NewsFire blocks RSS ads - Niall Kennedy

I noticed something new and interesting in the NewsFire release notes today: NewsFire now blocks advertisements from Google and FeedBurner. NewsFire is the first aggregator I know of to block advertisements in the default installation and not a custom user-supplied Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) stylesheet.

I tested the new feature with Brad Feld’s feed and Engadget’s feed and both display advertisements in the source but not when displayed in NewsFire. I cannot find any way to enable advertisements at the application or feed level.

Is NewsFire the first of what may be many aggregators to block advertisements in feeds? Will products tout this feature as a key reason to switch? Will publishers such as Weblogs Inc. ban such user agents from accessing their feeds?