
 Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results - saurabh
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/24/google-breaks-promise-banner-ads-search-results
======
T-hawk
It's arguable that queries like [southwest airlines] are even a search. The
vast majority of instances are probably URL-illiterate users merely trying to
get to Southwest Airlines' web site. (And Google must know rather precisely
just how many.) For these users, search is really operating as a natural-
language alternative to DNS so such a clickable banner will help them get
there.

More than just advertising, this represents an element of curation on such
search terms, to get you to the place you're really looking for. It'll help
avoid situations like when that one blog post appeared at the top for
[facebook login] and suddenly bunches of users couldn't find Facebook.

Like any technological tool, it could be misused for evil, and so will require
vigilance in the court of public opinion if not in actual courts.

(Disclaimer: I'm a potential Googler, currently in the interview pipeline, but
these views are my own.)

~~~
peejaybee
I would say that even URL-literate users use it this way, because the
business-to-URL mapping is not always clear, and the naive guess is sometimes
the worst possible one (e.g. Dick's Sporting Goods.)

~~~
graeme
Yes, I thought this was (likely unintentionally) insulting. I rarely use urls
unless it's a known site. Especially since I'm Canadian and the TLD isn't
always predictable.

And on a phone, it's usually faster to google 'hacker news' or even 'hack new'
if I'm lazy, than it is to type 'news.ycombinator.com'. (Yes, I'm horrible.
And no, I don't want to bookmark it and make it too easy to come here....)

~~~
epochwolf
Typing n autocompletes to news.ycombinator.com on my devices.. yes, I'm here
way too much.

------
jeffclark
In related news: I am no longer with my college girlfriend, despite the fact
that 8 years ago I told her I would never leave her.

~~~
mapgrep
Good to know that the company that holds my email, appointments, two-factor-
auth, credit card number, and search data has the reliability of a flaky
college freshman.

Also good to know that there will literally ALWAYS be people willing to
minimize the broken promises of corporations (when they're not insisting that
no corporation would ever be so stupid as to break a highly visible promise
because the outcry would be tremendous).

~~~
jeffclark
> Also good to know that there will literally ALWAYS be people willing to
> minimize the broken promises of corporations

At some point, people realize that corporations exist to maximize profit and
not necessarily for the good of the customer.

~~~
enraged_camel
Then why are they making promises for the good of the customer?

There are plenty of corporations who don't make such promises.

~~~
velik_m
To maximize the profits?

------
shortformblog
This isn't a banner ad. This is essentially a branded search. It's not like
Google is targeting users with Flash-based crud here. To call it a banner ad
is kind of silly.

~~~
null_ptr
What exactly would you call it then, if not a banner ad? It's a large,
colorful, rectangular 5:1 panel that advertises a company. Cut the
doublespeak.

~~~
TheCraiggers
If I search for MLK, I see his picture on the side. I don't see how getting a
picture of Southwest Airlines when I search for "Southwest Airlines" is that
big of a deal.

Now, if I were to search for "airlines" and saw that huge banner up there, I'd
call that an ad and I'd be right there, handing out pitchforks. This? This is
just returning searching results in a (arguably) prettier way.

~~~
drhayes9
It's a big deal because this is a false equivalence. A corporation with a
marketing budget and a brand is not the same as an historical figure. I think
that explains a lot of the leeriness around this move.

That said, I'm leaning towards your interpretation ("search results in a
prettier way"). But the money involved makes me nervous.

~~~
chc
Lots of people have an irrational fear of money. But in reality, money itself
is rarely a problem.

~~~
drhayes9
Sure. It's not money itself, per se, but the concurrent corruption it brings.

------
hughes
If that's a banner ad, it's the most relevant, pleasant, and appropriate
banner ad I've ever seen. It's directly related to the search term and is not
obnoxious in the least.

If all ads were such high quality I'd have no problems with this (but would
still probably use adblock!).

~~~
bovermyer
I agree completely. I'm not opposed to banner ads as long as they are relevant
to my present task.

Nor do I take issue with Google changing its stance in this way. Corporations
change with the times.

------
TomGullen
Corporate promises aren't worth a dime as history has shown repeatedly. In
fact, corporations (especially large ones) can't ever be trusted for pretty
much anything and anything they say or do you should always react sceptically
by default. They just don't care, and this lack of caring is an inevitability
for growing corporations.

Granted some might consider this to be a minor breach of a promise, some might
not. The point still stands.

~~~
alan_cx
No, no, no.

You can absolutely trust them if they are say "we are doing this to maximize
profits for our share holders / owners".

Then, what is this expectation that one should be able to trust them to do
anything else at all? Surely the mere existence of consumer law should tell us
something.

~~~
anon1385
>You can absolutely trust them if they are say "we are doing this to maximize
profits for our share holders / owners".

Eh, not necessarily. Enron executive said what they were doing was to maximise
share holder value, but really it was to maximise their own wealth.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_fraud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_fraud)

------
JohnTHaller
If you take the full quote, this isn't an open and shut case as it certainly
isn't a 'banner ad' in terms of what everyone understood to be banner ads in
2005. The full quote is:

"There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results
pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping
up all over the Google site. Ever."

That Southwest Airlines screenshot doesn't look like a banner ad as described
by Marissa Mayer. It doesn't seem to be flashing or flying around or popping
up.

And, arguably, Google has been doing things that flash and fly around with the
Google Doodles on the homepage for years. And no one freaked out about that.

~~~
pessimizer
>in terms of what everyone understood to be banner ads in 2005.

Everybody understood banner ads then in exactly the same as they understand
them now. Ads in a banner. Banner ads never had to be "crazy, flashy,
graphical doodads flying and popping," and you never needed a banner ad to do
any of that.

Mayer isn't actually saying the two things are the same either, because she
uses two different, complete sentences.

~~~
psbp
Isn't a banner ad an ad embedded in a page full of content? This is the actual
content for a specific search, so I'm not sure how it constitutes a banner ad.

------
jakozaur
Over the years Google is way more aggressive with ads then it used to be.

For any query less and less percentage of first page is dedicate to organic
example.

E.g. a silly example:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=trash+can](https://www.google.com/search?q=trash+can)
25-30% organic, rest are the adds.

~~~
ChrisClark
Only one ad without Adblock.
[http://i.imgur.com/pQqF9uz.png](http://i.imgur.com/pQqF9uz.png)

Maybe check to see if you have some malware inserting ads?

~~~
pfortuny
Google's result do not follow a person-agnostic algorithm, so he may get 20
ads and you only 1. As a matter of fact, I get none.

~~~
arrrg
Language is the biggest influencing factor, at least for me.

I get zero ads if I search for “trash can” but an ridiculous amount of ads if
I search for “Mülltonne” (German for “trash can”), all because I’m searching
on [http://google.de/](http://google.de/).

Screenshots: [http://imgur.com/a/Yco1R#0](http://imgur.com/a/Yco1R#0)

(Hey, the German results leak the city I’m currently staying at. The first
organic result is a form to sign up for the city’s garbage collection.)

~~~
makomk
Also, it depends on what country Google have geo-located you as being in and
not on what country's Google page you're searching from; non-Americans get
completely different search results on Google.com from Americans.

------
sker
That promise was made when Schmidt was running things. We all know by now that
Page is much more aggressive at monetizing existing products and killing off
non-essential ones. We can expect more of these things in the future.

------
nandhp
> Based on your search query, we think you are trying to find a specific
> brand. This box provides information about that brand. The brand owner is
> sponsoring this collection of content, some of which would appear even
> without this sponsorship. The brand owner is compensating Google and
> providing images and other content relevant to the brand.

This is _replacing_ Southwest's search result. It's noteworthy to me that only
"some" of this content would appear without sponsership. So not only are they
showing "banner ads" in search results (that's a little bit of a stretch), but
it's a bit like them allowing compensated reordering of search results.

How's Bing these days?

------
peterwwillis
I love how people continue to attach emotional investment to an arbitrary
thing like a corporation. Apologists, fanboys, and people with a child-like
innocence. Do you really expect a for-profit company will stick to a promise
like it means something?

The entire point behind a capitalist corporation is to make more profit, year
after year. That is the entire idea behind the stock market. To think that
they'd evade eventually exploring every avenue available to avoid making more
money is mad.

~~~
mynewwork
But there are plenty of companies that make a lot of money specifically
because they 'stick to a promise'.

Whole Foods, Chipotle, REI, Patagonia all spring to mind as companies that I
will happily pay a premium to shop at because of things they do that fall
outside of the ruthless race to the bottom to cut costs. They make a profit
off of me specifically because they stick to promises like "don't put
antibiotics in chicken feed" or "don't use sweatshop labor".

I don't care about a banner ad the way I care about antibiotic use in
agriculture, so this doesn't matter to me, but maybe someone out there does
and will stop being a profitable google customer because of this action.

~~~
peterwwillis
Companies which have a niche market do depend on their customers continuing to
invest in that niche market, but this is like any other company that sells a
product. If people no longer want that product, they go out of business.

In the companies you cite, the product you're buying (primarily) is peace of
mind. You feel better when you buy their products, vs others. If you stopped
feeling good about it, you'd buy somewhere else, and they'd go out of
business.

Here's another case of customer intent: CBS Fantasy Sports. For years they've
been charging people to use their fantasy sports websites, while Yahoo, ESPN,
and others gave theirs away for free. Year after year, people _paid money_ for
the CBS product, and they actually got _more customers than the free
providers_. Why? Superior niche product. If the product wasn't as good as the
free providers (and if they provided all the same features) people would have
left in droves.

A "promise" is not a business model. A product is. Google's product is not
banner-ad-free search, it's just search. If in the future there's an equally-
good search product that uses no ads at all, Google will have an inferior
product, and people will leave - eventually.

------
DjangoReinhardt
Not the first time, I must add.

When Orkut was all the rage, Google claimed that Orkut would never be merged
with the Google core and would remain separate to Google.

The same seems tobe happening with YouTube. Sure, they still allow users to
keep their YT & Google identities separate but IDK how long that will last.

Remember when they claimed their motto was 'Don't be evil'?

(NB: Before you come screaming at me for making vague accusations, please take
that previous sentence with a pinch of '/s'. Thank you.)

~~~
rajivtiru
Umm they forced me(as in I wasn't able to use youtube otherwise) to connect my
Google account to my Youtube so...that is pretty much combining the accounts
in my book.

I think, they just needed that to collect my aggregate search+video watching
behavior for ad targeting, which they got.

------
ChuckMcM
This is not wholly unexpected, after all their earnings have shown that CPC is
down and while you can make that up in volume for a while, eventually you
exhaust that path too.

And _that_ then is what I think the real "problem" is. You reach a point where
your biggest money maker, search advertising, by at least one and possibly two
decimal orders of magnitude, is no longer growing. And all of the things
you've ever done which were never as successful as search advertising are
supposed to give you the growth that your stockholders are looking for.
Interesting place to be for a company like Google I expect.

This is just another example of how that it process is coming along. It will
be interesting to see what happens if it starts damaging their brand.

~~~
cylinder
Right. Soon they will run out of surface area. And then they will squeeze out
more money by cutting costs. Such is the life cycle of the corporation. They
aren't able to monetize their other novelty projects yet, they are almost
wholly reliant on advertising. I'm surprised their stock is priced as a growth
company.

------
ajiang
Are we putting that much significance from a quote in 2005 by a Google
executive who has since left Google?

While some see it as a social utility, Google is a $350B public company that
generates its revenues from advertisements. 8 years ago, the world of
advertising (and the world in general), was a different place. Holding Google
accountable for something so far in the past by someone who is no longer there
is a seemingly unfair standard.

~~~
mathattack
Indeed - 8 years is a long long time. And who is actually harmed?

Would it be less evil if Google had to put banner ads up to make payroll?

~~~
tedunangst
_Would it be less evil if Google had to put banner ads up to make payroll?_

I think so. Google can't really pass this off as "the economic situation
forces us to make a really difficult choice."

~~~
mathattack
But is it really any different from a shareholder getting paid versus an
employee? These are pension funds and 401ks counting on the money.

~~~
tedunangst
Perhaps people invested in Google precisely because they believed in googles
vision for a better web. Google has been fairly clear in telling investors,
hey there's a line we won't cross. They can't complain. If there's something
to complain about, it's sitting on $50 billion in cash and not paying a
dividend.

~~~
mathattack
True, though Google seems to be investing the cash fairly aggressively.

------
cromwellian
What a sensationalist headline. The guardian really seems to have learned the
need to go sensationalist from the Snowden affair.

"Google breaks promise" followed by "Google is testing banner ads" in the
first paragraph. So umm, "breaks" is the wrong verb, more like "thinking of
breaking"

The reality is, Google runs hundreds, perhaps thousands of experiments all the
time and only a few make it.

------
wodow
Are there any example URLs?

[https://www.google.com/search?q=SouthWest%20Airlines](https://www.google.com/search?q=SouthWest%20Airlines)
doesn't do it for me at the moment, from the UK.

~~~
randlet
This is addressed directly in the article. "We're currently running a very
limited, US-only test, in which advertisers can include an image as part of
the search ads that show in response to certain branded queries."

~~~
petepete
I think "certain branded queries" are the key words here; if that style of
banner is displayed for more generic searches (simply 'Airlines', for example)
I think people would quickly become frustrated with the experience and move
on.

When searching for a particular airline, being confronted with a photograph of
one of their aeroplanes isn't the end of the world.

------
canthonytucci
I just tried it.

I count:

1 Big ass ad 3 "News" items 5 genuine "Search Results" (with no heading or any
way to know when the ads and nonsense stops. One of the 5 is a link to the
Southwest Airlines Android App 3 "In-Depth Articles" I don't know what this
is, i guess long blog posts?

This honestly looks more to me like a domain squatting BS ad page that we hate
on ISPs for than a research tool (which is what I used to think of google
search as).

------
jggonz
I used to dislike ads in general, until Google came along and made ads
actually useful. There have been many times when I needed to search for
reliable vendors in my area, and being able to perform a query for a product
and receive an ad for a vendor that sells said product proved to be very
useful and a huge time-saver. I no longer had to dig through search results,
the ads were my search results. Same thing goes for the great set of Youtube
video ads that have been improving lately: some of them actually are useful.
Gmail ads are also very interesting. They sometimes inform me of new
technologies, or other things that are related to what I'm reading in my
inbox: that can be valuable. I really hope the trend continues with these
banner ads. Being able to add a touch of graphic to an otherwise dull search
result page can be useful if done right, and Google does seem to care about
their ad business. Anyway, those are just my personal thoughts on the subject.

------
magicalist
I guess they are relatively "classy", as other people have pointed out, but I
still don't want them in my search results. Regardless, it's just a test, so
discouraging them from moving forward with it is good, but "breaks 2005
promise" is dumb because they haven't actually done it. "Poised to break 2005
promise"? Still overly dramatic, but less wrong.

Also, I first saw this over on search engine land yesterday[1]. It's possible
the Guardian author remembered that Marissa Mayer quote (and blog post) on
their own, but it seems unlikely. It's pretty shitty to take a story and not
even cite where you got the idea.

[1] [http://searchengineland.com/google-testing-top-banner-
ads-17...](http://searchengineland.com/google-testing-top-banner-ads-174927)

------
anonmyous
Google (and possibly many human's) principle over time..

Don't be Evil (2005) >>

Don't be Evil over short period of time (2013) >>

Oh screw it, now we are Evil enough. Let us plunder the hell (2021).

Now they will show ads for the key word, South West Airlines. Next it will be
a whole flashy ad when you search flight, then it will when you start to think
about flying or your girlfriend sends an email about flying for someone's
funeral. But these profits too will dwindle after a point. Then they will
start selling your profiles, what you read, what you think.

For a corporation privacy and trust, or any other values are only as important
as the profit it can bring. Its only a matter of time before you will erode
your own values, when profits are what we are maximizing. This is all the more
likely when you are ambitious.

And then you repent it, and the cycle is complete.

------
asdf001
Interesting how this submission went from being #1 20 minutes ago, to #5 15
minutes ago and now is sitting at #9, despite the fact that the number of
upvotes increased.

Google workers mass flagging this submission? Don't be evil.

~~~
freehunter
As was talked about with the recent controversy of Nokia and Microsoft news
being penalized while Apple news was on the front page, HN has some pretty
intrusive algorithms that play with the positioning of the article on the
page, algorithms that aren't always clear to the users or necessarily
productive to the discussion.

------
cmtruong
I don't really care as long as the ads are relevant and interesting. We all
know what we signed-up for (I hope) when we joined Google, Facebook, Yahoo,
etc...for "free."

~~~
pbhjpbhj
We signed up for what they promised us?

------
danso
So how much of the reluctance to use banner ads can be attributed to Mayer,
or, the subsequent reneging to her leaving? The screenshot follows kind of the
same look of Google+'s banner (er Facebook's), so since + is supposed to be
the new thing, and it has space for gaudy banners, why not throw it on search
too?

Still, seems like a slightly regressive strategy...I thought the traditional
Google Homepage was becoming less of a revenue driver compared to all the
other way results are traffic driver?

~~~
AJ007
Google has gotten much more aggressive amount monetizing their existing
inventory. They have been rapidly iterating Adsense unit designs that were
fixed for 6+ years.

Search engine optimizers (of which I'm not one) have been terrified as they've
watched ads creep over the search results and new elements push organic
listings lower and lower.

------
7952
At least banner ads are obviously adverts. It can be quite difficult to
differentiate between ads and searches in certain situations (like tilted
screens).

------
yeukhon
If it is relevant to my search and the image gives better impression of the
product, I am okay with that. Though people forget about their promises. But I
am against having multiple banners. I am okay with say "search Amazon" and
return amazon's latest banner on thanksgiving sale deal. Just one, a good one,
reasonable size, and that's it.

------
night815
The full quote is still true.

"There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results
pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping
up all over the Google site. Ever." -Marissa Mayer

That "banner" is not a "crazy, flashy, graphical doodad". That is pretty much
the company's logo.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
They're separate clauses.

If I say "I won't hurt you. I won't sneak in in the night and smack you with a
fish. Ever" and then I punch you in the face I've broken my promise. If I'd
snuck in at night and hit you with a fish then I'd have broken two promises.

------
teaneedz
Most of what Google does (beta or released) these days is sending me to other
options.

Thank you DuckDuckGo for taking a stand for users.

~~~
edwintorok
You can also use ixquick.com or startpage.com that doesn't show banner ads for
me.

------
DanBC
> The company gained attention when it started in 1998 because its opening
> search page, and following results page, was uncluttered by adverts and
> other elements

Google isn't what it was, and Google wants many more users than they can get
from keeping just the early adopters.

People use Google like a portal. This is just Google giving in.

------
judk
This is basically the same as the new Product Search, where only paid ads are
shows. (Google killed organic product search this year.)

But this version doesn't allow open pay-for-play access, only one preferred
buyer is invited per search term.

------
angryasian
the reality is , is that in general people like pleasant associated images.
Its only mirroring the way that Facebook has a cover photo on profiles and
made a difference in the way that profiles are viewed. Why not extract money
when a corporation is searched for and show a profile for them. Similar to
facebook and searching for a user. I think it will become an issues when
corporation decide they want to use the image, like a banner ad vs a nice
associated image.

------
lnanek2
The advertisement rows in GMail are really annoying too. I wish they would at
least put an x button on the side so I can close them and do email in peace
for a while.

------
mknits
Their tagline should be changed to - "Be Evil".

------
coryfklein
Technically they haven't broken their promise yet - the ads are still in
testing.

------
jasonlingx
Shouldn't the title be "Marissa Mayer breaks 2005 promise..."?

------
AbraKdabra
This fits perfectly with the ad designer that Google released weeks ago.

------
linux_devil
How will they earn then? Most of their profits are from Ads.

------
6thSigma
This doesn't really meet my definition of a banner ad.

------
samspenc
Marissa Mayer isn't with Google anymore, is she?

------
wnevets
If I search for southwest airlines, is that image truly a banner ad?

~~~
pmelendez
In the moment when Southwest airlines paid for it is an advertising piece
indeed. And to remove any shadow of doubt if you can't see a similar image
when you search for American Airlines or Jetblue then it is clear that Google
is favouring results against other companies in the same industry.

~~~
wnevets
My point is if I search for jetblue and I dont get the southwest image that's
not a banner ad, at least not in the traditional sense. If fact if you search
for southwest without being in this test group you'll see a southwest image on
the right side. Is that a banner ad, if so these images are old news.

Now if I were to search for plane tickets and get the southwest image, that's
a banner ad.

~~~
pmelendez
Under that razor... if you search for southwest airlines and between the
results you get a Adwords of Southwest, then that won't be an ad because is in
the result page of the same thing I was searching?

~~~
wnevets
As a user, sure why not? Why does it matter whether the link you want is
within the ad words box or under it? If you're searching for southwest
airlines you obviously want the southwest homepage. Now southwest probably
sees it different since they're paying for ad words but that's a different
conversation

~~~
pmelendez
> "southwest probably sees it different since they're paying for ad words but
> that's a different conversation"

Fair enough :)

------
bolder88
Love how theguardian has a massive banner ad at the top of this article. God I
hate the guardian.

------
aviraldg
These are 100% about the search query. Not related, but directly about the
query. Not ads.

~~~
vidarh
Whether or not they are relevant to the search is immaterial to whether or not
they are ads - lots of ads are relevant to the search terms. They are paid for
with the intent of driving more traffic.

------
kailuowang
It's great that Google is under so much scrutiny due to its do no evil slogan.
But making such a fuss about Google changing its UI to make more money is
somewhat a bit off the target in my opinion. Google changing UX to make more
money is going to be tested and corrected by the market. The real serious
threat to the society for Google being evil is the possibility of Google using
the massive amount of information it collects to manipulate the society at an
enormous scale. Just imagine the possibility of Google start trading. It could
be all based on the public information Google gathered but Google's ability to
collect it is no match by any other entities (alright, maybe NSA)

