AdBlock vs. AdThwart

I’ve been using Google Chrome as my browser for about three months now, ever since my previous browser, Firefox, grew morbidly obese and AVG AntiVirus decided to strangle it. It would hang up, grind to a halt, lock up, and refuse to shut down without a forced shut down in the Task Manager. After wrangling the two of them and researching online to discover that AVG 8 and Firefox weren’t getting along, I dumped AVG for a Avira AntiVir (disabling the annoying pop-up ad), and made the move to Chrome.

I missed my AdBlock add-on from Firefox. It’s probably one of the main reasons people weren’t making the move from Firefox to Chrome. I absolutely couldn’t stand surfing with ads. I’d grown quite unaccustomed to it. So, I went with using Privoxy, and things were shiny in Google Chrome land. I grew to really like Chrome, with it’s speed and pared-down interface.

A few months later, Google came out with extensions for Chrome. I waited a bit before diving in, noting that there were now two options to choose from for blocking ads: AdThwart and AdBlock. I was initially drawn to AdBlock, since that is the one I’d become accustomed to for all those years of using Firefox. But, I decided to do a little online research to see what others said. This is what I found:

• AdThwart sucks.
• No, Adblock sucks.
• AdThwart slows everything down.
• No, Adblock does.
• AdThwart lacks such-and-such.
• No, Adblock does.
• AdThwart doesn’t block, it only hides!
• That’s what Adblock does, too!
• Install them both for best coverage.
• Are you insane?!

I decided to try them both out, one at a time. You can take the following review for what it’s worth, it being a general user’s review, and not a tech writer or geek review.

I did not notice any reductions in browser speed with either extension. AdBlock, though, allowed the ad to appear momentarily before blocking it. AdThwart did not. There still remained, however, a white space where the ad would have been in both extensions.

My main reason for considering moving from the use of Privoxy was the inability to see any pages from the Statcounter.com website (not refused access, but simply not showing up at all). With AdBlock and AdThwart, I could access the pages. Nevertheless, I removed both extensions and went back with Privoxy. Privoxy wasn’t as easy to install and I don’t have the chops to start messing around with trust files and whitelists to allow Statcounter to be viewed, but I prefer how it handles not only ad blocking, but the blocking of certain kinds of sites and other browsing features.

I may decide to go with an extension under the assumption that some of the things I did not care for will be worked out. If I did choose an extension now, though, it would be AdThwart simply because I don’t want to see an ad before it’s blocked. However, Privoxy was working fine, and I guess I’ll stay with that for now.

UPDATE: Here is an additional review of the two products. If you have your own experiences or thoughts on the two, please leave a comment below. I’ll publish them if they are serious and in good taste.