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Google says ad blockers will save online ads

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Google says ad blockers will save online ads

#31

Post by pavs »

hyperbovine wrote: post #26
axod wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Google should really be applauded. I'm bored of all this "Ah but google have access to all my data. What if they turn evil". There was a recent story about Google adding a cookie so that people without google accounts/not logged in, got some extra functionality. Instead of being applauded for improving the product, people started moaning that they were harvesting data from everyone. Tracking peoples movements…

OT, but why do people keep saying "Google have too much power," "Google have 60 billion dollars", etc. ? It's a singular noun. The circle is round. Google is powerful. It is turning evil. We are hungry. etc. This is not meant to flame, I'm really curious why/when the usage shifted.

I don't know about axod, but some of us don't have English as our first language. Its not always easy to have perfect grammar that comes naturally to a native speaker, but I personally try to be as correct as possible often going through 4-5 edits and going back to it to make sure that people, other than me, can read what I am typing. Still, mistakes slips through. Its a work in progress, some do better than others.

I waited almost a year before I decided to register an account (this place and other forums) and contribute to the discussion, when I was sure that I can put words together in a sentence that people can understand; only to find out that the best way to write proper English (or any language for that matter) is to write often and make mistakes so that others can point them out and you learn from that.

Re: Google says ad blockers will save online ads

#32

Post by Periodic »

gyardley wrote: post #30
Periodic wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If ad-blocking got popular and sites tried to get past it I believe those sites would likely lose some of the customer's respect as they would be disrespecting the customer. Which site do you want to go to:, the annoying one that forces you to watch an ad, or the one that just has a few less-obtrusive ads that you might block? Which one is going to benefit more from network effects and draw in more users?

Someone who pays nothing is not a customer.

You can be a customer of the site without be a customer of their advertisers.

Re: Google says ad blockers will save online ads

#33

Post by txxxxd »

hyperbovine wrote: post #26
axod wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Google should really be applauded. I'm bored of all this "Ah but google have access to all my data. What if they turn evil". There was a recent story about Google adding a cookie so that people without google accounts/not logged in, got some extra functionality. Instead of being applauded for improving the product, people started moaning that they were harvesting data from everyone. Tracking peoples movements…

OT, but why do people keep saying "Google have too much power," "Google have 60 billion dollars", etc. ? It's a singular noun. The circle is round. Google is powerful. It is turning evil. We are hungry. etc. This is not meant to flame, I'm really curious why/when the usage shifted.

Companies are treated as singular nouns in American English and as plural nouns in British English.

Re: Google says ad blockers will save online ads

#34

Post by pavs »

alain94040 wrote: post #28
pavs wrote: post #3

Wow, the first half was all good and informative, than the second half the authors started to dump all his opinion as known, absolute facts. The fact is that Google, a multi billion dollar company which make ~90% of its revenue through ads, not only allows ad blocking extensions to be installed in its browser (which is rapidly gaining market share) but also not-so-evil enough not to tinker with the Top 10 extension l…

Excuse my ignorance, but that this ad blocker block google ads in search results, or rather Flash ads? I'm asking because, if you push this argument further, you could think that it's good for Google to have all ads served by competitors disappear, to leave only google ads everywhere.

I haven't used privoxy in a while because I don't want to globally block ads and I want to have site-wide filtering system which is easier in extensions and a bit of a work with privoxy. There are supposedly better alternative to privoxy someone once mentioned, I can't remember it.

Blocking google text ads with privoxy: http://www.willamowius.de/privoxy.html

The thing with privoxy and most other good ad blocking extensions/software is that you can edit the filter list to block almost everything you could possibly think of. So no matter whatever your argument is Google can not stop you from blocking whatever ads you want to block, regardless of the operating system you use (yes even Google Chrome OS, which is a debain/ubuntu based system. Emphasis on Ubuntu because Canonical/Ubuntu developers actively worked on it prior to the official Chrome OS announcement. Not to mention Chrome OS is opensource and you can rip it apart and do whatever you want to do with it).

Re: Google says ad blockers will save online ads

#35

Post by whatusername »

naz wrote: post #27
hyperbovine wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OT, but why do people keep saying "Google have too much power," "Google have 60 billion dollars", etc. ? It's a singular noun. The circle is round. Google is powerful. It is turning evil. We are hungry. etc. This is not meant to flame, I'm really curious why/when the usage shifted.

British English

Really?

I would have written those sentences as: "Google has too much Power", "Google has 60 billion dollars"

The usage of have seems wrong to me

Re: Google says ad blockers will save online ads

#36

Post by eli »

m_eiman wrote: post #17
gyardley wrote: post #14

I don't believe the market will balance itself at all. Online publishers are reliant on advertiser revenue, and there's far too much ad space to fill solely with useful ads for useful products. At the same time, the vast majority of AdBlock users block almost everything - including the 'useful ads for useful products' and the high-value branded advertisements that pay by the impression and really don't care whether y…

the vast majority of AdBlock users block almost everything - including the 'useful ads for useful products' Is there such an option in AdBlock? If there is, I wouldn't mind seeing those ads. Currently they get blocked along with the rest, though.

No, not really. You can subscribe to different block lists, but last I checked the goal of all the lists (or at least all the default lists) is to block all ads.

And anyway many of the block rules target ad networks and platforms. One site may use doubleclick.net's ad servers to serve up great, well-targeted ads and someone else may use the same system to server really obnoxious ads.

Personally, I don't subscribe to any lists and add all the block rules by hand. I really just don't want anything that moves or talks to me. But it ain't easy.

Re: Google says ad blockers will save online ads

#37

Post by axod »

whatusername wrote: post #35
naz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

British English

Really? I would have written those sentences as: "Google has too much Power", "Google has 60 billion dollars" The usage of have seems wrong to me

Both are common/valid, at least in the UK, but the plural is more common here than singular afaik.

Re: Google says ad blockers will save online ads

#38

Post by eli »

pavs wrote: post #34
alain94040 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse my ignorance, but that this ad blocker block google ads in search results, or rather Flash ads? I'm asking because, if you push this argument further, you could think that it's good for Google to have all ads served by competitors disappear, to leave only google ads everywhere.

I haven't used privoxy in a while because I don't want to globally block ads and I want to have site-wide filtering system which is easier in extensions and a bit of a work with privoxy. There are supposedly better alternative to privoxy someone once mentioned, I can't remember it. Blocking google text ads with privoxy: http://www.willamowius.de/privoxy.html The thing with privoxy and most other good ad blocking exte…

They could make life a lot harder for AdBlock plugins if they wanted to, but site usability would take a hit and it would always be a cat and mouse game.

Re: Google says ad blockers will save online ads

#39

Post by eli »

Hoff wrote: post #9
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a straightforward collective action problem. However, annoying interruption ads work only when they can successfully interrupt people - through pop-ups, flashing, grabbing focus, and all the other annoying things they do. It seems to me that the widespread adoption of adblocking software can only hurt the annoying, short-term thinking advertisers and help the not-annoying, long-term thinking advertisers. As it g…

And that spam email stuff is going to stop arriving, too.

Hey, if there were a plugin for Outlook that blocked all commercial messages (spam or not), I'm sure many people would use it.

Re: Google says ad blockers will save online ads

#40

Post by axod »

anigbrowl wrote: post #22
axod wrote: post #11

>> "But the truth of the matter is that most people won't install ad blockers on Chrome because people are fundamentally lazy." BS. Most people don't install ad blockers because they don't want them. Not everyone is a new age hippy anti consumerism activist. If an advert annoys you, don't visit that website again. Vote with your feet. That's being honest. I not lazy, and I won't be installing adblock. I don't think d…

I rather think it's because a lot of people don't really know how. Like a lot of others, I don't mind advertisin in principle; indeed, I think they have utility and sometimes click on them because I'm actually interested in what's being sold. ...BUT not the ones that float in when I've already started reading the page, or that take over my screen when I unwittingly roll over them with the mouse (and obscure their clo…

Absolutely not my experience. Also do bear in mind that most people also have TVs. And weirdly, out of choice!!! So they're quite used to adverts.
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