"EarthLink's arsenal to lure subscribers from its online rivals includes a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign and new access software that will let Web surfers banish pop-up ads--one of the most-often cited annoyances on the Internet. "

Pop-up blocking software has always been the domain of savvy internet users. Earthlink is now mass marketing it. I've got two problems with this.

The first is that the advertising market is seriously depressed and many of the sites that use pop-up ads cannot afford to operate without them. This announcement will certainly depress those numbers even further, possibly forcing a number of sites into bankruptcy or subscriptions, or increasing the number of floating animations and intersittal ads which are even more annoying but harder to eliminate. The web is NOT FREE.

The second is that not all spawned windows are pop-up ads. Earthlink's software will break MemeStreams. Savvy users will be able to turn the feature off so that they can still use this site, but most people won't be able to. The worst thing about all of this is that if you want to surf without pop ups all you have to do is turn your security settings in IE to "high." Earthlink is marketing a service that is only attractive to people who haven't bothered to look at the preference settings for their browser before.

I always liked Mindspring/Earthlink's anti-spam work. This is a different matter, however. I pay for spam. Pop-up ads pay for the content I like to read. I want to loose the spam, but I don't want to loose my content.