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Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

theintercept.com

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Re: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

#81

Post by partiallypro »

ucaetano wrote: post #25

It is worth remembering the The Intercept used to (still does?) work with and publish material from a Oracle-funded nonprofit that existed for the sole purpose of creating bad PR for Google: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/anti-google-rese...

That may be true, but what is untrue about the article? How is it ok for a company to be the largest ad company in the world, while controlling the most popular browser on the planet and just announced a service that will kill off its competitors (as if they have many at all?) That's monopolistic behavior. Ask yourself, if Microsoft did this or something similar, would they get hit with anti-trust? Yes.

Re: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

#83

Post by real-hacker »

Animats wrote: post #17

What ads would get blocked? The ones not sold by Google, for the most part. I can see it coming - "Host on AMP, and your ads will get through". "Use Google Ads, and your ads will get through." "Pay dues to the Acceptable Ad Consortium, and your ads will get through." Look what happened with TrustE and their ratings. It started out as a good idea, and ended up as a cover for scumbags. Today, a TrustE seal has negative…

This, along with Safari's 'stop-ad-tracking' feature released on WWDC17, will very probably kill the Internet ads business (the others). I would be surprised if stock prices of the ads networks don't plumage.

Re: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

#84

Post by null0pointer »

scarface74 wrote: post #58
newtem0 wrote: post #19

I still dont understand why simple endorsments dont work for some sites. Just put a text banner somewhere prominent that says "thanks bobs burgers for being our sponsor" there is no way ad blockers could pick that text out of all the other text and block it. And there is no reason anyone would want to block it anyway.

Daringfireball.com. John Gruber's ad model for over a decade is to post one RSS sponsorship on Monday and a thank you on Friday. He charged $8000 a week it. https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/

Another interesting and simple ad model that I saw was on a bitcoin gambling site. The ads were a small image banner at the top of the site. Each advertiser would choose a daily rate to pay. Then each time the page was loaded an ad was selected randomly weighted by daily rate (eg. Alice pay $1/day and Bob pays $2/day, Bob's ads show up twice as often). I like how simple it was while still allowing advertisers to bid against each other. The total ad revenue of the site would scale directly with website traffic. There are no trackers, no third party services, and no JS. Just simple get what you pay for. Want more? pay more.

Re: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

#85

Post by ben-schaaf »

sowbug wrote: post #62
quadrangle wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power is typically zero-sum. As Google gains effective monopoly power, Mozilla and others whose interests are more aligned with the public interest lose power. I could go on. Put simply, if nobody stops using other adblockers because of this, then nothing is directly a problem. The problems come when Google uses their power to do things like block adblockers in Chrome (as they already do on Android!) and other ramifi…

> as they already do on Android! This is exclusionary detailing, wouldn't you say? Chrome on Android doesn't have an extensions platform.

That doesn't stop you from using a local proxy to filter ad network traffic, like what Adblock Plus does on android. Adblock Plus was removed from the play store in 2013 [0].

That being said there are other browsers on android that either support extensions (like firefox) or have an adblocker built in.

[0]: https://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-plus-for-android-remove...

Re: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

#86

Post by fidrelity »

The state of online advertisement has to change. Customers and publishers are unsatisfied and there are massive bot scam networks out there.

I am hopeful that Brandon Eich's brave browser[1] will make the ads economy less vulnerable to Google's dominance.

[1] https://brave.com

Re: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

#88

Post by PrivWeeble »

russdpale wrote: post #78
rtkwe wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little more hopeful. They have a clear incentive to keep really bad ads off their own services because if they don't a lot of people will just reinstall another ad blocker. If I didn't have to deal with unmutable autoplaying video ads or ads spouting malware I'd be more willing to browse with a limited ad blocker.

Google will never be able to pry uBlock Origin from me! Stay away!

And if Google takes steps to prevent third-party ad blockers from working in Chrome? Or renders them worthless through exceptions to the filtering API?

Even if you ignore Google's Funding Choices and its potential to increase adoption of view-ads-or-pay (a lose/lose for privacy, btw) you are very vulnerable if you use Chrome and/or a Google controlled OS. The Coalition for Better Ads won't be helping you by keeping Google in check. It is more or less the same companies you are fighting right now (check membership and note NAI, IAB, DMA, and other trade associations).

Re: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

#89

Post by balladeer »

The key part here is they are deciding to make it enabled by default. Does it not really amount to malpractice against their competitors in the guise of user experience. Anti-trust?

Because just saying that one can always disable it and use something like uBlock Origin is missing the point that most of the people will not bother to do that except a tiny minority and that would essentially mean this coalition, which by all measures comes across more of a sham, will succeed in monopolizing ads completely.

I think the least they could do to even look impartial is keeping it disabled by default rather than making it opt-in.

Re: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

#90

Post by saiya-jin »

PrivWeeble wrote: post #88
russdpale wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google will never be able to pry uBlock Origin from me! Stay away!

And if Google takes steps to prevent third-party ad blockers from working in Chrome? Or renders them worthless through exceptions to the filtering API? Even if you ignore Google's Funding Choices and its potential to increase adoption of view-ads-or-pay (a lose/lose for privacy, btw) you are very vulnerable if you use Chrome and/or a Google controlled OS. The Coalition for Better Ads won't be helping you by keeping G…

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