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No More Deceptive Download Buttons

googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com

201–210 of 263 posts

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#202
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the bright "ad" lozenge next to the paid results isn't explicit enough Yes, it is not explicit enough. The tiny yellow box is just a noise present on every search page. As any noise it will be ignored. Especially when everything else in these ads tries to look exactly as a valid search result.

So what should Google do then? If a "tiny yellow box" is just noise, isn't a larger yellow box just more noise?

Go back to a different background for ads, for instance.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just use The Deck, you have to be invited.

Valid point. But I still reject the notion of "that sucks but might as well get mine". Sounds like there's a lot of space for ad networks that don't suck. Or monetization models that don't rely on spammy, useless ads.

> Or monetization models that don't rely on spammy, useless ads.

I'm struggling to find one, any idea?

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#204
post #148

This "Google Safe Browsing" initiative seriously worries me. It's effectively some unknown, mysterious, un-contactable set of AI algorithms/people/who knows what controlling the internet because Google owns everyone's browser. One of my websites got tagged as "Dangerous" and having "harmful programs" despite having nothing of the sort. My guess is a silly hiccup of their neural network algorithms. And I have absolute…

I always thought it was something like visiting the site with a somewhat unprotected (but virtualized) computer and seeing if anything bad (registry keys changed) happened.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd invoke the first amendment. It would be pretty open and shut.

I'm not sure if you know what the "first amendment" is. I'll tell you what it isn't, it's not a magical trump card that lets you say whatever you want.

http://searchengineland.com/another-court-affirms-googles-fi...

That seems to be how Google is (successfully) using it.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#206
post #154
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point was made elsewhere, but I think you stated it most eloquently. Here's my question though: does it not benefit the user to enforce some minimum of deterrence through automated policing on the ad acceptance side? Yes, it's whack-a-mole, but so is SEO, and Google's continually tweaking that instead of giving up. Based on the current rudimentary techniques used by the advertisers (e.g. "DOWNLOAD!" buttons), eve…

Google is trying quite hard to stop the download ads. The people running those ads are trying even harder. It has nothing to do with CV, it is not an engineering problem.

> It has nothing to do with CV, it is not an engineering problem.

Not sure what you mean by this, given that there's a human with eyeballs on the other end of the bad ad and a limited number of keywords to trick that human into undesirable actions (virus,error,infected,download,update,install).

CV is exactly the solution you'd want to use for a first-pass categorization, given that's the pathway by which the ads communicate with users.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#207
post #9

This is a joke right ? We run Adsense display ads on our site and have to spend significant time every day reviewing and blocking new ads which try to use these deceptive practices. Since Google clearly has the tech to detect this they should be implementing it at source on the advertisers (malvertisers). Instead they are pushing this down to the publishers and hitting them with penalties. It's a clever ploy in some…

No, it's not a "ploy", it's the only realistic action google could take. It would be a huge business mistake to ban malvertisers from adsense, because those would move to other networks, which would then in turn be preferred by publishers because that's where the money moves. Adsense would lose, and the consumer wouldn't have won anything.

The publishers aren't innocent at all. They decide to place ads right above, below, and all around the real download button. Because they know that a good percentage of their consumers will be tricked, and so they get payed.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#208
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"more broad reaching than anything they could do just within AdSense" ... as long as you don't care about browsers which don't run Google's Safe Browsing service. You know another way to stop these ads? Make available an advertising network which doesn't serve them. Website owners who don't want to install malware on their users' computers - which is probably most of us - would prefer that network to the others. As-i…

I've actually built an advertising network[1] that is not focused on serving display ads, but linking to content directly in images. Video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GfKBvs53Ss The thought is that if "advertising" is actually a feature of a website, then it solves the problem of users trying to avoid being shown ads. If you could hover your mouse over an object on any image on the internet and be taken di…

That's pretty good. The issue I have with it is that without this prior knowledge, I can't tell what will happen when I click - the URL isn't informative, and there's no alt-text.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect an ad blocker to block stuff like this.

I would not expect Google to recommend using an ad blocker. They still want you to be able to see the 'good' ads.

They also recommend not do any evil if you do not want it to be posted publicly on the internet (E. Schmidt in particular).

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valid point. But I still reject the notion of "that sucks but might as well get mine". Sounds like there's a lot of space for ad networks that don't suck. Or monetization models that don't rely on spammy, useless ads.

> Or monetization models that don't rely on spammy, useless ads. I'm struggling to find one, any idea?

Build something so good, people will pay for it? It seems to work for companies like Netflix and Toyota.
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