At present, the Google Chrome tabs are clean, minimal, and free from any kind of ads. But that is going to change because Google Chrome engineers are testing a new shopping ads widget.
And sadly, this would show up on the new tab page. Although this is an experiment that was spotted in the latest version of Google Chrome, we speculate we might see ads taking up the free space on the new tab page soon.
Notably, this Google Chrome shopping ads widget was first spotted by Techdows. Reportedly, this feature is currently buried behind flags in Google Chrome Canary.
Enabling this flag, you could see what you may have to deal with in the Google Chrome browser’s new tab page. We speculate that it is Google’s way of making the new tab page a central hub of showing ads relevant to your search history.
Moreover, we think that these are not going to be limited to just shopping advertisements. This new ads widget might also show streaming services and recipes based on your search history attached to the Google account in use.
The name of this new Google Chrome shopping ads widget flag is ‘NTP Shopping Tasks’. Matter of fact, this is the first module that the Google Chrome engineers are working on for the new tab page.
As already mentioned, this new module will show up ads for various types of products. But that product will be based on what the user has been searching and it won’t be random.
The Google Chrome shopping ads widget is a fairly sizeable widget underneath site shortcuts
The ‘NTP Shopping Tasks Module’ flag reads, “Shows the shopping tasks module on the New Tab Page. – Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS.”
Taking a hint from the flag, this feature would be available on Mac, Windows, Linus as well as Chrome OS. Another bad thing for those who hate ads is that this Google Chrome ads widget is a fairly sizeable one.
It lies underneath your site shortcuts and shows shopping ads relevant to your search history. This could be beneficial in cases when you want to continue your product search from where you left off. But that is literally not the case with everyone.
If you have guts and want to see this new shopping ads widget on Google Chrome, you can launch Google Chrome Canary, visit chrome://flags page.
And use the flags ‘NTP Modules’, and ‘NTP Shopping Task Module’. Make sure to choose ‘Enabled-Fake Data’ for NTP Shopping Task Module, before restarting your browser.
You can easily remove the widget by pressing the ‘X’ button at the top right corner of the widget. However, it is unclear whether it is a permanent removal or just for the time being.
Google has also clarified that there are no ads. And in fact, are products for shopping based on the user’s history. None of the products to be displayed via this widget will be sponsored.