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Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

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Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#131

Post by nitrogen »

wallunit wrote: post #58
znowi wrote: post #13

I think it was immoral and dishonest to sneak in a whitelist feature into AdBlock, which is in direct opposition to the core product value. Imagine a firewall that whitelists certain networks. And background updates add more networks that bought their way into your machine. Not a product I'd be willing to use.

1. There was a user survey in 2009, whether users would like to have every ad blocked or would accept some ads to a certain degree. And the result was that around half of the users are fine with getting some ads: http://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-plus-user-survey-results... 2. Adblock Plus has announced on their website that they have introduced "Acceptable Ads", and that it will be enabled by default: http://adblo…

It's #3 that is evil. Unless there's a large print disclaimer sayong "notice: ad networks pay for whitelisting" in the extension description and next to thethe acceptable ads checkbox, Adblock Plus is being deceptive. The ad networks themselves should never be paying an ad blocker for special treatment. It's either bribery by the networks, or extortion by ABP.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#133

Post by kbenson »

hnnnnng wrote: post #125
kbenson wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really equate paying a third party to reduce their negative impact on your business to paying a third party to start negatively impacting a competitor? One takes advantage of market conditions their benefit, the other changes market conditions to the detriment of the competitor.

Well by funding, they are helping adblock. And, assuming its true that their(Google's) own ads are NOT blocked, it means adblock(and by extension Google) is negatively impacting only the competitors. So in this case, the comparison is very valid. Obviously they(Google) can't outright put out an adblocker of their own, but if someone else puts it out and they support it, and it just so happens to whitelist their ads,…

> Well by funding, they are helping adblock. And, assuming its true that their(Google's) own ads are NOT blocked, it means adblock(and by extension Google) is negatively impacting only the competitors. So in this case, the comparison is very valid.

If you want to go by that meaning of "funding" then any use of a service is "funding" that company that provides it. While technically true, I would argue that most people would think "funding" to mean "provide capital to an entity without expectation of a service or item which that entity sells as a normal mode of business, and to use it in a different manner without explicit note of your meaning is to invite a misinterpretation of the facts, on purpose or otherwise. I don't believe that leads to rational discourse.

> Obviously they(Google) can't outright put out an adblocker of their own, but if someone else puts it out and they support it, and it just so happens to whitelist their ads, you must admit its definitely worth at least questioning. Plus Google is not the stellar company it pretends to be, with the recent news about its tax evasion in Europe and PRISM participation.

Of course it's worth questioning. But if someone someone states that paying a company to get a benefit yourself is the same as paying a company to cause a detriment to another, a lot of evidence is needed to back that up, otherwise we aren't questioning anything, we are making assumptions.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#134

Post by ceejayoz »

s3r3nity wrote: post #88
asperous wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some ad companies pay per view

Yeah but CPM (cost per impression metric) is not a scalable business model alone -- CPC (cost per click) or CPA (cost per acquisition) metrics have arisen because sites will spam impressions to people in Malaysia who will never buy anything...cheap impressions don't power a site for very long unfortunately.

Many sites in the news media are still primarily on impression-based ad revenue. Often, a print advertising purchase comes with a certain number of impressions on the website.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#135

Post by sandossu »

md224 wrote: post #122
RyanZAG wrote: post #113

I was thinking about this further, and while it comes off as fairly irrelevant to start with, it's actually an extremely bad thing. In essence, this has set up two tiers of advertising: those we have paid for white list privileges, and those who haven't. This is heavily in Google's interests as they are the only advertiser powerful enough to get by with only text adverts - nobody else has a platform like Google searc…

It's interesting that people are upset about Google being able to pay to get their content around certain barriers, when this is essentially what Google AdWords is: a system for advertisers to pay to get their content displayed in prominent locations rather than relying on position in organic search. And yet nobody really takes it seriously as a Real Problem. Not trivializing your complaint, btw... just pointing out…

"I think we would all like to live in a world where purchasing decisions are based on reviews from people that have actually used a good or service, and I would think that the ubiquity of the web has made this kind of crowdsourced intelligence quite feasible."

Would you really like all advertising to move in that direction? You should realize it's impossible to know if a person really owns and likes a product or it's just a sponsorship. Nobody would be trusted anymore.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#136

Post by shardling »

nitrogen wrote: post #131
wallunit wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. There was a user survey in 2009, whether users would like to have every ad blocked or would accept some ads to a certain degree. And the result was that around half of the users are fine with getting some ads: http://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-plus-user-survey-results... 2. Adblock Plus has announced on their website that they have introduced "Acceptable Ads", and that it will be enabled by default: http://adblo…

It's #3 that is evil. Unless there's a large print disclaimer sayong "notice: ad networks pay for whitelisting" in the extension description and next to thethe acceptable ads checkbox, Adblock Plus is being deceptive. The ad networks themselves should never be paying an ad blocker for special treatment. It's either bribery by the networks, or extortion by ABP.

wallunit's response was in direct response to someone who claimed this feature was "snuck in".

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#137

Post by enraged_camel »

RyanZAG wrote: post #113

I was thinking about this further, and while it comes off as fairly irrelevant to start with, it's actually an extremely bad thing. In essence, this has set up two tiers of advertising: those we have paid for white list privileges, and those who haven't. This is heavily in Google's interests as they are the only advertiser powerful enough to get by with only text adverts - nobody else has a platform like Google searc…

I think the damage this causes is far greater than setting up two tiers of advertising.

This is a shining example of how those with money are able to influence the system by corrupting the very mechanisms that were implemented to protect the "regular people" in that system.

If Google had paid a politician to exempt itself from certain laws, we would call it bribery. For the exact same reason, we should take issue with them paying Adblock Plus to whitelist their ads.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#138

Post by pbhjpbhj »

nitrogen wrote: post #131
wallunit wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. There was a user survey in 2009, whether users would like to have every ad blocked or would accept some ads to a certain degree. And the result was that around half of the users are fine with getting some ads: http://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-plus-user-survey-results... 2. Adblock Plus has announced on their website that they have introduced "Acceptable Ads", and that it will be enabled by default: http://adblo…

It's #3 that is evil. Unless there's a large print disclaimer sayong "notice: ad networks pay for whitelisting" in the extension description and next to thethe acceptable ads checkbox, Adblock Plus is being deceptive. The ad networks themselves should never be paying an ad blocker for special treatment. It's either bribery by the networks, or extortion by ABP.

I feel some charge is acceptable as the ad network needs to be assessed against the whitelist criteria.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#139

Post by wallunit »

nitrogen wrote: post #131
wallunit wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. There was a user survey in 2009, whether users would like to have every ad blocked or would accept some ads to a certain degree. And the result was that around half of the users are fine with getting some ads: http://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-plus-user-survey-results... 2. Adblock Plus has announced on their website that they have introduced "Acceptable Ads", and that it will be enabled by default: http://adblo…

It's #3 that is evil. Unless there's a large print disclaimer sayong "notice: ad networks pay for whitelisting" in the extension description and next to thethe acceptable ads checkbox, Adblock Plus is being deceptive. The ad networks themselves should never be paying an ad blocker for special treatment. It's either bribery by the networks, or extortion by ABP.

Ad networks doesn't pay for white listing! The article is little confusing (typical for German press). Certain ads on certain websites can get into the white list. So if somebody pays it is the company running the website. And smaller websites like Reddit got their ads even white listed for free. See my reply to Karunamon [1].

However the comment you replied to was about the accusation that Adblock Plus would be dishonest, which just isn't true.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5996565

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#140

Post by nivla »

Although I can understand the need to whitelist non-intrusive or "acceptable" ads, it seems shady to base the list on who pays the most. If adblock plus is a community plugin, the list of acceptable ads should be voted on. I have switched to Ghostery (after reports of adblock plus injecting referral tags), so can someone clarify if whitelisting is enabled by default?

Despite ads being the main source of revenue for Google, it is really cool of them to allow ad-blockers on the Chrome extension store (although Andriod is another story). However, paying to be whitelisted puts the rest of the advertisers at a disadvantage. It is a very well known fact that there isn't a good alternative to Adsense and things like this will only puts a dent into the remaining competition.

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