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Adblockers stop publishers serving ads to (or even seeing) 1bn web users - Press Gazette
(pressgazette.co.uk)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The toolbars came from scam software on the '90s. Ads being able to install things came well into the '00s.
yeah, there was quite a long time where useful software was bundled with toolbars or, the worse option, malware that hijacked your browser, which was a pain in the ass to remove. I was the techie in the family, and i got pretty good with tools like hijackthis and knowing by heart what services and background programs should start on a standard win98 or xp installation. (in this time i also was THE guy to ask at my job when issues with 56k modems came up, diagnosing a lot of issues by listening to the dial-up tones)