Google Cries about Ad Blocking Software Ruining Your Relationship With It

Diji1 on 25/02/2016 - 00:18

Looks like Google and some company called Yahoo? - have you heard of them? me either - are having a whine about the "relationship" that you never wanted being "destroyed" by users electing to install ad blocking software and hence having their attention rendered completely unsellable by ol' "don't be evil" Google. Or selling ads if you want to call it that

Must be a delicate business when no one wants your product and 90% of profits are staked on getting the users to take it LEL so they've decided to attack those evil ad blocking software vendors.

Also online advertising is tanking big time thanks to enormous levels of fraud and Apple putting their oar in and actually caring about users having a good experience. See that's where a hell of a lot of paying customers are.

Feeling sorry? Nope, me either.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/23/google-yahoo-clash-with-blunt…

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Comments

  • scrimshaw on 25/02/2016 - 00:34
    +8

    Well it certainly would ruin your relationship with Google if you made money from those ads to pay off your server bills, right?

    Would like some input from those that actually run a website i.e Scotty
    what is your stance on Ozbargainers running adblock on Ozb?

    • antzz on 26/02/2016 - 01:29
      +31

      I would definitely prefer to see Google ads and using Google search, maps, YouTube, Android, Gmail, drive, hangout, waze and other things for free. Seems like a good trade over. They certainly much better advertiser than other spammers

      Especially if the other options is to pay to use its services. If there is one company the world can not function without, it is Google. No other companies put more effort to further human technology than Google.

      Look what we got with Microsoft in the 90s, you get technology but you have to pay arm and leg for it, still they try their best to ensure no competition ever become effective. None of these trait can be said about Google.

      If Google does not develop self driving car or put billions to research ai there is no way we would be where we are today.

      • geoffs87 on 28/02/2016 - 21:46

        i refuse to use waze since they wouldn't release the morgan freeman voice outside of USA… its the whole netflix saga again

        But, i realise thats the rights issuer problem, not waze or netflix… still im making a stand :)

      • BringAPlate on 01/03/2016 - 11:13

        You've got some relevant points but like any major multi-national, they aren't completely innocent. They do sadly quash competitors sometimes.
        http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/25/google-is-killing-yet-another…

        • eug on 01/03/2016 - 15:03
          +3

          I think it's also based on how good the product is, rather than the fact it's a big company. If the competition offers a better product even Google won't be able to crush it. e.g. Facebook and Google+/Orkut, Vimeo and YouTube (and previously Google Video and YouTube), Google Checkout and PayPal, etc.

          If the competition offers a weaker product, then it'd be no surprise that they would get crushed. I don't think too many people are mourning the decline of the Yellow Pages, the frustrating tiny maps on whereis.com.au, or the 2MB mailbox quota of Hotmail and Yahoo Mail.

        • antzz on 01/03/2016 - 20:25

          There is a big difference in building a better product than available in the market and winning the market share in that category vs muscle out the competition by any means (loss selling, purposely removing them from search result, pay money to buy out, sue competitor until out of business or hijacking employees) As far as i can see, in most of the cases, google able to better the competitor on providing more relevant information or better ui design.

          There are many cases they try their best but can not win in terms of usability, design and overall usefulness. Google Coupon VS Groupon, Google Plus vs Facebook, Google Photos vs Instagram. In terms of power and money, google has everything it needs to prevent facebook becomes big and taking over its ads dollar. Google tries it best and lost on that front. As for providing relevant information such as comparison of credit cards / flight / or other specific information this is an area google excel from the beginning, so direct competition will always result a win for google, simply because the quality of information gathering and presentation is very good already.

          It is not without saying that absolute powers corrupt absolutely, so yes it is not completely innocent but as far as i can tell until now, they are trying very hard to be very modest and not muscling out competitors secretively (motive vs result)

    • chipstss on 27/02/2016 - 07:29
      -2

      A website's visitors aren't obliged to view your ads, the sooner you realise this the sooner you stop winging about adblockers.

      • eug on 27/02/2016 - 11:35
        +3

        Without visitors viewing ads, many websites will not be able to continue providing content for free. The sooner you realise this the sooner you might consider disabling adblock for all the sites you use the most.

        • chipstss on 27/02/2016 - 19:00
          -5

          I've realised this a long time ago, still using adblock, still enjoying free content.

        • eug on 28/02/2016 - 08:01
          +4

          @chipstss: That's the same mentality as dole bludgers. Oh well. You can thank everyone who doesn't use ad blockers for your free content.

        • [Deactivated] on 28/02/2016 - 18:16
          +3

          Wikipedia runs a massive website without ads and when it needs money, people give it to them because they are so useful.

        • eug on 28/02/2016 - 18:33
          +3

          @StiffHindQuarters: If you run a website whose content is maintained by thousands of unpaid volunteers, that would be possible.

          It won't work with the vast majority of other websites though.

        • chipstss on 29/02/2016 - 23:13
          -2

          @eug: Heh, salty downvotes. Still using Adblock :)

        • eug on 29/02/2016 - 23:15

          @chipstss: So proud of it too.

      • ajwatts on 27/02/2016 - 17:24
        +5

        A website isn't obliged to provide any content or services to visitors. The sooner you realise that, the sooner you stop whinging about ads.

        If I was Google and detected the use of ad blocking software, I would limit the functionality of certain services (Google has made itself so vital that it would need to maintain a certain minimum, but it could strip away A LOT of stuff).

        The OP's logic seems to be that if I don't want the relationship with my supermarket to be that I go there and exchange my money for their food, that I should be able to just book a grocery delivery, pay for neither the food or delivery, and they should shut up about it. Because I never WANTED the relationship to be cash for services.

        Well, I don't WANT the relationship between me and society to be that I only drive on the road, so starting tomorrow I will drive on the footpath. As long as I don't hurt anyone, everyone should shut up about it.

    • [Deactivated] on 29/02/2016 - 21:55
      +1

      It's funny, because back in the early 90's, a lot of the web was users home pages. If you wanted news or info on something, you'd most likely end up on someone's home page for the latest or in depth article (long before "blogs" was a word).

      A lot of the home pages that got really popular, they would end up buying a domain and become a stand alone site (and make .5c per ad click). But then heavily funded American websites came along (preinternet bubble burst) and pritty much americanised everything, including the focus of money. It really drowned out all the other small websites.

      So, no one cared when all those one or two man sites died.

      As I see it, the market has changed, they'll need to adapt and change with it, or die out. Just like we did.

  • scotty on 25/02/2016 - 01:09
    +39

    Disclaimer: OzBargain is mostly funded by display ads from Google

    I haven't looked too much into it but there's just something dodgy about Shine Technology. About the company

    We bring together PhD’s in Engineering, with graduates of Archeology, History, Arts, Theatre, along​ ​with​ ​autodidacts, so we can look at the world differently and develop technology that protects consumers from AdTech.

    What the?! And

    • It claims to be network level ad-blocking working with the telecom companies. For network level blockers, it's with (1) null-routing the end point of the ad networks, or (2) inspecting the HTML packet to remove ad network scripts. Or maybe the combination of the two. However (1) can be problematic especially if websites move over to 1st party ads, which host-level null-routing could block the entire site. (2) wouldn't work on SSL sites, unless they force you to install their own root CA, which comes with other security issues.

    • Blocking on network level also raise the issue of network neutrality. For example, if you can no longer reach Google's DoubleClick network on Three, should Google also reserve the right to slow down all your access to their search engine and Gmail services?

    • It has received USD$3.3m funding with no business plan. Well, like other "ad blocking software companies" the likely business plan is racketeering, asking ad networks for ransom money so their ads can be included in their so-called "acceptable ads" list. It's likely that the telco also wants a piece of the pie as well. See the end paragraphs from this article from AdAge.

    As of ad blocking in general, most Internet publishers hate it but grudgingly accept it as the growth of ad-blocking is pretty much irreversible. Stats from December last year — 50% of desktop page views on OzBargain have ads blocked (and 7.25% of mobile page views). So don't feel too bad if you are blocking ads on OzBargain, as every other person out there is doing it :P It's certainly affecting our bottomline but people might want to worry about the smaller websites first as they are likely to be the first ones to fall, if they cannot migrate off their business model from display ads.

    • pointless martyr on 25/02/2016 - 02:24
      +2

      A very good retort.

      As with free to air TV, non- subscription model based website users need to accept that there has to be some sort of cost.

      The cost is advertisers access to your eyeballs.

    • elusive on 25/02/2016 - 11:07
      +8

      As controversial as the "acceptable ads" program is, I do feel it has a positive impact overall. It's a reasonable compromise - make ads less obnoxious, so users don't need to find a way to block them all. The only problem there is the conflict of interest :\

      • Peace Maker on 25/02/2016 - 14:30
        +15

        Well said. I used to have no objection to ads, but they are becoming more intrusive and obnoxious to the point they drove me to install an ad blocker. That and auto play on websites drive me insane.

        • ilikeradiohead on 25/02/2016 - 18:23
          +6

          Yeah at one point I allowed Youtube to show me ads as I was enjoying the service, but the pre roll ads were becoming insufferable, so I turned it back on on YT. Now however I do most of my Youtubing through my Xbone where I do not have an ad blocker. I must have seen one of the recent sportsbet ads like 100 times (well, the first 5 seconds at least).

        • Forfiet on 26/02/2016 - 01:00
          +1

          @ilikeradiohead: ya same here with chroecast+youtube….. :(

        • alikazi on 26/02/2016 - 19:37

          Let's be honest. Some (or a lot) of us installed adblock to prevent those annoying popups from ruining our porn viewing experience. And then we forget to turn off adblock on Google websites and OzBargain. So the solution could be a ad blocker that doesn't block ads on trusted sites like Google or limits them in number rather than blocking all of them.

        • johnno07 on 27/02/2016 - 11:23
          +4

          @alikazi:

          the solution could be a ad blocker that doesn't block ads on trusted sites like Google or limits them in number rather than blocking all of them.

          Doesn't every ad blocker have this option?

        • alikazi on 29/02/2016 - 00:13

          @johnno07: But I have to do that manually. The only time I do this is when a page doesn't load properly. Otherwise I don't even notice that adblock is doing it's job and hence, I forget to turn it off for trusted websites. This is what most people must be doing too.

        • Tombf2g on 01/03/2016 - 13:57

          @ilikeradiohead: YouTube content creators are putting hard effort into videos which you get for free and you are screwing them over cause you can't wait 5 seconds to skip a preroll? As someone with over 175,000 youtube subscribers it's sad that people are so impatient to use adblock after I spend weeks making a video

        • ilikeradiohead on 01/03/2016 - 15:43

          @Tombf2g: I don't have any issues with the concept of ads or pre-rolls. But when I watch stuff on my xbox I see the exact same 5 seconds of advertising before every 2nd video. Maybe as a content creator you should contact YT about their advertising model. I'd also be annoyed if I were an advertiser as their ad dollars are going to waste with such ineffectually repetitive ads.

        • ashanrath on 16/03/2016 - 15:40

          @Tombf2g: If it was 5 seconds then skip, no problem. But when it's 2 minutes and can't be skipped? I know what I'll be using.

        • eug on 16/03/2016 - 15:43

          @ashanrath: Are there 2 minute unskippable pre-roll ads? I've only seen 15-30s ones.

        • ashanrath on 16/03/2016 - 15:46

          @eug: They're out there, though it seems to contradict the official Google position. Search for "youtube long unskippable ads" and you'll see a pretty mixed bag. People over on reddit were going nuts a while back.

        • eug on 16/03/2016 - 15:48

          @ashanrath: Must have been a test or an error. I wouldn't be concerned about it in that case. Hitting refresh often skips the ads too.

        • ashanrath on 16/03/2016 - 15:51

          @eug: Probably less of a technical test and more of a "how many people will stick around and put up with it" test.

    • pennypincha on 25/02/2016 - 17:33

      Stats from December last year — 50% of desktop page views on OzBargain have ads blocked.

      How does one know this? Assuming the equation would be:
      Adsense Impressions / Pageviews ?

      • scotty on 25/02/2016 - 17:46
        +2

        It's easy to find out. Basically

        • Load the page
        • Wait for a few seconds
        • Check whether ads are loaded / ads element is visible
        • Send back stats
        • hahaboy on 28/02/2016 - 18:33

          haven't looked much into it, but don't some ad-blockers allow for ad-blockers to be loaded / ad elements visible, but still not show the ads on the front-end when looking at the ad? (ie - generates ad cash for websites, without bothering the end user).

        • scotty on 28/02/2016 - 21:23

          @hahaboy: Most ad blockers would not even let the ad script to load, as it speeds up website. "Viewability" is also a new trend in display advertising, where ad networks can measure how long has their ads been visible (or not visible at all), and the advertisers will bid accordingly.

    • w0lf on 26/02/2016 - 11:41
      +4

      I didn't think of Ozbargain ads! Have now excluded it from AdBlock!

      • 811b11e8 on 26/02/2016 - 13:10

        I've excluded it from my ad-block too!

      • jelko on 26/02/2016 - 18:12

        LOL

      • newozbargainermelb on 26/02/2016 - 21:30
        +9

        Every deal that gets posted in ozbargain is an ad in the form of bargain ;).

      • BradH13 on 26/02/2016 - 22:10

        Also excluded OzBargain, along with a few other smaller websites I go to.

    • [Deactivated] on 26/02/2016 - 13:23

      Hey Scotty, have you thought about renaming ozbargain to catchbargain? It seems like the next logical step due to the evolution and changing nature of the business.

    • ajwatts on 27/02/2016 - 17:31

      I use no ad blocking tools and fo not recall EVER seeing an ad. (I mostly visit the mobile site, though.) I assume I have seen them and they just haven't been intrusive. Well done!

      • scotty on 27/02/2016 - 22:02

        Or you could have just turned "Show advertisement" off from your user settings…

    • gromit on 01/03/2016 - 13:28
      +1

      I used to accept Ads as a necessary thing as they fund a lot of great content. But the seem obnoxiousness of some ads and Ad providers. Ads that maskerade as news, ads with video and sound especially those that auto play, resize on cursor hover or ads that wrap the background of sites so an accidental misclick is sure to trigger an ad. The abusive behaviour has taken me from begrudging acceptance to must have ad blocking on every machine I own.

    • user27 on 11/03/2016 - 15:05

      love it when you talk stats like that Scotty

  • kima on 25/02/2016 - 02:35
    +6

    The ads on ozbargain don't bother me. The ads on TV and some other websites just got to the point of being ridiculous - more of the content was ads than the content I wanted to watch and they stop your content and have the ads take over so you can't avoid them (like youtube) and the same ad shown repeatedly so they kind of deserve to get ad blocked. If they want to advertise then do it in a more user friendly manner.

    Its like trying to sell a dead horse, the longer you try to sell it the smellier it gets and we know if we buy it then your just going to keep selling more dead horses so no point encouraging you. If the ad is annoying people then they are going to get angry and not buy your product and are going to hate your product. The marketing need to get more innovative and post ads that actually interest people and make you want to watch it or click on the website, not try to force ads on to people that they are not enjoying.

    • Vampyr on 25/02/2016 - 07:11
      +1

      Unfortunately things aren't that simple. In general, the more something is put in front of us, the more we are likely to buy it.

      • dogboy on 26/02/2016 - 12:00
        +3

        I think that only really applies to mindless consumers.

        • Vampyr on 26/02/2016 - 19:22
          +1

          I'd like to think I'm impervious, but I know I'm not…

        • ajwatts on 27/02/2016 - 17:33
          +2

          I think 90% of consumers are mindless - it just seems like there are more mindful ones because we are all concentrated here.

    • ESEMCE on 25/02/2016 - 08:37
      +1

      I'm happy to support OzBargain by whitelisting it.
      And I try to remember to whitelist other frequently visited sites/services for the same reason.

    • dogboy on 26/02/2016 - 12:06
      +2

      I gave up watching free to air TV over 10 years ago due to my hatred of ads and use ad blockers in my browsers. I personally think Marketing is the most worthless and evil profession (more so than lawyers). If I want to buy something, I can think for myself and do my own research to make a decision. I don't need nor want blatant consumerism targeting the lowest common denominator in society constantly shoved in my face at every opportunity. Life would be so much better without it.

      • eug on 26/02/2016 - 19:46
        +5

        Life would be so much better without it.

        Without ads, you would not have TV, movies (think product placements), Google, Gmail, Google Maps, maybe 90% of the websites on the internet. Heck the internet probably wouldn't be anywhere as large as it is now without ads to pay for all those free websites you use.

        If that's the kind of life you consider better, you should stop watching all TV and drastically cut your use of the internet. You should also stop using OzBargain as it's heavily ad-funded.

        It's a give-and-take world. If you want something without paying money for it, you should at least lend your eyeballs for a split second.

        • [Deactivated] on 27/02/2016 - 01:40
          +2

          Yeah I think both are right. Ads do pay for free websites Tv etc. but they agitate your mind and sap your spirit. We didn't evolve to live this way.

      • johnno07 on 27/02/2016 - 11:28

        I personally think Marketing is the most worthless and evil profession

        What a silly naive comment. Marketing I'd a necessary part of a capitalist economy. If you aren't able to tell people about your product, how do you expect anyone to find out about it? Hope a customer cold calls you?

        • beyondtool on 27/02/2016 - 19:57
          +1

          Exactly. I come to ozbargain when I am ready to receive information about a product I'm interested in, and then I'll go research it and view the online vendors. Otherwise I do my best ignore advertising in all its forms.

          Advertising is a highly unregulated industry which encourages rampant consumerism, destroys self esteem, manipulates social consciousness, applies ethically moribund physiological manipulation techniques and does all of this without the viewers permission… just to flog crap which people don't need. It's negative impact on society is profound and extensive.

          That said I don't use an ad blocker. It is my hope somewhere in the future that people will not expect the online world to be free and that people will support online sites they care about with donations. I happily donate to sites like Wikipedia.

        • scotty on 27/02/2016 - 22:06

          Not to mention while advertising is part of Marketing, Marketing is far more than advertising. There's a lot of psychology and behaviour studies in there, and statistics/analysis.

        • mavis30551 on 01/03/2016 - 13:38

          @beyondtool:

          i would rather just have some ads to the side and not have to donate to the hundreds of websites i visit each year.

      • ajwatts on 27/02/2016 - 17:36

        Do you watch ANY broadcast TV, then? Pay TV shows ads, too, not just free-to-air. Do you just use your TV to play DVDs/etc, or is there an ad-free broadcast TV service I fon't know about?

        (I read that back and know it sounds a bit sarcastic, but I am asking quite sincerely.)

        • beyondtool on 27/02/2016 - 19:58
          +1

          My ABC works for me.

        • eug on 28/02/2016 - 09:03
          +2

          @beyondtool: So you don't consider those ads for things you can buy at the ABC Shop … ads?

        • dogboy on 29/02/2016 - 09:30

          Netflix, Plex, Blurays = no ads. Simple

        • eug on 29/02/2016 - 11:23
          +1

          @dogboy: You don't consider product placements in TV shows and movies … ads?

        • ajwatts on 01/03/2016 - 19:14

          They also aren't broadcast TV.

  • mskeggs on 25/02/2016 - 07:21
    +13

    I have used ad blockers for years, pretty much after the first pop-under page ads came out or that flashing monkey you had to catch.

    Recently, some sites I don't consider evil (e.g. The Guardian, The Atlantic) have started posting a small notice stating my use of ad blockers hurts them. So I have enabled ads on these sites, and I have probably clicked on some ads because of it, but if they become obnoxious again I will block them again.

    I do empathise with content providers quandary on how to fund sites, but it is a tragedy of the commons, with crappy sites ruining it for the more responsible ones.
    The Fairfax sites are good examples of aggressively advertised sites that I dislike. If I ever break the habit of a lifetime of getting my news from the SMH, it will be because of their thoughtless ad placement practices, especially on mobile.

    • scotty on 25/02/2016 - 07:40
      +6

      Argh Fairfax. And you'll think that they will give you an ads-less page after you pay up the subscription fee. Nope — still full page expanding flash ads every now and then.

    • [Deactivated] on 26/02/2016 - 07:28
      +3

      I remember back in the day when I had ads enabled on YouTube until I had to watch those 30 seconds to one minute ads, how annoying, and that was the end of it. Sorry Google you should have kept them to 5 seconds.
      How do they block ads on phones?

      • Gina Rinehart on 26/02/2016 - 23:00
        +1

        How do they block ads on phones?

        Most current phone ad-blockers are in the form of a root program (Android) that modifies the system's hosts file to nullify any requests to known ad networks. E.g. it patches your hosts file to include a line for *.doubleclick.net (one of the major Google ad services), and a bunch of other known ads. This is also possible on a desktop machine.

        Whenever your phone tries to load the content from that location, it'll just load nothing (localhost). It seems to work pretty well, however the downside is there is no way to have exclusions and whatnot very easily.

        Ads for YouTube videos and whatnot still appear using this method on mobile, however, so you'd need something like YouTube adblock which requires a few more privileges/frameworks to work.

    • scotty on 26/02/2016 - 07:45
      +1

      Just read this yesterday from mUmBRELLA. Quoting Director of Digital Commercialisation from Fairfax:

      We have taken this fantastic environment – think about when you go to the movies – you actually enjoy the advertising experience with the big screen and surround sound, and we have taken something fun and moved it into a tiny little iframe. That’s the problem we need to overcome.

      Emphasis mine. They aren't happy with medium rectangle, large leaderboard or other standard IAB banner sizes — they want to turn their web pages to a movie cinema with full screen "entertaining" pre-roll ads. That's the mentality from the actual advertising people.

      • ajwatts on 27/02/2016 - 17:39

        Even with your emphasis, that isn't how I read it. It sounds to mr like he is daying he wants to find a way to make people enjoy ads, rather than forcing them on people as a little nuisance in the corner.

        • scotty on 27/02/2016 - 22:09

          That's what I meant. We all want banner advertising to be enjoyable. However most OzBargainers would prefer simple text ads or no ads at all. However a advertising person would think a simple iframe is too restrictive — it should be cinematic.

    • diddy50 on 26/02/2016 - 20:08
      +2

      I did this for kotaku and Gizmodo, as I too noticed the little prompt saying that ad blokcing hurt them. I enjoy their site, so I allowed the ads.

  • ozhunter on 25/02/2016 - 07:39
    +1

    Ads, the necessary evil.

    If I visit a site frequently and the ads aren't too intrusive, I leave them on.

  • peterpeterpumpkin on 25/02/2016 - 08:03
    +8

    I never click on ads intentionally. Ever since targeted ads came in I find clicking on them even less relevant since they more often than not show websites I've recently visited.

    When browsing on my ZTE Fit Smart phone I can't scoll down OzBargain without it accidentally launching an ad. A crappy phone or maybe a bit of javascript at work? :)

    • scrimshaw on 25/02/2016 - 08:26

      You just have fat thumbs :)

      • kima on 25/02/2016 - 08:39
        +1

        I had the same problem on one of my phones, the ads were actually making it laggy so if you scroll down it always managed to stop on the ad and open the ad

    • andymatter on 25/02/2016 - 14:55

      I've intermittently had the same problem on my 5.5 inch LG G3.

    • BartholemewH on 26/02/2016 - 00:16

      My Lenovo K3 Note constantly accidently launches ad clicks on ozb.

  • the-mal on 25/02/2016 - 08:29
    +11

    Okay…

    Also online advertising is tanking big time

    No it isn't. In Australia (to stay local) it's growing at 33% as an industry over the last year. That is enormous growth.

    And here are some figures showing the year on year growth for digital advertising in the US.

    It's one of the worlds primary growth industries and it is showing zero signs of slowing down.

    Must be a delicate business when no one wants your product and 90% of profits are staked on getting the users to take it LEL so they've decided to attack those evil ad blocking software vendors.

    No one wants who's product? Googles? Their sites get more than 187 unique visitors per month. And how much do you pay to use Google search, or Android, or Gmail, or GDocs or Youtube etc etc…?

    You pay $0 in transactional money. So you pay with your data.

    That data is used to serve you customised content by companies who pay Google to subsidise your usage to their services (and make Google a healthy profit).

    The advertising model works because it lets companies subsidise a hell of a lot of our daily services. Ad blocking services severely restrict the ability to subsidise those services. So Google has two choices:

    1) Go after the ad block companies OR

    2) Alter the subsidy model and start charging users for their services.

    Given the choice, I'm happy with the subsidy model. I'm happy to view content specific ads in exchange for a bunch of services I regularly use that help my life. I'm happy that I visit hundreds of sites regularly (like OzBargain) that give me content for free even though it costs them money to keep the servers running and the site getting developed. And I'm happy to keep consuming that content for free with the understanding that I'll be served some ads. The more tailored those ads are, the more likely they are to be relevant to me, the more likely I am to click on them.

    The ad block revolution can't continue on it's current trend without a lot of sites and online services having to change their business model to a direct "user pays" model. I much prefer the model we have now. Give me ads, and continue to give me stuff for free. It has worked for radio, worked for TV, worked for magazines and newspapers, worked for public transport, and for millions of more services. Don't ruin the free services by blocking ads - they're really not that intrusive and when they're customised well they can actually be helpful on occasions.

    • meowbert on 27/02/2016 - 15:31

      The relationship isn't as linear as you make it out to be. In order to serve ad google also tracks your movements, habits, preferences. This is sold to insurance, banking and to your politicians. I block ads and tracking as much as possible as the usage is sinister.

      • eug on 27/02/2016 - 15:50

        Do you expect to continue accessing websites for free?

        • meowbert on 27/02/2016 - 16:59

          I accessed websites for free for many years prior to google tracking my every move.

        • eug on 27/02/2016 - 17:07

          @meowbert: The past is irrelevant. Right now, how do you justify denying the content provider revenue while taking their content for free?

          If you were a content provider and the bulk of your earnings came from ads, how would you feel towards people who take your content but purposely deny you your earnings?

          Do you support any YouTube channels you may watch through services like Patreon, or are you of the opinion that everybody should give you their work for free, even if it's how they earn a living?

        • meowbert on 27/02/2016 - 20:43

          @eug: how is the past irrelevant? Legitimate question.

          In answer to your questions in order of questions asked - I don't care, I'm not a content provider, and no.

        • eug on 28/02/2016 - 09:09

          @meowbert:

          how is the past irrelevant? Legitimate question.

          Funding models have changed. Those sites you accessed for free in the past have probably disappeared due to a lack of revenue to keep it going, or adopted advertising to pay the bills.

          In answer to your questions in order of questions asked - I don't care, I'm not a content provider, and no.

          OK, proud to be a freeloader then.

        • meowbert on 28/02/2016 - 12:40

          @eug: sure, call me all the names you like.

          Re: funding model, business will need to adjust how they make money to my preferences, I don't need to adjust my preference to suit them. Thats how business works.

        • eug on 28/02/2016 - 17:21
          -1

          @meowbert: You'll never see things any other way, so no point talking about it anymore. Pity.

      • ajwatts on 27/02/2016 - 17:44

        You don't need to nlock ads to stop the tracking.

        • meowbert on 27/02/2016 - 20:44
          -1

          I can't be bothered splitting hairs.

        • ajwatts on 28/02/2016 - 10:15

          It is a far cry from splitting hairs. Tracking is a tool used by advertisers, yes. But saying you need to block ads to stop the tracking is like saying you need to turn off power to your house, because the computer the ads are displayed on uses that power.

          Or like killing everyone from Japan because you don't want sushi.

        • meowbert on 28/02/2016 - 12:42

          @ajwatts: OK, I personally have found the effort involved too difficult based on the tools I use, but understand your opinion.

  • ESEMCE on 25/02/2016 - 09:38
    +2

    The important bit to note here is the extortion-like tactics being used by the Ad-Blocking firm.
    The Ad-Blocking company isn't the plucky hero here!
    It's a slimy, backstabbing third party dressed up to look like your friend.

      • ESEMCE on 25/02/2016 - 10:02
        +4

        Wow! Really?
        That's a massively tenuous link to my comment to start with and then you add another even more tenuous link like a Cherry on a Tenuous Link Cake!
        He wasn't really even particularly involved in the Manhattan Project.. His biggest contribution was signing a letter to President Roosevelt recommending that the USA ramp up their R&D efforts to beat the German effort to develop the bomb!
        To name him responsible (apparently solely) for invention is ignorant of the efforts going on simultaneously across the globe to achieve the same aims. And to name him responsible for actually using the bomb is downright lying.

      • p1 ama on 25/02/2016 - 19:32
        +2

        What? How is developing something the equivalent of using something. Things aren't inherently bad or good, it's the way people use them. By your logic, if I used a car to run over a crowd of 20 people, then the guy who invented the car was a mass murderer? That doesn't make any sense does it?

      • aussieprepper on 26/02/2016 - 00:37
        +1

        It was not only devolved by him!

        many many people played a huge part!

        Like enrico fermi!

      • antzz on 26/02/2016 - 01:40
        +1

        You my friend should read. I understand even ape can be taught. The most idiotic comments of the year

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