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Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

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Re: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

#151
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.

Those ads are very expensive to place on the page and have lower inventory. Aka less efficient than popular ads

Re: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

#153
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is a data mining and extraction company. That's hard to argue with. Are you complaining about the "sells personal information" part?

Google does a lot of different things, but people with an axe to grind often like to label Google as something specific that they dislike. In this case they call it a data mining company, which is both meaningless due to how vague the term is, but also slightly menacing sounding. Does Google do things that would fall under a reasonable interpretation of data mining? Definitely. Is it their primary activity? Not by a…

Google's primary activity is collecting and monetizing your personal data. That's what their ad business is based on, and their ad business is really the only thing they do that makes money (in Google scale terms of money, anyways). It doesn't matter what department someone at Google works at, their paycheck is paid for by the monetization of that data mining.

Anything else Google does is either a route to more data mining and extraction, or a fun side project they do with money made off data mining and extraction.

Re: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

#154
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you add or remove [from that quote] to make it more factual?

Replace "that sells personal information to advertisers" with "that uses personal information to match consumers to advertisers". Unless Google really sells personal information somewhere, in which case I'd like to know the price tag on the file about me that's supposedly for sale. My understanding is that such a product doesn't exist. (Disclosure: I work at Google but on Chrome OS, ie. client hardware. No idea what…

The only practical difference here is that Google isn't giving away their main value proposition. Why give people the product when you can charge them for it over and over?

Either way, at the end of the day, Google is still selling our data.

Re: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

#155

Let me tell you what will happen: - Google creates built-in adblocker that allows google ads - Google removes the adblockers from Google Store due to some reason - You don't have an adblocker anymore

- You switch to another browser that allows ad blockers or has a good one built-in.

Ah, but not when all the (Google-powered) apps and services you use only work on Google's browser.

Re: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but then you've got cases like this: https://www.troyhunt.com/ad-blockers-are-part-of-the-problem... I've been using adblockers for about ten years now, but blocking that just seems over the top and I understand Troy's frustration. I want a blocker to prevent trackers from being loaded and for removing annoying crap from webpages. That includes most ads, newsletter popups, interstitials, maybe social widgets an…

Why is that thing loaded by javascript, and why is it on a different domain from the site (with www vs. without it). It took way too many steps for me to get to see the sponsor message.

Troy's sponsor message isn't loaded by JavaScript. Someone blacklisted the div id on the list several ad blockers are using.

Re: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

#158
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.

s/released/announced/ afaik

Re: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google hosts most of those download button ads... Also the biggest source of pre-roll auto-play video ads, youtube.

I feel like auto-play ads make sense on youtube because youtube is a video service and you go in expecting a video anyway. It's like a TV commercial. I get super pissed by auto-play ads on non-video websites, but when it's in front of a video such as on youtube I find it only a minor annoyance. [EDIT: I don't know if there are auto-play ads in the sidebar on desktop, I use adblock on desktop so I only see those video…

There's no shock of audio but it's still stopping you from getting to the content. It's just as bad as full-page interstitials. (By the way, does anyone else get unreasonably mad that the button to leave such an ad usually says "skip" even when the ad was already shown and stays up indefinitely?)

Re: Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker

#160
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sure and there'll be tons of die hards like you who won't stop using blockers. This still makes a lot of sense if it keeps new people from installing a 3rd party blanket ad blocker and eating into ad revenue from Google's own platform.

Based on the article, I didn't see any evidence they are shutting down chrome add-ons. I'm really lost on why people are getting the impression of that. When Google made Google+, they didn't block you from visiting Facebook, why would this be different
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