It may be laudable to try and lead an "industry-wide" effort to clean up ads but it stinks of hypocrisy when Google repeatedly allows all shades of garbage to permeate its' own Adsense network.
Ad blocking strikes so deeply at the heart of Google's success, it's simply not credible to believe there is no more to the strategy than the simple defense mentioned in the article.
To speculate on just one possible strategy:
- First order of business, crush Ad Block plus' pay to play business. Possibly just by entering the market with resources, IP, and channel that would overwhelm them.
- Continue on this path until Google is the leader and standard setter, beating everyone on price
- Start to innovate around adding higher value pay to play features, prioritization, options, etc, until it becomes a business with a decent margin.
- Decide whether to wage all out ware with blockers that don't participate in a revenue share program. The war would be multi-pronged with technical, political, and PR fronts. A large team would work 24/7 to instantly defeat blocker updates in an effort to wear them down. Lobbyists would press hard to legislate and control ad-blocking to "protect" content creators. PR would enlist high profile loved content creators, show how much we love their work, and that now, they are forced to live in a cardboard box due to your ad-blocking.
If 60 Billion in revenue is threatened, how does it play out any nicer than this?
While this is a possibility, the wrench in the works is the Firefox browser. How is Google going to get them to play along and prevent 3rd-party blockers like UBlock Origin from working? I don't see it happening.
They can certainly put ABP out of business, which honestly is fine with me. But UO isn't a business AFAIK, it's a Free open-source project. That's like trying to put vim out of business; you just can't, because there's no business there. Google can certainly change Chrome to prevent UO from working, but they can't do the same for Firefox, nor can they really for Chromium (though their actions can make it difficult, but that could also mean that many other non-blocker extensions won't work if they're too restrictive).
Finally, these aren't the only browsers out there. Apple's Safari might also refuse to go along, and even go directly against Google somehow (including their own Google-ad-blocker, or helping UO work on their browser). Apple doesn't live on ads like Google does.
Finally, as for legislation, that doesn't make much sense either. First, I have a hard time seeing any Federal US laws actually succeed that force users to view ads, and even if such a law passed, there's no way to enforce it. How would they? Are websites going to sue users whose browsers don't actually download all their ads? That'll be great for PR. Or are they going to block users who don't download the ads (they're already doing this on some sites). If it gets that bad, it wouldn't be hard for ad-blockers to switch to simply downloading all the ads, and then sending them to /dev/null instead of displaying them.
You "kill" vim by preinstalling a friendly text editor by default, like TextEdit or Notepad. Many of my technical friends (myself included) use vim, but vim will never be used by everybody, everywhere. When most people first get a new computer and want to edit text, they use TextEdit instead of vim.
The end game of ad blocking is that everybody installs one. That would be devastating to Google. Instead, they would rather preinstall theirs. If theirs is the default adblocker even on just Chrome, they'll have substantial market share. Most people won't bother installing a browser extension if it the default is good enough, just like how most people don't use vim if TextEdit is good enough.
Most of my nontechnical friends don't use adblockers. In 10 years most people might. Google is preventing that from destroying them by shipping their own as a default instead.
>You "kill" vim by preinstalling a friendly text editor by default, like TextEdit or Notepad. Many of my technical friends (myself included) use vim, but vim will never be used by everybody, everywhere. When most people first get a new computer and want to edit text, they use TextEdit instead of vim.
This is just plain wrong. You're not understanding the meaning of "kill": that means that it's dead, gone, unable to be used.
Many, many people (millions?) use vim every day. I do, and others I know do too. People who use vim don't care about what editors other people use; it's just as irrelevant as what cars other people drive. I can go buy a Honda, a Tesla, or some 50-year-old antique, and drive it if I want, legally. Other people buying Fords has no effect on that. No one cares about everyone, everywhere using vim, only that it's available and it works. That's not changing, and there's no indication it will ever change.
>The end game of ad blocking is that everybody installs one.
No, because there are technical ways of getting around them. Look at all the sites that have anti-ad-blockers installed, and force you to turn off your ad-blocker to see the site. Of course, the ad-blockers have been working on ways of defeating those, so it's an arms race.
>If theirs is the default adblocker even on just Chrome, they'll have substantial market share. Most people won't bother installing a browser extension if it the default is good enough, just like how most people don't use vim if TextEdit is good enough.
Who cares about "most people"? I don't. My whole assertion is: how will they prevent other blockers, like UBlock Origin, from being used? If they're not going to bother, then great, but that's not what the OP claimed: he claimed they'd find ways of actively preventing 3rd-party blockers from being used, either technically or legislatively.
>Google is preventing that from destroying them by shipping their own as a default instead.
Wrong. Google isn't preventing anything, as long as they don't actively prevent you from installing a 3rd-party blocker. The message I replied to alleged that this would happen.
Some operating systems (macOS, most linux) do install vim by default. The problem is that vim has a very high learning curve, and most people don't want to spend time learning to edit text. Microsoft has tried doing what you described, by installing ie/edge by default, and making it good enough for most people. Admittedly it's working to some degree, but there are still plenty of people who choose firefox/chrome over edge.
> While this is a possibility, the wrench in the works is the Firefox browser. How is Google going to get them to play along and prevent 3rd-party blockers like UBlock Origin from working? I don't see it happening.
As power and money become more centralized in fewer hands, the ability to abuse DRM and standards, and to coerce partners and content providers into falling in line, becomes cheaper. Google declares legal and technical war on ad blockers while offering a "better" solution laden with incentives; Firefox gets bought off or coerced to be compliant. The barrier to disruption becomes not only a high technical bar, but a legal one as well.
I don't think there's a clear path to this that I can see right now, but we're a LONG way from Microsoft's defeat in the browser wars (both in terms of time and political environment) and a lot of shit I didn't think I'd see over the last two decades has happened after all. The broader interpretation of Gilmore's notable quote ("The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it") is less applicable today than it's ever been--in part because to a large degree, "censorship" has been replaced by "loss of profit".
If Firefox joined in in preventing 3rd-party ad-blockers, they'd lose what few users they still have left. The whole point of using Firefox is that it isn't corporate-controlled, and is the FOSS alternative that gives you more freedom. Take away the freedom, and you take away the primary reason to even use the browser; might as well just use Chrome at that point.
1) It's illegal to sell cars from Telsa in many states because...I can't even stand to repeat it.
2) It's illegal to give your child pot, even when it's a pharmaceutical grade product shown to be the only cure for her epileptic seizures, and even if done with 100% physician oversight. I would so enjoy a morality debate with a congressman in a state choosing to stand by and do nothing while a small child shakes violently on the ground.
You'd only have to request the ads not actually download them. Then the sites in question can check the DOM for ads and black out if it doesn't find them. It's an endless arms race.
I'd like to agree with you, but Firefox has already buckled under to support DRM, so I don't know how much you can count on them to be a bulwark against industry pressure.
They likely buckled under largely because the users wanted to be able to watch Netflix, and there was no way that Mozilla was going to convince Netflix to adopt a different solution. So they had a choice of either being the 1 browser that doesn't work with Netflix (and other streaming services like that), or joining the crowd. Most users don't care about DRM for things like Netflix; if you don't like it, you don't have to use it. No one's forcing you to subscribe to Netflix, and it's not representative of the rest of the web. (It is totally unlike, for instance, sites like this, or news sites with articles, or blogs, etc.) It was a pragmatic choice: either work with popular sites that people like, or become irrelevant because of some extremists. Those chose to remain relevant.
Ad-blocking is not the same. Ad-blocking doesn't prevent you from seeing most sites (and for those that it does, you can selectively turn off the ad-blocker; you don't have to ditch your browser). What incentive would Firefox have to prevent people from installing an ad-blocker? If they did that, they'd lose whatever relevance they still had, because people would just switch to Chrome.
> it's simply not credible to believe there is no more to the strategy than the simple defense mentioned in the article
It would be more fair if Google implemented a micropayments system that would be distributed to the websites a user is using most / where the user wants to tip. Google already has payments integrated through the app store. If they created a new kind of "micropayments sponsored" content category, it would help content producers to earn an income. The monthly amount to be tipped should be capped in total, say, $1/person, not much. Google can still make money by taking a small fee from the micropayments.
"Disable ads and support websites for $1/month". Something like that. It's like getting access to music from a subscription service, but the upside is that surfers get to support their favorite sources.
the ny times maybe has the staff to do that (or used to). Joe's blog does not.
back in print media each ad had to be placed by hand. it also had the aquired though manual labor. those things seriously limited the number of people publishing since the majority of your time was spent not making content for your zine but instead chasing down ads.
the internet changed that. here's a spot on my page . fill it with ads please. make those ads geographically specific and or user specific . write me a check for $$$.
it seems pretty obvious that history. if I decided the put ads on my sites I certainly would not have the time to find relevant ads for the world or even just my country. that's not something I want to deal with.
that said, if there was a good ad company that currated their ads well, did not share info with 3rd parties and track users I'd certainly consider signing up to that over others
I started ad sales using numerical techniques on the turn of the nineties. Our first hurdle was to bat off vexatious law suits brought by agencies, for copyright materials theft every time a major sent us the separations. All digital imposition - the layout of pages in final form to the n-up web offset affines that creates the cut pages in sequence from a running roller fold, indeed could require no manual intervention. (copy dot scanners captured and re digitized the pre stochastic screens of adverts)
But I think you mean addressing the spots, or paginating what goes where.
This is still actually manual for a ad network, if you mean deciding advert a never runs nearer than n pages to advert b, or ad y never runs in section k. Just the scale is inverted. And with it, pricing power, which is almost entirely buy side.
I could easily flip a galley proof of the magazine pages laid out as they will run, in under a minute for all but the bulk ad titles like PCWorld..
That was the scrutiny I meant.
Are there no tools to assist pre screening ad network proposed flows? I imagine, also, offensive adverts rarely have budget for impressions. I bet cutting the bottom 20% would solve most problems...
If Joe doesn't have time or staff to make sure his only means of generating income is not offensive or hostile to his customers, he doesn't have time or staff to run a business.
Imagine if a store said they didn't have enough staff to QA the products they sell, so they shouldn't be blamed for injuries related to their crappy products. It's 2017, you can't say you didn't known lawn darts were dangerous and you really shouldn't admit you didn't know your store was even selling lawn darts.
I hope this comes as an extension that can be turned off. E.g having flash pre-installed in chrome but having ability to turn it off. I expect reasonable defaults but some knobs to control the ads I want.
If chrome team who thinks about the world and ads team who thinks about $$$ are total separate entities who don't influence each other for special interests then I applaud the effort.
I hope this is done in the open in chromium source code. Basically the current way extensions work is by injecting massive amounts of CSS and js in the page. This makes a lot of optimizations in chrome useless for fast page renders. Doing an optimized ad block engine would make chrome feel faster
Chrome doesn't even allow you to control if a single click in the URL bar highlights the entire URL or just drops a cursor even though the behavior in the same application is inconsistent between different platforms. I have my doubts they'd allow you to fiddle with knobs about advertising preferences.
We talked about this only a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14094083