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

Wait, Google Sent Me

chrome.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 246 posts

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#51

Post by scrollaway »

donohoe wrote: post #37

Disappointed in you Jeremy. Its fair for many here to complain about some of the online advertising practices of publishers. However the viable alternative it to pivot to some form of subscription model. Its a hard transition and many orgs are making risky changes to do better. Extensions like these are a step backwards. If you value the work you should support it. See bio for usual disclaimers

It's quite a bit absurd to complain about technical solutions which fullfill the needs of users. If a source of income revolves around annoying users into paying and for them not to find a way around such annoyances, don't expect it to last forever.

In this model, I consider the whole tactic to be publishers relying too much on Google's policy in the first place. If they change that policy, said publishers are screwed. Anything that depends on a third party is doomed to begin with.

These things are temporary income at best. Publishers should not just "take the win and go home"; keep looking for other, better solutions.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#52

Post by petemill »

donohoe wrote: post #37

Disappointed in you Jeremy. Its fair for many here to complain about some of the online advertising practices of publishers. However the viable alternative it to pivot to some form of subscription model. Its a hard transition and many orgs are making risky changes to do better. Extensions like these are a step backwards. If you value the work you should support it. See bio for usual disclaimers

This is a positive thing has been made, and I too have worked at publishers. You can't control these things and this tool prevents a user from having to jump through hoops to use a feature which is publicly available. Well done. You want your geek customers to have some chance of once-again enjoying reading these sites so let them back on them.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#53

Post by TEMPLEOS_DEV »

donohoe wrote: post #37

Disappointed in you Jeremy. Its fair for many here to complain about some of the online advertising practices of publishers. However the viable alternative it to pivot to some form of subscription model. Its a hard transition and many orgs are making risky changes to do better. Extensions like these are a step backwards. If you value the work you should support it. See bio for usual disclaimers

Extensions that allow you to modify the referrer have been around forever.

Also, fuck off.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#54

Post by donohoe »

jashkenas wrote: post #49
donohoe wrote: post #37

Disappointed in you Jeremy. Its fair for many here to complain about some of the online advertising practices of publishers. However the viable alternative it to pivot to some form of subscription model. Its a hard transition and many orgs are making risky changes to do better. Extensions like these are a step backwards. If you value the work you should support it. See bio for usual disclaimers

Sorry to hear that, Michael. Subscription models are great, and paywalls are great. What's not so great is creating an internet where if you use our Trusted Corporate Partner™ you're allowed to view a public webpage, and if you come from anywhere less privileged on the internet, you're not. That's not sustainable. Lest we fall into a vortex where you're only allowed to browse the public web by logging in through Face…

  ... if you use our Trusted Corporate Partner™
No. Not like that. Basically, its Google saying publishes must do this or they won't send traffic their way (via search result / SEO)

Its not publishers saying use Google over Bing over Yahoo etc.

  Lest we fall into a vortex where you're only allowed 
  to browse the public web by logging in through Facebook
The other argument that this may hold water is similar exceptions when you come from social (Reddit, Twitter, FB, etc) where they often allow access. However not for the reasons you're suggesting. In that case its the publisher saying they don't want to cut them-self out of the conversation (who'd link to the NYT if it was alway a paywall or would immediately count against your monthly free views before you can determine whether you wanted to read it or not...). In such cases those exceptions are factored into the economics of whatever the 'free views' limit is.

  and it doesn't do anything fancy to subvert any 
  paywalls — and it's not going to
Really? You could make that argument. However the screenshots you choose for the extension in the WebStore are all sites that have paywalls or subscription requirements. So that last statement is being a big disingenuous.

   I think that's a fair thing to do

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#55

Post by donohoe »

patcon wrote: post #43
donohoe wrote: post #37

Disappointed in you Jeremy. Its fair for many here to complain about some of the online advertising practices of publishers. However the viable alternative it to pivot to some form of subscription model. Its a hard transition and many orgs are making risky changes to do better. Extensions like these are a step backwards. If you value the work you should support it. See bio for usual disclaimers

Not a fan of the shaming... If news orgs value their journalists and the future of the profession, they should experiment with more daring models, rather than ones that simply maximally enrich the org under the same old model EDIT: imho a model that falls apart legally under a browser extension that fits in a 40-line gist is nothing on which to base the livelihoods of a bunch of people

I agree - but to be fair you're assuming they haven't experimented. Micro-payments, dumb 'capthcha' based models, memberships, events, "premier access". All have been tried in various flavors. Some with limited success.

I'm not asking for you to dream up an alternative solution, but don't assume this is a problem that has not been given a lot of thought by many organizations.

This is partly why we are stuck with things like "native advertising" and pretty shit IAB ad units.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#56

Post by javiercr »

IMHO rendering totally different things depending on the http referrer should be considered as cloaking. It's basically the same practice than rendering a different thing if the User-Agent matches Googlebot.

I wonder what would happen to your site if you did this without being The New York Times.

Kudos to Jeremy for this.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#57

Post by arielm »

jashkenas wrote: post #49
donohoe wrote: post #37

Disappointed in you Jeremy. Its fair for many here to complain about some of the online advertising practices of publishers. However the viable alternative it to pivot to some form of subscription model. Its a hard transition and many orgs are making risky changes to do better. Extensions like these are a step backwards. If you value the work you should support it. See bio for usual disclaimers

Sorry to hear that, Michael. Subscription models are great, and paywalls are great. What's not so great is creating an internet where if you use our Trusted Corporate Partner™ you're allowed to view a public webpage, and if you come from anywhere less privileged on the internet, you're not. That's not sustainable. Lest we fall into a vortex where you're only allowed to browse the public web by logging in through Face…

I think the real "issue" here is that those paywalled content publishers want to get paid but also want the free advertising that comes with having a well indexed site.

It's a pretty interesting subject in my opinion because I can easily see arguments for both sides, and if we compare it to the real world we have the exact same "issue.

I can read an article that's on the newspaper's first page when it sits in the newsstand but I can't open it and look for any other articles without paying for the paper.

I think the real solution has to come in the form of a better subscription model. I usually get to paywalled sites wanting to read a single article so a subscription is a bit too much for me. If there was a way for me to get what I want by paying quickly, maybe using some sort of a federated payment platform (much like downloading apps doesn't require subscribing) I'd be more inclined to pay.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#58

Post by yuncun »

donohoe wrote: post #54
jashkenas wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear that, Michael. Subscription models are great, and paywalls are great. What's not so great is creating an internet where if you use our Trusted Corporate Partner™ you're allowed to view a public webpage, and if you come from anywhere less privileged on the internet, you're not. That's not sustainable. Lest we fall into a vortex where you're only allowed to browse the public web by logging in through Face…

... if you use our Trusted Corporate Partner™ No. Not like that. Basically, its Google saying publishes must do this or they won't send traffic their way (via search result / SEO) Its not publishers saying use Google over Bing over Yahoo etc. Lest we fall into a vortex where you're only allowed to browse the public web by logging in through Facebook The other argument that this may hold water is similar exceptions wh…

Makes sense from google's perspective. Why should they list sites that people can't access.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#59

Post by supermatt »

donohoe wrote: post #37

Disappointed in you Jeremy. Its fair for many here to complain about some of the online advertising practices of publishers. However the viable alternative it to pivot to some form of subscription model. Its a hard transition and many orgs are making risky changes to do better. Extensions like these are a step backwards. If you value the work you should support it. See bio for usual disclaimers

This extension simply modifies the referrer, overcoming some strange problem with certain websites where it alters page content depending on the referrer header - i.e. it fixes URL uniformity on broken websites.

I'd be all for this extension not needing to exist if these website owners would simply fix this obviously broken behavior.

Re: Wait, Google Sent Me

#60

Post by jneal »

donohoe wrote: post #37

Disappointed in you Jeremy. Its fair for many here to complain about some of the online advertising practices of publishers. However the viable alternative it to pivot to some form of subscription model. Its a hard transition and many orgs are making risky changes to do better. Extensions like these are a step backwards. If you value the work you should support it. See bio for usual disclaimers

I'm a bit curious. I was under the impression that changing your site to show different content to "Google" than "regular users" was against TOS and could get you banned from results all together. Do big companies pay to get around these restrictions or have there been rule changes in Google Search?
Post reply on HN