Prior to AdNauseam, co-creators Daniel Howe and
Helen Nissenbaum released another extension, TrackMeNot, that masked the user's
web queries by sending unrelated queries to search engines. In 2015, according to
The Guardian, AdNauseam designer Mushon Zer-Aviv referred to the extension as "more art project than mass-rollout tech". Howe released version 2.0 of the extension in July 2016 at the
Hackers on Planet Earth conference. Version 3.0 became available in November 2016.
Ban from Chrome Web Store Google banned AdNauseam from the
Chrome Web Store in January 2017, citing the platform's developer agreement, which granted the company "the right to suspend or bar any Product from the Web Store at its sole discretion". When questioned by
Fast Company, Google denied that AdNauseam's ad-clicking functionality triggered the ban, instead claiming that AdNauseam was removed for simultaneously blocking and concealing ads—a behavior exhibited by other extensions that Google continued to allow on the platform. AdNauseam had 60,000 users at the time of the ban, and was the first ad blocking extension designed for
desktop computers that was banned from the Chrome Web Store. Users were initially able to bypass the ban by installing the extension in
Google Chrome's developer mode, Zer-Aviv had previously anticipated the possibility of Google removing the extension and believed that the company did so to safeguard its use of advertising as an income source.
Fast Company expected a competing
ad blocker to be built into Chrome that would adhere to criteria published in March 2017 by the Coalition For Better Ads – an industry group that Google co-founded – that evaluated visual appeal instead of privacy considerations. == Functionality ==