Why doesn't Chrome's AdBlock extension work as well as the one in Firefox?

Question

I've tried both of the major AdBlock extensions in Chrome; AdBlock and Adblock Plus for Google Chrome™. In Firefox, AdBlock is 100% effective, in Chrome there are frequently unblocked ads. Also, ads are sometimes loaded and then blocked, whereas in Firefox they are never requested.

So why is Google Chrome worse than Firefox? The conspiracy theory is that Google's business is ads, but I know that can't be true. The extensions all use the same ad blocking lists, so why doesn't Chrome's ad-blocking extension work as well? Is there one that does?

Solution

Extensions in Google Chrome are not as powerful as the ones in Mozilla Firefox. There currently is no API that allows them to prevent network requests, which means they can't fully block ads in the manner that ad blocker extensions do on Firefox. They can only hide them from the displayed page.

For more information, see this feature request in the Chromium issue tracker.

Comments

[100rabh]

which means they can't fully block ads in the manner that ad blocker extensions do on Firefox. They can only hide them from the displayed page --> that's not true. Chrome since v5 has been capable of blocking resources theregister.co.uk/2010/07/20/chrome_does_resource_blocking and ABP blocks them, not just hides them'

[Patches]

@Sathya: The beforeload event described in that article has severe limitations that result in the behavior the questioner is experiencing. Even the Chromium team has admitted that they make ad-blocking on Chrome less than ideal. For more information see comments #69 and #71 of the bug I linked to in my answer and the fourth question down in the FAQ for AdThwart, a popular ad blocker for Chrome. I'd edit my question to make that more clear but it appears it wouldn't matter now that this question is closed.