Google makes money from ads, and now Microsoft is shifting towards that strategy with Win 10 being free etc. Apple on the other hand makes money from hardware, app store, 30% or whatever it is on ebooks and inapp purchases. I'm not really THAT surprised - only so much as I thought Apple would want a slice out of both pies, but it stands to reason that they can bleed much more from Google by blocking ads than they could gain from partnering with (or creating) ad networks.

It's an aggressive strategy.

Apple is only blocking internet ads, not in-app ads, which makes it obvious that they're targeting content creators to push them to either Apple newsstand or iOS apps, where Apple gets a cut of the ads.

It's disappointing because Apple is using their mobile marketshare to attack and fragment the open web. Users either don't understand or don't care because they have cognitive bias towards ads to begin with - e.g. people only attribute negative ad experiences to ads, never good experiences (w/ few exceptions like the superbowl).