Chrome has already declared war against auto-playing content with sound and low-quality ads for the coming year. Now, the list has a new addition – unwanted redirects.
Today, Google revealed that every fifth feedback they receive from desktop Chrome users includes unwanted redirects. The search giant has thus prepped a series of countermeasures against deceptive behavior that intentionally mislead the users.
There are several unwanted redirects, one being links disguised as site controls or play buttons. There are transparent overlays as well, capturing each and every click and opening new windows or tabs. And then, we have the simple redirects that come out of the blue.
Chrome released the timeline for the 3 new protections. Firstly, the pop-up blocker of Chrome will protect users from sites that lead to opening new tabs or windows. Google will be launching the Abusive Experience Report for the site owners to analyze the behavior on their respective sites. The issues left unaddressed for 30 days will automatically trigger the prevention. This will be happening by early January 2018. Next is the Chrome 64 release, which will take place by late January. The redirects coming from third-party iframes will display an info bar that will replace redirecting.
Last but not least, the Chrome 65 release will see the daylight by early March 2018. This will take care of the links that open new tabs desirably and simultaneously open a new window to an unnecessary page. The process is the same as that of the Chrome 64. In the case of Chrome 65, Google seems to target certain intentions of the developers. There are sites that can efficiently avoid the pop-up blocker via various redirecting ways. Google states that this will be well taken care of by Chrome 65.
Well, Chrome has more than 1 billion users across the world. It is quite fitting that Google is stepping up against the inconveniences created by the redirects in every possible way.
