Text 2 Google or,technically,Alphabet,the holding company that the firm established in 2015,has its fingers in many fields.But the company"s main business,which pays for all ofits spending elsewhere,is digital advertising,which in 2017 accounted for more than 86%ofits$lllbn revenue.It may seem odd,then,that Google"s latest move is to aid ad-blocking.On February 15th,Chrome,its web browser,which has a 59%market share,switched on code to block certain online advertisements.In doing so it joins an established trend.Third-party ad-blocking software is available already for Chrome but only for its desktop version.As well as being built in and thus on by default,the new blocker will work on smartphones.Web publishers will not welcome another threat to the efficacy of advertising,their main source ofincome.Google at least promises that only pages which display the most annoying ads-those that automatically play videos with sound,for instance-will fall foul ofits new filter.What counts as annoying is defined by the Coalition for Better Ads,a group of advertisers,technology firms and other companies of which Google is a member.The online-ad industry has over the years developed an unusually hostile relationship with those to whom its products are served.In the early days of the internet,jiggling,brightly coloured animations were common.Pop-up advertisements,some of them uncloseable,became so prevalent that browsers such as Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator were modified to try to stop them.Ads may be more sophisticated now but still find ways to irritate.Dodgy ones are a popular delivery route for malware.The ad industry,indeed,is in an arms race with blocker-writers.Many sites now try to detect ad-blockers,and force users to disable them if they want to visit websites.The ad-blockers have retaliated with techniques to dodge the detectors,and so on.Google"s move thus looks like an attempt to save online advertising from itself.It is also launching a service called"Funding Choices"that is designed to allow website operators to invite people who use ad-blockers to pay small amounts to view their pages instead.Its new products could land it in trouble.Margrethe Vestager,the European Union"s competition chief,tweeted last year that she would be"closely"following the firm"s ad-filtering efforts.The worry is that by defining what counts as an acceptable ad Google will amass still more power over online advertising.The European Commission fined it 2.4bn（$2.9bn）in 2017 for giving its price-comparison shopping service preferential treatment in search results over rival offerings.It was unclear that users of such services lost out much.Consumers also have lots to gain if Chrome can help stem the ad onslaught.26.Technically speaking,the author would agree that