Doug Fisher is calling the Mozilla Greasemonkey plugin "TiVo for the Web" in describing one of the biggest function that the software does - allow ads on pretty much any site to vanish from sight while a user is surfing.
We've all heard the phrase "technology always wins" when discussing spamming, hacking, or any other online habit that has an "us" and a "them" - but now, the "us" or "them" might be a whole lot more people than those of us who might be considered tech-savvy or "in the know." For months many website publishers have been publishing their stats about browser share, with Internet Explorer really getting a kick in the pants recently because of Mozilla's growth. Could the browser of choice of many a surfer today become the bane of the website publisher's existence?
From experience, I can state that I know some not-so-savvy web surfers who I was surprised to see had Greasemonkey running on their laptops in the last week. They casually mentioned that "it was something they heard about that would get rid of all the ads." Wow. If the casual Web user is trying to get rid of advertisements, what are the early adopters doing? Oh, that's right - they're removing the ads, too. What's a publisher to do in the interim?
Is it safer to think that this might just "catch on" with the mainstream, and find another way around things? Will the "sponsorship" model have to be put into play, with less graphical advertisements being served up by networks and a mention of "the Technology section brought to you by so-and-so," or something along those lines? Or does that get too close to the editorial and advertising wall that many are concerned about breaking on the 'net?
1. Adblock is a better extension for removing ads - the ads are blocked instead of merely hidden, improving page load and saving bandwidth. GreaseMonkey is much more flexible however, so used together these two extensions provide a defiant solution to removing unwanted ads.
Power to the people, I say!
Posted at 4:16PM on Jun 16th 2005 by coda