Is Opera Now The Fastest Web Browser?

Opera Is Embracing Built-In Ad-Blockers

Isn’t it annoying when you have to wait on your browser to load — only to find out most of the page consists of ads? Some tech-savvy users install browser plug-ins to block those ads and improve their experience and loading times, but one browser, Opera, is embracing built-in ad-blockers.

In a developer blog, Opera released notes on their latest update to their browser, which included the introduction of their “native ad-blocking technology” and claims that their ad-blocking solution was 45% faster than Google Chrome using the plug-in Adblock Plus.

Opera developers said that other ad-blocking tools spend time checking elements and URLs, then state that “Opera blocks ads as early as possible: right in the engine, when a network request for a URL is first being made.” This makes “the slowdown from checking negligible.”

While the ad-blocking is included by default, Opera will ask when you view a site if you want to block ads on that particular site or if you are OK with viewing them. If you disable them, the ads won’t show up. If you do want to view that site’s ads, you would select “Not Now” instead when asked. To toggle between blocking and not blocking, users would just select the shield in the address bar and flip their settings. That same box, you can also view statistics like number of ads blocked and speed benchmarks.

The blog also contains a chart on how Opera with native ad-blocking compares to other browsers using third-party ad-blockers.

Compared to the popularity of Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer, Opera is almost an afterthought, but with this new update, we may be seeing an increase of users who’d like to enjoy the benefits of ad-blocking without adding any extra work to the equation. Will you be one of the people who make the switch?

(Image Source: iCLIPART)