Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox has had ads on its "new tab" page by default for ages now.
By ads you mean the popular articles from Pocket? That is an ad for Pocket ?
Amazon.com is pinned when you install the app
Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab
221–230 of 330 posts
Re: Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worth noting that UGC has some significant security regressions https://qua3k.github.io/ungoogled/
Interesting to learn. Are these issues fixable? I'm not familiar with what changes went into UGC but something like changing the compiler toolchain seems like a strange decision.
Upstreams toolchain is pretty insane so most downstream try to do the more default thing but that often doesn't include the same customizations.
I think its all doable but community forks tend to be one person doing a job of 10 people and will never keep up.
Re: Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
If this harms their business then why would they keep doing it
Say you're a decision-maker at Google (or Any Large Corp). You have a KPI to increase revenue by 5% this year. If you hit this KPI, then you get a bonus. If you get the bonus, then you can afford the thing that your partner has been wanting forever (or that will make your neighbours jealous, or whatever), and you get a happy life. You know that doing X will harm the company in the long term (defined as anything past…
I know people that do this very thing but none of them admit to themselves that they "know that doing X will harm the company in the long term". Instead they create a narrative that says "This time it will be different" so they don't have to be bothered by any kind of pesky conscience. I don't even know if they do this consciously, it just seems to happen.
Re: Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not really a matter of opinion or what people think. We're already in a recession here in the United States, as we've had two negative GDP growth quarters in a row. Anyone who says otherwise is likely just doing so for political reasons, as it's also an election year here in the United States, but to do so they'd have to literally change the definition of recession (they're trying but it's not working).
This is a classic example of how propaganda works. The layman's definition of recession, which has never been used officially or by policy-makers in America, is this bit about "negative GDP growth for two quarters". But despite that not being how we've always determined recessions here, if you read the reply above, the user has literally invented a political conspiracy about their ignorance about economics. The layma…
Or maybe THIS is exactly how propaganda works, swapping between the connotations and denotations of words when it's politically convenient to. It's also clear to me if the president had an R next to his name, both sides of the "Are we in a recession?" debate would swap entirely.
Re: Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab
#225> Google has historically been protective of their front page, why now? Probably for the same reason that Google is shutting down Stadia [1] and cutting staff [2], and the same reason that we see roughly one announcement of layoffs here on Hacker News every week: most people expect that we are going into a recession. For example, see the price of major indexes like the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ and plot it on a 10+ year…
It's not really a matter of opinion or what people think. We're already in a recession here in the United States, as we've had two negative GDP growth quarters in a row. Anyone who says otherwise is likely just doing so for political reasons, as it's also an election year here in the United States, but to do so they'd have to literally change the definition of recession (they're trying but it's not working).
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Re: Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab
#226Who still using chrome? Use safari, brave, or Firefox.
I have no choice but to use Firefox because I have switched to vertical tabs (with Sidebery) and it seems that every other browser besides Edge(?!) is stuck with horizontal tabs.
Horizontal tabs are objectively inferior - why are vertical tabs so rare???
Re: Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab
#227Re: Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm surprised they advertise their own product in those places... It's such an obvious thing for the EU to go after. "Google has a monopoly position in Browsers/Search, and (ab)used their homepage to advertise their entry into a new field of business, immediately giving it free advertising the competitors could never access." If I were Googles legal team, I would immediately put an end to such cross-product advertisi…
I've said the same, how is doing that any different from Microsoft using their OS to push their own products in the past when they got sued? Having that stuff in Chrome would cost millions in terms of normal display ads for the number of impressions they would get
The difference is, these anti-competitive tactics bring them more value than the penalty the receive, at this point, it's more of a slap on the wrist and nothing else.
Re: Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab
#229Notably, this is not Google showing random search/display ads. Those look like ads for Google's own product. I don't think this is the first time. IIRC, Google used to show an ad for Chrome if you used the search from any other browser.
While slightly dirty, I got the ad for Chrome, that made sense in the context. Advertising for Fitbits is weird and seems desperate.
My sense is that it's a test. If Google decides it went well we'll see ads for other Google products. That's a dangerous path though, at some point some one will make a nice offer for that spot, and I'm not sure the current management at Google have enough integrity to say no.
Side note: It might be Fitbits, because Fitbit is a subsidiary of Google LLC, and not Alphabet directly.
Re: Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab
#230I woke up to ads in my new tab page in Firefox yesterday; sponsored links to Amazon and Nike. Browsers don't seem to serve users anymore. They, like everything else, are mostly ad delivery mechanisms.
Whenever I open a new tab in Firefox it is a blank tab because I set New Tabs to Blank.
Wake me when I can't do that anymore (and point me to a decent fork).