Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

ninjasandrobots.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 99 posts

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#71

Post by fpgeek »

Duff wrote: post #68
Peaker wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you just mentally ad-block, are you still denying them?

It's your ethical duty to click! Seriously though, my local weekly newspaper knows nothing about my habits, but offers ads 10x more relevant than Google, who has been tracking me for a decade.

I'm sure your local newspaper offers tons of irrelevant ads as well (mine did once-upon-a-time). I suspect you've learned to pick out the relevant ones and skip the irrelevant ones - which is arguably the dead-tree newspaper equivalent of this proposal.

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#72

Post by jodrellblank »

12uu45dd wrote: post #62
12uu45dd wrote: post #37

Now, let's be serious. If we all block ads, whic is really trivial to do, then the web would cease to be an important medium, the quality of content found through the web would drop sharply and our lives would lose the enrichment that online advertising brings. It would just be terrible. Don't block ads. A kitten is tortured everytime you do.

If you don't believe this is an important issue, then please consider the example of public television. The damage it has caused by denying income to advertisers has been immeasurable. Not to mention that the programs they show serve only to dull the minds of the population. Please do not block ads. My kitten thanks you for your anticipated cooperation.

They don't have a right to make a living from a horrible business model!

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#73

Post by elithrar »

rglullis wrote: post #31
tomkarlo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that the MPAA claim is silly. But in this case, you're actually consuming the product - using their bandwidth, their servers, etc, all of which costs money - and denying them the revenue they use to support that service. The argument with the MPAA concept is that you're not denying them a sale, nor are you increasing their cost of doing business, but here you're you're doing the latter. Do you really…

The thing is, if the product is actually valuable to me, I would spend more money on them that they could ever make from me through ads. "But wait, what about freemium? Plenty of services remove the ads for paying customers", one might ask. The problem with it is that you now a have false sense of choice: 1) Free product + ads 2) Paid product and no ads. There is a third alternative: free product, adblock, no ads. Ye…

> There is a third alternative: free product, adblock, no ads.

You're absolutely allowed to do this if you choose, but you should also be aware that it's harming the sites/app that you're obviously visiting. If a site has incredibly intrusive ads, I just choose not to visit it. Most sites I visit respect the user enough to not have crazy pop-over/roll-over ads; as a result, I don't use AdBlock extensions and they get their CPM $.

FYI, here's the Arstechnica article RE: Ars vs. AdBlock, for those interested: http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-d...

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#74

Post by zanny »

Duff wrote: post #68
Peaker wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you just mentally ad-block, are you still denying them?

It's your ethical duty to click! Seriously though, my local weekly newspaper knows nothing about my habits, but offers ads 10x more relevant than Google, who has been tracking me for a decade.

But your local newspaper is not trying to provide relevant ads. They just take ads from whoever will pay them and put those in the paper. Or am I missing something, such as sarcasm. I am bad with that.

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#75

Post by zanny »

thelastknowngod wrote: post #45

You should check out Collusion: http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/collusion-who-is-tracking-you/ Then install TrackerBlock: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/trackerblock/

Upboats for Collusion, I can't sleep anymore knowing 95% of the websites I visit are sending info to or from Facebook.

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#76

Post by vibrunazo »

getpost wrote: post #25
vladd wrote: post #7

Google allows you to manage your ads preferences at: http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ Retargeting is basically disabled if one opts out there (for the web, search&gmail or both).

I checked that link, and Google's profile of me is way off. Earth Sciences? Seriously? This is a comfort, since I figure letting the system run on bad information is just fine. It does suggest that Google isn't using some information it has on me. I'm sure it knows my birth year, but my browsing habits seem to suggest someone much younger. I must be 'immature.'

It put my inferred age as 65+ years old, when I'm 29. I'm not sure what to make of that, other than google is much worse at this than I thought they were ^^

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#77

Post by rglullis »

elithrar wrote: post #73
rglullis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, if the product is actually valuable to me, I would spend more money on them that they could ever make from me through ads. "But wait, what about freemium? Plenty of services remove the ads for paying customers", one might ask. The problem with it is that you now a have false sense of choice: 1) Free product + ads 2) Paid product and no ads. There is a third alternative: free product, adblock, no ads. Ye…

> There is a third alternative: free product, adblock, no ads. You're absolutely allowed to do this if you choose, but you should also be aware that it's harming the sites/app that you're obviously visiting. If a site has incredibly intrusive ads, I just choose not to visit it. Most sites I visit respect the user enough to not have crazy pop-over/roll-over ads; as a result, I don't use AdBlock extensions and they get…

I addressed this in another comment. I have zero tolerance for ads, no matter how "un-intrusive" they are.

Also, it is a matter of signaling: I don't want to reward sites that have a business model reliant on ads. That would give them a very strong incentive to go to the lowest common denominator and just optimize all their work to increase page views.

Ten years ago, we used to complain about the state of "mainstream media" and thought that blogs would be our salvation. But instead of rewarding quality work of bloggers, we decided that it was okay to accept ads. When you get that, you get a popularity contest, and this is why we end up with crap like Techcrunch and Engadget and other AOL-owned "properties".

Ars provides the "premium" service, but what they offer for it? Full-text RSS? It is not worth $5/month. I will just adblock + readability the hell out of their articles.

To sum up: I don't want to hurt the sites, but I do want to hurt the business model. If the websites rely on this failed business model? I'm sorry, but it is just collateral.

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#78

Post by cnbeuiwx »

Why do people even trust ads? Why would I pick a certain brand just because I see it over and over? Wouldnt someone intelligent just do 5 minutes of googling to find out which one is the best?

Not to mention that I think it grabs my attention from what Im trying to do and redirects it into me wanting to buy a product all of a sudden. No.

Proud Adblock user ever since it came.

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#79

Post by earl »

rglullis wrote: post #77
elithrar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a third alternative: free product, adblock, no ads. You're absolutely allowed to do this if you choose, but you should also be aware that it's harming the sites/app that you're obviously visiting. If a site has incredibly intrusive ads, I just choose not to visit it. Most sites I visit respect the user enough to not have crazy pop-over/roll-over ads; as a result, I don't use AdBlock extensions and they get…

I addressed this in another comment. I have zero tolerance for ads, no matter how "un-intrusive" they are. Also, it is a matter of signaling: I don't want to reward sites that have a business model reliant on ads. That would give them a very strong incentive to go to the lowest common denominator and just optimize all their work to increase page views. Ten years ago, we used to complain about the state of "mainstream…

Dude, were you arsed to see what Ars offers for their $5/month? Because IN GIANT BOLD TYPE, they offer -- and I'm quoting -- "Ad free, premier page layouts."

http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/

So, to summarize:

(1) You don't want to "reward" sites that have a business model reliant on ads

(2) you want their content anyway

(3) when they offer you a trade: pay us $5 and we won't show you ads, you ignore them

Conclusion: you're a cheap dick.

Re: Google, I've had enough. How about a Compromise?

#80

Post by bad_user »

rglullis wrote: post #11

I really, really don't buy the idea that I should feel bad for using adblock. The whole "ads can be a way to provide quality services, and adblock removes that revenue" is the marketer's equivalent to the {MP|RI}AA's "every pirate is a stolen sale". The whole thing with the Internet is about desintermediation, and marketing departments are nothing but middle-men between producers and consumers. Even worse that they a…

Ads are a monetization platform and you as an individual are not relevant, until most people start using AdBlock.

I do agree that the argument is very similar to piracy arguments told by MPAA/RIAA. When such a thing happens, the smartest thing for businesses is to adapt.

However, for the moment I like the Internet services and websites that I'm using, while I don't like the content or the prices or the restrictions promoted by the media industry. Which is why I'm being a good citizen and so I'm not installing AdBlock.

But this issue cuts both ways. AdBlock when used by a minority, is actually beneficial to websites. Because otherwise that minority would get really annoyed with a lot of them and losing those consumers is worse than not having conversions from them.

So that's another reason why I'm not using AdBlock, because websites that annoy me to the point that I can't take it anymore do not deserve my eyeballs, while those where the ads are promoted with taste do deserve my attention.

Post reply on HN