Google is updating the popular Chrome Browser and the result, according to the company, will be improved battery life. The company, in a post published Thursday in its Chromium Blog, said that it discovered that a small fraction of ads was using a “disproportionate share of device resources, such as battery and network data, without the user knowing about it. ” Google went on to say, “These ads (such as those that mine cryptocurrency, are poorly programmed, or are unoptimized for network usage) can drain battery life, saturate already strained networks, and cost money.”
So Google has decided to limit the resources that a display ad can use before the user interacts with it. When the limit is reached, the ad’s frame will navigate to an error page that will tell the user that the ad has consumed too many resources. Google says that it is targeting those ads that consume more CPU or network bandwidth than 99.9% of other ads. After the update, these ads will be able to use 4MB of network data or use the CPU for 15 seconds over any 30 second period. Google points out that while only 0.3% of ads exceed these thresholds, they account for 27% of network data employed by ads on chrome and 28% of CPU usage.
Marshall Vale, Chrome’s product manager, says to expect the update to roll out near the end of August. Vale adds, “Our intent with this extended rollout is to give appropriate time for ad creators and tool providers to prepare and incorporate these thresholds into their workflows. To help advertisers understand the impact of this intervention on their ads, they can access reports to learn which ads Chrome unloaded. With these changes, Chrome is continuing to help ensure that people have good browsing experiences both on the screen and behind the scenes.”
The frames of ads on Chrome that exceed the resources cap will navigate to an error page
