Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted • Hacker News Board

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#41

Post by wallunit » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 5:41 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #26

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.

Agreed completely. For what it's worth, on Firefox anyways, there's a fork of Adblock Plus called Adblock Edge that has no such ethical issues, and as far as I can tell, works with all the addon plugins that worked with ABP like the element hider and popup blocker.

Why does somebody fork ABP, just to strip out a featere which can already be disabled in the options?

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#42

Post by tommi » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 5:41 PM UTC

mst wrote: post #33

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.

I installed AdBlock Plus because of the addition of the whitelist. I want to encourage sites providing me with free content to show me adverts that don't annoy me. And it was announced well enough that I, a non-user, heard of it, so I think 'sneak in' is frankly disingenuous.

The problem here is that the definition of annoyance is the amount of cash paid to AdBlock Plus, not the actual annoyance from user's perspective.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#43

Post by Apocryphon » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 5:42 PM UTC

Mozilla's main source of revenue is from Google, as well. Are many of these non-profit entities dependent upon Google funding?

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#44

Post by 6cxs2hd6 » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 5:43 PM UTC

As others noted, AdBlock and Adblock Plus are two different companies.

I donated to AdBlock a couple years ago. Should have earlier. And should do again. Not claiming to be a saint. But I gave them some actual money. I'd like to think that enough people doing this, makes it possible for AdBlock to avoid doing what AdBlock Plus did.

I think this is a variation on the theme, "If you're not the customer, you're the product." Usually we talk about this WRT free web services. In this case it applies to what, back in the day, some of us would refer to as "shareware".

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#45

Post by Dylan16807 » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 5:44 PM UTC

diggan wrote: post #11

kevingadd wrote: post #7

As long as they're only whitelisting text ads, I don't think I mind. Even image ads that aren't animated are okay with me if they aren't offensive. The only reason I have AdBlock plus installed in the first place is the really vile shit - noisy SWFs, scantily clad women, drive-by PDF 0 day exploits, etc...

Well, what others find offensive, you find funny and what you find offensive, other people don't even notice. It's a pretty subjective thing no?

Fine, get rid of the image ads that offend even 0.1% of people. The general idea is that some people want to block 'ads', and some people only want to block 'harassing ads'. An ad being a clean, non-blinking, PG etc. experience is mostly objective.

Personally I want to try an ad blocker that only blocks video ads, that works in tandem with click-to-play flash, but I haven't found one.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#46

Post by dropdownmenu » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 5:44 PM UTC

I can understand google trying to protect their revenue source, but actions like this undermine the openness of the platforms that they are trying to promote.

Open and free platforms need to allow people to say no.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#47

Post by cupcake-unicorn » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 5:45 PM UTC

I did notice this recently and have been having to uncheck the box on all the new PCs I install it on. While the ads are "unintrusive" I have a media PC where I've turned the font up to huge to be able to read from the couch. Some search terms will cause maybe up to 4 different text ads to show up and that will effectively block out the actual search results when your font is large.

I'm glad I found out about this though. I always felt vaguely guilty unchecking it, because I thought it was maybe AdBlock trying to support the "Good Guys" of online advertising, but if Google themselves are paying for it, I no longer care.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#48

Post by Ellipsis753 » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 5:45 PM UTC

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.

Actually I don't mind the feature existing. Small clearly labeled text ads don't add much to the page loading time and can be clearly seen as ads.

However I still normally disable the ads as I really enjoy the increased screen space gained by removing the ads.

Asking for money to whitelist ads it rather poor policy however. If an ad is small and clearly an ad then whitelist it. If it's not then blacklist it. Having to pay to have your non-intrusive ads whitelisted is shitty. I hope they didn't have to pay very much.

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#49

Post by nwilliams » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 5:46 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #27

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.

It's not immoral and dishonest to have a different idea of the core product value than you do. Personally, I run AdBlock not because I break out in hives in the presence of advertising, but because a lot of advertising on the web is just awful, makes sites harder to use and wears down my battery. Whitelisting advertising that is actually consumer-friendly is not at all against the core value I derive from the product…

The article seems to imply(if my reading of the somewhat dodgy translation is right) that Google ads were allowed but Bing and Yahoo's weren't.

Last I checked, both Bing's and Yahoo's ads were as "unobstrusive" as Google's text ads so unblocking only Google's ads because Google pays them does not follow from what you said about distracting and resource hungry ads.

Perhaps Google's ads are less obtrusive because it has started disguising them from organic search results pretty well?

http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-it

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentional...

FTC recently ruled against this and said that 62% of web surfers studied could not even tell that there ads on the search results page!

http://www.ftc.gov/os/2013/06/130625searchenginegenerallette...

Re: Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

#50

Post by cake » Fri, Jul 05, 2013, 5:49 PM UTC

jpdoctor wrote: post #6

Quick ref to get rid of Google Ads (and some others too) on Adblock Plus: FOR CHROME: Go to "Settings" Find Extensions in the list on the left Find AdBlock, select "Options" Click the tab "Filter Lists" Uncheck: "Allow some non-intrusive advertising" FOR FIREFOX: Go to the Firefox menu in the upper left corner Select "Add-ons" Select "Extensions" Find Adblock Plus, select Options. Find the "Filter Preferences" Button…

And don't forget to support the websites that you visit the most by whitelisting them.