
An update on Better Ads (Chrome native ad-blocking) - mgiannopoulos
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/12/better-ads
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secret_island
There are no "better" ads. The only good ads are the ones I cannot see. My
computer, my rules. Lately now blocking coin mining in addition to all ads,
trackers, beacons, pixels, etc. I have the right to surf on my terms. Traffic
to websites is a cost of doing business; don't try to recoup in ways that I
never agreed to (mining), selling my data w/o my permissions, etc.

You have to love the tripe in the article: "Better ads experience..." No one
enjoys the experience. No one except those in a position to make money from
same. Everyday IT people and others find ads intrusive, annoying, and
dangerous. Ads are a major vector for malware. Again, my rules, my computer.
I've not seen an ad in many years, but I do keep up with the tech and means to
keep blocking all newcoming means to circumvent my own security.

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throwaway613834
> My computer, my rules

Or maybe their website, their rules? Otherwise this is like walking into a
store and telling them to take off their ads, because your eyes, your rules.

~~~
betterunix2
Sorry, but nobody ever promised to render your website in any specific way; my
browser does whatever I programmed it to do. I might be using w3m. I might be
using a browser you never heard of. I might be using a text-to-speech engine.
Website owners do not get to set the rules on my machine, no matter how badly
they want to.

~~~
throwaway613834
You can put on rose-colored glasses (or AR goggles) when you walk into a
store, too. I don't really see a contradiction.

~~~
betterunix2
Exactly: you can put on AR goggles and have them draw opaque rectangles over
all the ads in the store, and there is nothing wrong with that.

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gressquel
An attempt by Google to take over the Adblocking market and thus maintain
their own whitelist which will obviously not block Adsense ads. I have already
moved over to firefox

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Dylan16807
> maintain their own whitelist which will obviously not block Adsense ads

You make this sound like some kind of trick. The stated goal is to block
especially obnoxious ads, of the kind adsense doesn't do.

I can't say if it's going to be fair or not, but the way it treads adsense
specifically isn't going to be the deciding factor.

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ivanbakel
>The stated goal is to block especially obnoxious ads, of the kind adsense
doesn't do.

Either way you think the relation goes probably depends on your opinion of
Google, but I would take this as thinking backwards.

Google has lots of interest in preventing Adsense from being blocked as part
of some broad-stroke policy, so everything they do as part of their adblocking
policy has that in mind - wherever users prefer the Chrome native policy,
Google wins. Whatever criteria gets picked for the adblocker is going to fit
Adsense pretty well, or else Google loses.

If Adsense, and the ad revenue model, weren't deciding factors in introducing
these partial blockers in the first place, Google wouldn't be taking the steps
to implement one.

~~~
jacques_chester
Put another way, this is an example of standard Google strategy: defend and
control the approaches to the advertising river of gold.

Chrome was itself just such an investment. By controlling a major browser
(eventually, the dominant browser), they can prevent Mozilla or Microsoft from
cutting them out.

Now they want to prevent the increasing pool of ad blockers from freezing out
adsense. Happily for Google, this means that advertisers will prioritise
advertising through them, as they will _only_ be guaranteed to show up in
Chrome if they use adsense.

Their next step will be to bundle Contributor with Chrome. Again, by happy
coincidence, this blocks out anyone else from getting a good run at
microsubscription. Last I checked, the design is intended to be revenue-
neutral for Google.

Disclosure: I have been working on a business, Robojar, intended to remove
advertising and bypass paywalls in exchange for microsubscriptions. Google
have a very similar model in Contributor.

~~~
Dylan16807
> Disclosure: I have been working on a business, Robojar, intended to remove
> advertising and bypass paywalls in exchange for microsubscriptions. Google
> have a very similar model in Contributor.

Good luck! I love the idea of micropayments from a fixed budget to support
sites, but Contributor's bidding-based system was not a good path at all.

> they will only be guaranteed to show up in Chrome if they use adsense

That's the worst-case scenario, as far as power abuse here. But they might be
fair! We'll have to see.

~~~
jacques_chester
I want to give Google the credit for a conceptually elegant approach that will
slot neatly into the existing bidding system.

But it seems to think of humans and adtech bidding ecosystems as identical
economic agents. If we're all perfect consumers, sure, the system converges to
an equilibrium.

That seems like a mighty generous "if". It's already annoying to manage the
mental cost of schemes like Patreon's. How much more annoying is to have to
forecast, several weeks in advance, a bidding system that settles in
milliseconds, millions of times per minute?

It's worth noting that I may be misunderstanding or misrepresenting the
nuances and design of the Contributor scheme. I'm a potential competitor, my
remarks ought to be look on skeptically.

But likewise I ask people to follow the money. Cui bono? In this case: Google.

~~~
Dylan16807
My main objection to the bidding system is not even the unpredictability, but
that it rewards the wrong things. I don't want to pay more to a site that
happens to have car insurance ads. I don't want to pay less to a site that
installed fewer banners.

...hang on, when did google contributor relaunch as a service that pays per-
page-load, is opt-in per domain, and is basically useless?

Google, you manage to do youtube red just fine. Try harder.

~~~
jacques_chester
Oh wow, you're right. The model has gotten even more cognitively expensive.

This somewhat widens my ray of hope.

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scott_karana
How is this not a monopolistic, anticompetitive measure?

The largest ad company starts a shell coalition so their largest market-share
browser can use it as justification to block "non-approved" (competitor's)
ads.

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phil248
At this point, I'm dealing with so many pop-ups asking me to turn off my ad-
blocker that the original purpose of the ad-blocker (don't bother me) is
becoming moot.

If this effort by Google can somehow raise the quality of online ads from
horrendous to just terrible, I'll reluctantly support it.

~~~
dedalus
>If this effort by Google can somehow raise the quality of online ads from
horrendous to just terrible, I'll reluctantly support it

I think the rationale for this move is to stem the growth of adblockers rather
than anything else. Google Chrome on Mobile does not allow any extension so
thats safe for their monetization. Its only on desktop which is dwindling and
they are using this opportunity to make sure this is contained

~~~
scarface74
Only on Android does this save Google. iOS has had the ability to install
content blockers for a few years. They not only work in the browser but also
the newer embedded Web Views (WebViewController?)

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kodablah
I asked before, but never really got a good answer. Is this client side only?
If not, how are they querying a server? And where can I download the full list
of unacceptable ads/sites? And if I can't, why not? And finally, why does this
have to be native instead of an extension?

Edit: I guess another question, why aren't the answers to obvious questions
like these readily available? Or am I just ignorant?

~~~
dedalus
I believe this is a hybrid. Chrome sends telemetry data to their server and
they already know what kind of sites and ads are blocked.

I think they need correlation of ads shown followed by an adblocker extension
install so that they want to block such ads to prevent the growth in
adblockers

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sharpercoder
I really hope a service will be created where I can pay for adfree content
internetwide.

~~~
dedalus
you already have that here:
[https://contributor.google.com/v/beta](https://contributor.google.com/v/beta)

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bckygldstn
So removal of ads is based on a blacklist, rather than client-side
identification?

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dbcooper
Members of the "Coalition for Better Ads" are listed at the link below. Which
major internet advertising providers are not listed? (I am not familiar with
the market.)

[https://www.betterads.org/members/](https://www.betterads.org/members/)

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revelation
I'm not a lawyer, but it just seems like the biggest online ad peddler of the
world blocking ads of exclusively it's competitors in his preinstalled browser
on the most widely used mobile platform in the world is a recipe for a
blockbuster anti-trust sanction.

~~~
Kylekramer
I'm sure Google's employees who can say I am a lawyer reviewed this.

They've been paying Ad Block Plus to do this for years. Bringing it in house
can't change the legality much.

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xstartup
So, basically all ad networks like zeropark, popads, popcash, propeller ads,
will soon disappear?

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droopyEyelids
That or we'll start seeing "this browser not supported"

