweight goggles connected by cable to a small, hockey puck-like computing module that can fit in a pocket or on a belt. Its computing power is said to be at the level of a well-equipped laptop computer, although the precise specs and the price haven't been disclosed just yet. (Magic Leap did give Rolling Stone an exclusive first look and hands-on test drive of the device; its report, which is well worth a read, can be found here.)
POV: Magic Leap One's initial draw may initially be with game developers and the like, but assuming it ships and succeeds—long delays with the product's unveiling have prompted a good deal of skepticism along these lines—eventually be pointed at enterprise scenarios.
"This is competition for Microsoft Hololens," says Constellation VP and principal analyst Alan Lepofsky. "They are approaching the design in different ways, with Hololens having all the computing power contained in the headset, where as Magic Leap’s processing power is attached to your belt. While the device is important, the key is content. Microsoft will obviously integrate well with Office apps and content, where as Magic Leap will probably be linked to the Google ecosystem."
