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In the world of Web browsers, the renaissance is now.

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Browsers -? the last vestige of the soulless, corporatized Internet -? can now be personalized, creating a whole cottage industry of innovative add-ons, tools, appearances and software.

This is all great for users but has not turned out so well for doing business online.

For a good many years, beginning in 1999, while the rest of the Internet was rapidly democratizing, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer went unrivalled.

A particularly bleak year was 2002, when IE had nearly 95 per cent of the browser market share.

Around that time, though, the upstart Firefox, then called Phoenix, launched, with customizable tool bars and tabbed browsing. Soon, entire browsers could be customized with third-party,? often homemade modifications. These add-ons are now so popular that they’ve propelled Firefox to nearly of quarter of worldwide market share as of this month.

Its most popular browser add-on, with near 50 million downloads, has been, predictably, Adblock Plus, a tool to block out advertising.

Admittedly, searching the Web ad-free is a breeze. Without downloading extra images and cumbersome Flash ads, Firefox races though sites noticeably faster.

But the obvious drawback is that users are avoiding ads that are paying for their favourite sites to survive.

Farhad Manjoo, a Slate Magazine columnist and one of the world’s best Web commentators, recently wrote a piece explaining the need for more ethical browsing by users – scaling back the Adblock service to accept some ads, which ultimately pay for them to read the Web for free.

A lofty proposal but unlikely to happen. Still, it brings up a valid concern: is there a moral obligation to watch advertising?

For years, advertisers have splashed annoying, over-the-top, intrusive screen takeovers and Flash ads all over the Web. As anyone following Internet businesses knows, this hasn’t exactly worked out.

Perhaps rather than drying up the flow of money into websites, add-ons like Adblock will convince companies to create advertising that’s more in tune with what readers of a particular site want. Small, basic, targeted ads can offer something to users without offending them to the point where they block all advertising.

For instance, I bought Animal Collective’s last album from an MP3 site called Amie Street, simply because I saw a clean, well-designed ad on Hype Machine. Not coincidently, when I bought the album, Animal Collective was the most popular search on Hype Machine. Is it so hard to figure out why that ad worked?

The Internet is personalized. Shouldn’t Internet advertising follow suit?

joshuae@nowtoronto.com

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