
Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker - gjkood
https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/be-careful-celebrating-googles-new-ad-blocker-heres-whats-really-going-on/
======
Animats
_What ads would get blocked? The ones not sold by Google, for the most part._

I can see it coming - "Host on AMP, and your ads will get through". "Use
Google Ads, and your ads will get through." "Pay dues to the Acceptable Ad
Consortium, and your ads will get through."

Look what happened with TrustE and their ratings. It started out as a good
idea, and ended up as a cover for scumbags. Today, a TrustE seal has negative
value.[1]

[1]
[http://www.benedelman.org/news/092506-1.html](http://www.benedelman.org/news/092506-1.html)

~~~
rtkwe
I'm a little more hopeful. They have a clear incentive to keep really bad ads
off their own services because if they don't a lot of people will just
reinstall another ad blocker. If I didn't have to deal with unmutable
autoplaying video ads or ads spouting malware I'd be more willing to browse
with a limited ad blocker.

~~~
russdpale
Google will never be able to pry uBlock Origin from me! Stay away!

~~~
PrivWeeble
And if Google takes steps to prevent third-party ad blockers from working in
Chrome? Or renders them worthless through exceptions to the filtering API?

Even if you ignore Google's Funding Choices and its potential to increase
adoption of view-ads-or-pay (a lose/lose for privacy, btw) you are very
vulnerable if you use Chrome and/or a Google controlled OS. The Coalition for
Better Ads won't be helping you by keeping Google in check. It is more or less
the same companies you are fighting right now (check membership and note NAI,
IAB, DMA, and other trade associations).

~~~
lostcolony
Hello again Firefox

~~~
Nereus77
You mean Waterfox, of course?

------
jfasi
> Web users will quickly recognize their only options: pay to use the
> internet, or uninstall the ad blockers and surf the web for free.

Or they could disable Chrome ad blocking and install their ad blocker of
choice.

If I'm reading this correctly then no portion of the user population is hurt
by this. Power with religious objections to advertising are free to continue
using them. Typical users who don't care don't have to deal with awful and
broken stuff. People who feel charitable enough to pay for advertising get to
do so.

But doesn't it hurt the advertisers? That's not a given either. This article
makes it sound like all non-Google advertisers will be shut out. But that's
clearly not true: plenty of non-Google advertisers are represented in the
decision making process, to the point where one can be convinced that a
variety of views were considered.

Ad blockers are a response to the absolutely worst of ads, to the detriment of
better-behaved networks like Google, Facebook, and friends. While I agree it's
a little creepy that an advertising company shoulda put out an ad blocker,
Google is in a unique place to tackle the problem of poor advertising by
filtering truly bad experiences, and doing so hurts no one except truly
abusive networks.

~~~
eveningcoffee
I think that you are too naive and part of the problem why the Google has
become so dominant.

I actually installed an ad-blocker because I could not stand video ads (I
would call it TV-cation of the Internet) and that was the easiest way to
eliminate them.

You argue that people can install another browser and use an ad-blocker with
that.

This is true for now (given reasonably motivated and knowledgeable users), but
Google is also pushing DRM into web browsers.

This opens a possibility to restrict access to a website to all browsers but
Google one. Given their market dominance they can do this.

~~~
anth1988
I'm not disagreeing that this is possible, but I don't think jumping straight
to such a nightmare scenario really does any good. The reason being is that
they just don't go that far and it's suddenly seems okay in comparison to what
"could" happen.

More realistically, I think Google hurts other ad blockers and expands their
oligarchic position in the ads space (especially on mobile).

~~~
AlexandrB
> I'm not disagreeing that this is possible, but I don't think jumping
> straight to such a nightmare scenario really does any good.

Ten years ago I thought that the level of tracking and corporate surveillance
we see today was a nightmare scenario. I was clearly an optimist. Don't be me.

~~~
eveningcoffee
I think that the point of GP is that we did not get here suddenly but step by
step.

------
vinceguidry
>According to the Financial Times, Google will allow publishers what it’s
calling “Funding Choices.” The publisher could charge the consumer a set price
per page view to use third-party sites that block all advertising. Google
would do the tracking of how many pages users view, and then charge them.
Users could then “white list” particular sites, allowing ads to be shown on
them and removing the charge. If users decided to pay to block ads, Google
would receive a portion of that payment, sharing it with the publisher.

Pay for use ad-blocking is _exactly_ what I want. Did you hear me? Exactly. I
don't want to manage a zillion news subscriptions at $15+ a pop. I don't want
to get nagged to turn off my ad blocker.

I want a reasonable amount of money to to spent towards the people making the
content that I'm vaguely interested in because other people on Hacker News are
interested in it too. I've already solved the problem of content I really care
about, I just buy a darned subscription.

This is a huge market opportunity and I'm just absolutely silly with glee that
Google finally decided to jump on it. Because only Google has the scale to
make something like this work. Finally I'm going to see the end of mob rule
and the establishment of law and order in web advertising. Couldn't have
happened fast enough for me.

Please please, just charge me for the content I consume. Why did it take the
industry so long to figure this out?

~~~
azakai
> I'm just absolutely silly with glee that Google finally decided to jump on
> it.

There is no "finally" here - this isn't new. Google Contributor is from 2014
[1].

Google and other companies have tried this idea many times already. It's true
that people like you exist, but there haven't been enough to make this viable.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor)

~~~
vinceguidry
Nobody cares because it's not a real solution. Making content sites buy into
it means only 10% of the ads I see might get mitigated. Everybody else's
solution has the same problem.

It needs to be universal to be of any use to the end user. Otherwise it's only
of slight use to Google, marginal use to content creators, and no use at all
to consumers. That's what I'm hoping for from the new content blockers. A way
to force a new order on the content world.

------
Shank
> Google, a data mining and extraction company that sells personal information
> to advertisers

The content in this article, is, for the most part, good content. What annoys
me is that The Intercept seems fit to act like a heroic good guy insofar as
being completely biased against Google from start to finish in what could have
been a mostly informational article. An opening lead like this serves no
purpose other than making this bias known.

Are we really beyond "just the facts" journalism, even by new journalism
companies?

~~~
__jal
Google is a data mining and extraction company. That's hard to argue with.

Are you complaining about the "sells personal information" part?

~~~
Eridrus
Google does a lot of different things, but people with an axe to grind often
like to label Google as something specific that they dislike.

In this case they call it a data mining company, which is both meaningless due
to how vague the term is, but also slightly menacing sounding.

Does Google do things that would fall under a reasonable interpretation of
data mining? Definitely. Is it their primary activity? Not by a long shot.
Even the people who want to label Google an advertising company have more of a
point on a revenue basis. But these characterisations are needlessly reductive
and lead you to believe false conclusions like "Google wants all of your data"

~~~
eeZah7Ux
> slightly menacing sounding

As it should be. They are aggressively capturing and selling people data from
phones and browsers, as proven by large amounts of evidence. This is pretty
factual, please don't call it "bias".

~~~
Klockan
> They are aggressively capturing and selling people data from phones and
> browsers, as proven by large amounts of evidence.

I'm interested, where can I go and buy some user data from Google?

------
clock_tower
The fox is in the henhouse, but he brought along a hammer and some nails and
he really really doesn't like coyotes, so it's all good.

Part of the article was a bit confusing, though: "According to the Financial
Times, Google will allow publishers what it’s calling 'Funding Choices.' The
publisher could charge the consumer a set price per page view to use third-
party sites that block all advertising. Google would do the tracking of how
many pages users view, and then charge them. Users could then 'white list'
particular sites, allowing ads to be shown on them and removing the charge. If
users decided to pay to block ads, Google would receive a portion of that
payment, sharing it with the publisher."

Third-party sites that block all advertising? I think the author has this
confused with third-party ad blockers. And the part where Google does the
tracking means that now is certainly the time to switch to Firefox and keep
ajax.googleapis.com, google-syndication.com, google-analytics.com, and all the
rest of them firmly on the banned list.

At times I almost feel nostalgic for the bad old days of Internet Explorer
6... (But then I remember what IE6 was actually like, and the feeling passes.)

------
CryoLogic
The company distributing the ads is controlling the ad-blocker. We have seen
this before in other industries. It is never good.

------
balladeer
The key part here is they are deciding to make it enabled by default. Does it
not really amount to malpractice against their competitors in the guise of
user experience. Anti-trust?

Because just saying that one can always disable it and use something like
uBlock Origin is missing the point that most of the people will not bother to
do that except a tiny minority and that would essentially mean this coalition,
which by all measures comes across more of a sham, will succeed in
monopolizing ads completely.

I think the least they could do to even look impartial is keeping it disabled
by default rather than making it opt-in.

------
joeyspn
I'm curious to see how Google reacts when Brendan Eich's new browser project
gets traction....

"Brave Browser Will Reward Users with Ethereum-Based Tokens for Switching on
Ads":

[https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/brave-announces-
blockchain-d...](https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/brave-announces-blockchain-
digital-advertising-platform-with-ethereum-based-token-rewards-for-users/)

~~~
davidcbc
Is there any reason to think this will actually gain traction with a
significant portion of the population? This seems like the kind of thing HN
gushes over but the general population couldn't care less about.

~~~
azakai
Sure, that part of Brave is focused on tech people. But all these trends start
with tech people - then we recommend it and install it for our friends and
family.

Also, that's just part of the Brave strategy. It's going to block a lot more
ads than Chrome by default. That has the potential for general appeal, not
just for tech people.

------
Kenji
Google's bold move only works this well because other browser developers like
Mozilla (or even OS developers) were too hesitant to ship ad-blocking by
default. Sad, a missed opportunity. I've said this a long time ago. It's
unfortunate that Google does the first step when it really could have been one
of the last if browser developers acted properly. Ad blocking is a more or
less solved problem and could have been firmly integrated into browsers at
least 5 years ago. And I mean free OSS ad blocking without bullying
advertisers into paying fees to be unlocked.

~~~
a_imho
There is a serious chance of backfire though. Calling it adblocking normalizes
it across all the users. Once the genie is out, shipping a defective adblocker
makes for a inferior product.

I think the opportunity window is still open, and can't for the life of me
understand why Mozilla is not doing the right thing.

------
Rotareti
> Web users will quickly recognize their only options: pay to use the
> internet, or uninstall the ad blockers and surf the web for free.

Or switch to an open source browser like Chromium/Firefox and go on using the
ad-blocker of choice and avoid the pages that charge you.

------
newtem0
I still dont understand why simple endorsments dont work for some sites. Just
put a text banner somewhere prominent that says "thanks bobs burgers for being
our sponsor" there is no way ad blockers could pick that text out of all the
other text and block it. And there is no reason anyone would want to block it
anyway.

~~~
nitwit005
How much should you pay for that endorsement? Normally, you'd pay based on how
many people see the ad. That, then incentives lying about how many people saw
the ad, or creating fake views with bots. To deal with that, you add in
Javascript that checks if the ad is genuinely visible and, try to validate
that they aren't a bot, and whatever other fakery they try.

Adding a layer on top of that, people generally have a target audience, so if
you want them as a customer, you might have to inject some more Javascript to
determine if the user is part of the target audience.

And pretty soon the site is full of tracking beacons and blobs of JS.

~~~
taormina
Do we really have to track everyone? What ever happened to a flat fee per
month to have a static banner in place on a relevant website?

~~~
tyingq
Aside from tracking, I assume they like the JavaScript because they get more
metrics, a/b testing, etc. So they can tweak the ad to perform better.

------
PhasmaFelis
If this actually results in an internet mostly free of super annoying ads,
then I can't get too broken up about that even if it does give Google a major
advantage over its competitors.

The question, of course, is whether Google can/will abuse this in anti-
consumer ways. Some people have said that Google's criteria for "good" ads
aren't that great. The article implies that Google can somehow force adblocker
users to either pay per pageview or turn off their adblockers, which is awful
if true, though I'm not clear how it's supposed to work.

~~~
shusson
> The article implies that Google can somehow force adblocker users to either
> pay per pageview or turn off their adblockers, which is awful if true,
> though I'm not clear how it's supposed to work.

And that's when you download a different browser...

------
renlo
> According to the Financial Times, Google will allow publishers what it’s
> calling “Funding Choices.” The publisher could charge the consumer a set
> price per page view to use third-party sites that block all advertising.
> Google would do the tracking of how many pages users view, and then charge
> them. Users could then “white list” particular sites, allowing ads to be
> shown on them and removing the charge. If users decided to pay to block ads,
> Google would receive a portion of that payment, sharing it with the
> publisher.

Assuming the price is reasonable this doesn't sound horrible (but it doesn't
sound too great either). How much would a publisher charge for an article
view? $0.01? Or something like $0.50+ ? If the price is too high then I'd have
to ditch Chrome for Firefox or Safari; I do not like ads.

~~~
partiallypro
Maybe they will make the article views like a reverse auction system which
they have in Adwords.

------
pmoriarty
_" What ads would get blocked? The ones not sold by Google, for the most
part."_

That is hilarious. Talk about self-serving. How can they do this with a
straight face?

I guess "Don't be evil" doesn't imply "Don't be slimy".

~~~
nyc640
Well, to be fair, it seemed to me from the release announcement that they were
blocking ads on webpages where the _publisher_ set their pages up for a
frustrating experience (pop-up display ads, auto play video ads), irrelevant
of which ad systems were serving the ads on the pages. They aren't blocking
ads from certain ad systems or advertisers. In theory this means the ad
blocker shouldn't treat any ad system, including Google's, preferentially.

In practice, who knows?

~~~
DiabloD3
Someone is going to make that argument however: Google Ads disallows
displaying their ads that way, and is extremely good at finding websites that
do that, and not only banning them but keeping any potentially earned money as
well.

EU has already tried to make similar arguments to "break up Google" (lol, it's
an American company, glwt) by basically blaming them for having a fair ToS and
enforces it like no tommorow, thus producing services that attracts users.

Thus, having an ad service that bans shitty publishers and advertisers both
makes publishers and advertisers (sometimes exclusively) do business with
Google.

So, Google making Chrome ban shitty publishers and ad networks that harbor
shitty publishers and advertisers ... makes Google look like they're not
attacking themselves: which, well, they aren't, because they simply don't
engage in that behavior on their ad network.

There's probably a shorter way of explaining this.

~~~
nyc640
This makes sense. Thanks for explaining. I don't really know the ads ecosystem
that well, so those were just my inferences from the blog post. I'm sure that
was the intention of the post :-)

------
slaymaker1907
Honestly, I think the methodology of charging a small amount per page is
necessary for the continued success of the internet.

The advertising model of revenue seems to be extremely difficult to pull off
in practice.

~~~
cpncrunch
>The advertising model of revenue seems to be extremely difficult to pull off
in practice.

It seems to work well enough for Google. Not so much for everyone else.

------
romanovcode
Let me tell you what will happen:

\- Google creates built-in adblocker that allows google ads

\- Google removes the adblockers from Google Store due to some reason

\- You don't have an adblocker anymore

~~~
kermire
The fact that Chrome automatically disables extensions that don't exist in the
web store, in the name of security, is probably not a good sign. If it is for
security, then advanced users should've been given a way to bypass this
restriction, but it doesn't exist. If the adblockers get removed from the
store, there would be no easy way to use them without abandoning Chrome.

~~~
petra
Chrome is open-source, you could use an alternative chrome based browser, like
srware iron.

------
801699
company that sells ads says it will develop an ad blocker. why not stop
selling ads as well? what is the goal?

~~~
al_chemist
Company that sells ads says it will develop an ad blocker for their
competition ads.

------
bhhaskin
Having Google decide what ads to block is like leaving the fox to gard the hen
house.

------
whazor
I feel an European Union Anti Trust case coming up.

------
SamUK96
I don't think many people were celebrating it. The vast majority of people saw
it as a grubby power grab and a hit to the fairness of the internet.

------
fukusa
"Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker. Here’s What’s Really Going
On." I really don't like these kind of titles.

~~~
news_to_me
More than that even, the article seems pretty heavily biased against Google.
They bring up a good point which I hadn't considered before, but the way the
article is written is awfully slanted. For example, this paragraph:

> So this is a way for Google to crush its few remaining competitors by pre-
> installing an ad zapper that it controls to the most common web browser.
> That’s a great way for a monopoly to remain a monopoly.

It seems like the author is really trying to paint Google in an unflattering
light. Maybe that's how it is, but the facts should speak for themselves.

------
fidrelity
The state of online advertisement has to change. Customers and publishers are
unsatisfied and there are massive bot scam networks out there.

I am hopeful that Brandon Eich's brave browser[1] will make the ads economy
less vulnerable to Google's dominance.

[1] [https://brave.com](https://brave.com)

------
microcolonel
For me the solution is simple. More of my preferred content is offering honest
donation-based support (and receiving fully sufficient funds to operate. The
rest is free (the real kind) or paid.

My router just refuses to route to ad servers, and my DNS resolver refuses to
resolve their domains.

------
naugtur
I wonder what Mozilla did wrong that this thread is not full of "I'll just
switch to Firefox"

I'm on Firefox all the time and it's a RAM saver ;)

Full disclosure: I'm not related to Mozilla in any way but definitely a
fanboy.

------
yuhong
Thinking about it, printing money using basic income might make the demand for
ads increase. The economy would be basically based on how much basic income
consumers spend.

------
ggggtez
This article really has an apocalyptic tone, for what is essentially just an
alternative adblocker.

AdblockPlus already does most of this anyway (showing ads they get paid for).

------
slaymaker1907
Also, technically all major browsers have featured a limited ad blocker for
years. It is called a pop up blocker...

------
Jimmie_Rustle
I think this will be very beneficial to non-savvy web-users who may be tricked
by misleading ads like the download buttons, and the like.

Ads aren't really a problem for me (and I am guessing a lot of others), it's
bad/misleading ads like pop-ups, auto-play video ads, etc. I think the idea to
block ads that do not follow an established industry standard is definitely a
step in the right direction.

Savvy users will continue to use 3rd party ad blockers- no change there.

~~~
throwaway2048
Google hosts most of those download button ads...

Also the biggest source of pre-roll auto-play video ads, youtube.

~~~
Tentakill
I feel like auto-play ads make sense on youtube because youtube is a video
service and you go in expecting a video anyway. It's like a TV commercial.

I get super pissed by auto-play ads on non-video websites, but when it's in
front of a video such as on youtube I find it only a minor annoyance.

[EDIT: I don't know if there are auto-play ads in the sidebar on desktop, I
use adblock on desktop so I only see those video ads on the mobile version,
which doesn't have anywhere else to put ads]

~~~
Dylan16807
There's no shock of audio but it's still stopping you from getting to the
content. It's just as bad as full-page interstitials. (By the way, does anyone
else get unreasonably mad that the button to leave such an ad usually says
"skip" even when the ad was already shown and stays up indefinitely?)

------
KirinDave
It's really frustrating that we cannot have a browser that is both great and
not out to get us.

------
bitmapbrother
>GOOGLE, A DATA MINING and extraction company that sells personal information
to advertisers

Right off the bat this person couldn't even get his facts right. Google
doesn't sell personal information to advertisers.

~~~
Xorlev
Came here to say exactly this. Google doesn't sell your personal information.
It personalizes the ads it serves you, but that personalization happens in
Google, advertisers don't see it.

[https://www.google.com/settings/ads/](https://www.google.com/settings/ads/)

~~~
e12e
It might be wrongly implying Google is selling the content of your Gmail - but
between Google Analytics and stuff like:
[https://www.google.com/insights/](https://www.google.com/insights/) Google
certainly helps tracking users?

~~~
jessaustin
Yes it seems that a determined advertiser could find out quite a bit about
people who saw its Google ads...

------
bjd2385
I had to do a double-take when I read the title, forget about the article.
_Google_ developing an Ad Blocker? Ha! I'd never use it.

~~~
bbcbasic
It's saying to be careful when celebrating. Don't take anyone's eye out with
the champaigne cork. Make sure there is a designated driver. Etc.

------
hknd
This article is so much garbage

------
dubiousOne
the crown jewel in the google-oligopoly

------
ucaetano
It is worth remembering the The Intercept used to (still does?) work with and
publish material from a Oracle-funded nonprofit that existed for the sole
purpose of creating bad PR for Google:

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/anti-google-
rese...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/anti-google-research-
group-in-washington-is-funded-by-oracle/)

~~~
partiallypro
That may be true, but what is untrue about the article? How is it ok for a
company to be the largest ad company in the world, while controlling the most
popular browser on the planet and just announced a service that will kill off
its competitors (as if they have many at all?) That's monopolistic behavior.
Ask yourself, if Microsoft did this or something similar, would they get hit
with anti-trust? Yes.

~~~
ucaetano
No, it isn't monopolistic. Look at ad prices continuously going down.

"Monopoly" isn't a buzz word that you throw around randomly. It doesn't even
have to do necessarily with market share or control or the market.

There is no monopoly on the ad space, not by very, very far.

~~~
partiallypro
Microsoft was brought up on anti-trust charges because it packaged a browser
with its operating system.

Google controls the majority of ads on extended networks, it controls almost
all publisher ads (even Microsoft network sites run Google ads.) If publishers
have no where to go but Google, how is that not a monopoly? Ignore search,
ignore Facebook and Twitter, those are first party. Google has 0 competition
on extended network sites, and this ensures it never will.

~~~
ucaetano
"Ignore search, ignore Facebook and Twitter, those are first party"

You're not getting the point: extended network sites is not an isolated
product. It exists as a part of a large sub-segment (online ads) which part of
an even larger market (ads).

You can take a single sub-sub-segment and call it a monopoly. Its doesn't
matter if Coke had 95% of the colas market (it does in several countries), it
isn't a monopoly, because it competes with thousands of other drinks.

And you can't just look at market share, you need to look at prices. CPMs are
falling dramatically across the board, which is completely incompatible with a
monopoly.

There is the economical definition of a monopoly, and then there's the layman
definition, which means whatever you want to mean.

