A startling report by the Financial Times has revealed that Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) are paying the German company behind AdBlock Plus extension, a huge amount of money to unblock ads. Adblock Plus is hurting the core business of many companies, especially Google, whose billions of dollars come from ads revenue. The global ads market around the web makes up around $120 million.
German startup Eyeo is behind the Adblock web extension, which is downloaded more than 300 million times and has 50 million users worldwide. Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) are worried about this extension and there have been a bad air between Eyeo and many advertisers in the past. Some German and French companies are even considering to file a suit against Eyeo for hurting their revenues.
An insider source has claimed that Eyeo has demanded around 30% of the ads revenue it makes from the websites from Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). No confirmation could be done from the official sources.
In a program on CNBC, an expert said that there were some reports in the past that Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is starting a program that would allow the users to block ads. He said that this is never possible as Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is mainly driving its most of the revenue from ads.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is also crafting out its major ads revenue around Bing search. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) also pays the users of affiliate program and ads of its products.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) have declined to comment on this issue. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) said that the company would always inculcate user preferences while deciding anything.
David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management Lp owns around 600,000 Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) shares.
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