Tired of pop-ups? Google’s about to make the web less annoying (and break it)

Samsung’s merciless stance on alert-abusing adware and privacy-friendly policies are some of the biggest reasons why we prefer its Internet browser over its many Android alternatives. Ever since native ad-blocking support first arrived to the popular app back in 2016, the company’s been hard at work fleshing out its functionality. But the latest blow to annoying frontend design practices won’t be coming from Samsung’s direction – at least not initially.

Namely, Google still seems keen to continue investing in ad-blocking tech, regardless of the fact that it just happens to be the largest ad conglomerate in the world. And its next milestone seems pretty much guaranteed to leave a trace on your web-browsing experience, as Alphabet’s subsidiary is currently preparing to gradually sunset the Alert API in Chrome.

Samsung Internet is likely to follow Chrome’s lead here… but will this break the web?

Yes, the thing capable of pushing out pop-up messages. The very one that countless of shady sites have been abusing since the dawn of the modern browser. As of Chrome 91, cross-origin iFrames (i.e., those sent by embedded HTML windows) are a thing of the past. The implication is that the Alert API will be facing further limitations in the very near future. And the Chromium foundation of Samsung Internet also makes this change a likely release candidate for Samsung’s own mobile browser.

Granted, eliminating something as ingrained as the Alert API without breaking a whole swath of websites in the process seems… pretty much impossible. For better or worse, mind you. And some developers have already started rallying opposition to the move on social media, arguing the tool is still irreplaceable in many teaching and debugging scenarios.