I discovered an interesting new tactic in the website ad game. Like most people using Firefox, I use the AdBlock Plus extension. A short while ago, I found that Flickr stopped working very well – it was obvious to me that the CSS stylesheet wasn’t loading. After investigating, I found the reason. Some time ago, tired of Yahoo!-based banner ads, I blocked the domain yimg.com. Well, since Yahoo! bought Flickr, they have decided, ingeniously, to host the stylesheet for Flickr on yimg.com. So now, I have to unblock that domain or face an ugly Flickr. On many sites I’d be happy to deal with the ugly, but on an AJAX-intensive photo site, ugly doesn’t cut the mustard. It’s an interesting tactic, and I wonder if other companies will start to use it.