

Doomsday: Why Google needs its own browser - bdfh42
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080905_005415.html

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kennyroo
I don't buy Cringely's logic. He rarely makes sense to me, and this column is
no different.

Microsoft is working very hard to get into the Internet advertising business.
They need a big, technology-centered growth business like advertising to power
future growth because they're certainly not going to get it from Vista or
Office.

If you assume that Microsoft won't block ads from its own ad network, the idea
that Microsoft would block Google ads is unthinkable. Such obviously anti-
competitive behavior would bring down the Wrath of Kahn from every government
agency in Washington and Brussels.

It simply isn't going to happen.

IMHO, Google launched Chrome because Google has unlimited resources, a desire
to play on the desktop, fuzzy notions about a web OS, and because Googlers
just don't know what to do with themselves these days. Advertising is so
profitable but, alas, so boring.

There's no reason why Chrome won't be successful, but there's also no clear
business case for the product at present. Then again, there's no business case
for Lively or YouTube either...

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baha_man
"You'll also notice that Microsoft recently has been putting on some very
compelling web content that is only available if you use Windows and IE."

Does anyone know what this 'compelling web content' is?

"Google's greatest fear - that Microsoft will turn off ads in IE."

Google's ads are discreet text links, not blinking banners - does anyone want
to turn them off? As the commenters point out, Firefox already has adblock.

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unalone
People who block Google ads don't make too much sense to me. I agree with what
you said: they're text-based, oftentimes they're relevant, and they don't get
in the way at all.

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vaksel
all advertising is bad advertising. I don't want to be distracted by an ad. I
don't want to be tricked into hitting an ad link by mistake. And I don't want
to see numerous ads(that usually have NOTHING to do with anything I'm looking
for.

\+ adblock doesn't seem to block search results ads, and imho thats where most
people click ads anyways.

~~~
unalone
If the owner of the website uses advertisements to keep his site afloat,
that's a noble cause. It's not as noble as making a profit more actively, but
for personal and casual sites advertisement is a good thing. And Google Ads
tries to give readers ads that they actually will care about.

~~~
vaksel
the people who block advertisements won't be clicking them anyways, so the
person loses nothing.

As far as Google contextual ads? They are useless in 99% of the time...just
because I'm looking at a blog post describing a new TV, doesn't mean I want to
buy it, from the first person who tells me they have it for sale.

If the site owner wants to make it a noble cause, then he should just throw
some affiliate links to the item he discusses.

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mariorz
The p2p bit at the end makes no sense to me.

