The Adblock Plus policy openly states that some companies pay to be added to the Acceptable Ads list. And the inclusion of Google ads is because those comply with the guidelines for non-intrusive ads. And the Google tracking is there because companies rely on those stats for their revenue model, same as the ads. The fact that you can see the list (and turn it off!) shows that Adblock Plus still respects your freedom. And yes, some people, including some contributors, will be upset at this policy. But dissention about policy is nothing new in the Free Software world (think Canonical, Linux, or GPL v3). So my summary of the whole thing is: Nothing new here except some muckraking journalist trying to rake some muck.