Whiting Out the Ads, but at What Cost?

The New York Times conjures whitespace:

The larger importance of Adblock is its potential for extreme menace to the online-advertising business model. After an installation that takes but a minute or two, Adblock usually makes all commercial communication disappear. No flashing whack-a-mole banners. No Google ads based on the search terms you have entered.

That statement suggests to me that the Adblock Plus plug-in can block sponsored links on a Google search page. That I’d like to see. Has Noam Cohen tested this?

UPDATE: Nick Carr calls it the “nuclear plug-in.” Is that nuclear like Kim Jung Il’s fizzling ambitions?

UPDATE 2: Some are questioning the legality of this. I suspect that will go nowhere.