Earlier this year a Wall Street Journal report contained claims from anonymous sources that Google was working on a native ad-blocker for its Chrome web browser.
And now, the company has confirmed the news, announcing that a built-in ad-blocker will be arriving from Chrome next year.
In a blog post, Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google's Senior VP of Ads and Commerce explained how the new feature is designed to stop websites "showing ads (including those owned or served by Google) on websites that are not compliant with the Better Ads Standards starting in early 2018."
As the Wall Street Journal previously reported, ad-blocking has been taken up by 26% of US users on desktop devices, as preventing unwanted adverts from showing becomes increasingly popular.
Google's latest move looks designed to prevent further growth of third-party ad-blocking tools and give the company more control in general.
Chrome's built-in blocker won't prevent all ads from showing automatically, however. Rather, it will only block ads that have been assessed as being particularly irritating or intrusive for users.
If a web page has too many ads, the promotions will also be blocked, with videos that are set to autoplay and full-screen ads said to be targeted as part of the new feature – set to launch on both desktop and mobile.
The Coalition for Better Ads, made up of members such as Google, Facebook, and News Corp, is said to be deciding which ads will be deemed intrusive.
The feature's more discerning approach is likely why Google is referring to it as a "filter" rather than an ad-blocker.
To help companies prepare ahead of the filter's rollout, Google is also providing a new tool that will tell publishers if their ads are in violation of the standards.
What's more, to accompany the new Chrome feature, Google also announced Funding Choices – a tool that will allow publishers to display a message asking users to whitelist their site if they're deemed to be using an ad-blocker.
Funding Choices will also allow the publisher to offer users the option to buy a subscription to remove all ads through the Google Contributor service