Adblock Plus doesn't block Google ads. How to enable?

As @djfdat already said: You have to disable "Acceptable Ads".
This setting is enabled by default

enter image description here

This has nothing to do with your Google query for SSL or SSH. It's just that all Google websites are in the "Acceptable Ads" whitelist.


Story behind

Google (and other big companies) were asked to pay money by a firm called EYEO GmbH to show their ads. This firm owns Adblock Plus together with its main developer Wladimir Palant. And big player firms like Google accepted their offering.

Wait, they pay? Yes. This was a big story on the net the last couple of weeks when a blogger revealed the mafia-like system of Adblock Plus. Read more on Techcrunch.

Key statement on techcrunch

AdblockPlus says this fee is about helping it to maintain its filter list, which also whitelists some small websites and blogs for free, in addition to charging those larger companies like Google that participate. But it’s easy to see Google and others buying the right to put ads in front of web-browsing users, with Adblock Plus essentially acting as a gatekeeper meting out access to that sizeable chunk of consumers. Which gives Adblock a lot of power, and companies like Google that can pay a sizeable advantage over mid-sized competitors who can’t.

The Adblock Plus company blackmail websites in that way: "If you don't pay us, we block all your advertisements. We have 50 mio. users and the power to ruin you." The techchrunch article doesn't go into details, but the blog articles linked above do. They fake user reviews, even whole websites, conspire with big ad firms to white-list them and block those who doesn't pay. That's criminal and I recommend you not to use this plugin anymore in any browser.

Are there alternatives?

Alternatives like Adblock (without the plus) or AdGuard jumped onto the "acceptable ads" train and therefor are no longer a valid alternative. To give you an idea why they probable changed their business model, here's a quote from an article on theguardian.com regarding AdblockPlus' cash income.

Currently there are just 148 sites on the whitelist out of 777 which applied, according to a blogpost from Adblock Plus. For those which have to pay - which includes Google, Amazon and Yandex, Russia's largest search engine - the fee for not having their ads blocked is reportedly the cash equivalent of 30% of the revenue generated by showing ads.

My only advise I can give you stand today: Use whatever extension you want, but look up the option to disable Acceptable ads.


In your Adblock Plus Options > Filter Lists, make sure you're subscribed to Easylist. Also, turn off the last checkbox on that tab for 'Allow some non-intrusive advertising'.