
Basecamp's Protest Google Ad - bradleybuda
https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016
======
jiveturkey
I usually shake my head at these rants, but

The real problem here is not the ads per se. It's that they are not marked
well, so users are tricked into clicking them. I've seen the ads degrade over
all these years from clearly obvious, to plausible-deniability obvious. This
is actively harmful to users.

I find basecamp to be pretty mediocre but I'm glad they've raised this issue
in a public enough way that Google was forced to respond. Too bad their
response just cemented the notion that they don't care about users anymore.
You do have to laugh when they say with a straight face, "it's for the users".

Basecamp:

> When Google puts 4 paid ads ahead of the first organic result for your own
> brand name, you’re forced to pay up if you want to be found. It’s a
> shakedown. It’s ransom. But at least we can have fun with it. Search for
> Basecamp and you may see this attached ad.

Google:

> To provide users with the most relevant ads, ...

implying that ads are a service for the users. lol. It's official, Google
sucks.

------
Joakal
Can anyone see if you can put an ad for DuckDuckGo for looking up "Google"?

If not, this is Google not playing by their own rules.

Edit: looking up DuckDuckGo on Google, it's weird to see a DDG ad top result
and DDG organic as second result on Google. There's no competition but money
will still go to Google.

~~~
buboard
> it's weird to see a DDG ad top result and DDG organic

and google will never introduce an option to not show an ad if you 're the
first result anyway.

~~~
mcv
I generally click the organic result for companies I like, and click the ad
for companies I don't like. No idea if it matters.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
Google earns money anyway

~~~
mcv
Do they get money just for placement? I actually thought they got money for
clicks.

Although in that case it's entirely possible that my reaction is exactly the
wrong way around: Google will probably be more likely to place the ad that
gets clicks than the one that doesn't.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
it depends on how you setup the ad. Conversions/ Clicks/ Impression etc.

------
amadeuspagel
It's incredible how entitled people are. Explaining why your product is better
then basecamp is a perfectly legitimate use of an ad. It's something that
people who google "basecamp" rather then typing in the URL might be interested
in.

~~~
marcosscriven
Can DuckDuckGo advertise on Google with “Google” as a keyword?

~~~
mcv
Not according to the article. And that might be a good basis for an anti-trust
case.

------
Zanni
This is a Good Thing. Competitors with more money are going to do everything
they can to get their product info in front of curious eyeballs. You _want_
them to do it via obvious paid advertising rather than black hat SEO.

And contrary to Jason Fried, I think the ads are well differentiated, and it's
easy to skim past them to the first organic search result. Though you could
argue that there are too many of them. Two or three seems more reasonable than
four, which pushes the organic results pretty low on the page.

~~~
fasicle
"it's easy to skim past them to the first organic search result"

From my experience, so few people actually do this. When I watch friends or
family use Google, they almost always click on the first or second result
without thinking that it is probably an ad.

~~~
dhagz
It really is an amazing example of a healthy pattern becoming dark after
awhile. Google spent years establishing themselves as the best search engine,
to the point where you would want to click on the first result. Then, they
slowly start adding ads, but the ads look like ads and people can easily
ignore them. Until one day, someone at Google realizes that if the ads looked
more like actual search results more people would click on them - meaning
Google could make more money.

------
writepub
Keyword advertising's entire premise is based on advertising against keywords,
the system is working as designed, and I do not believe Basecamp needs to buy
an ad if someone is already searching for "basecamp".

On the other hand, if the ad looked like an organic search result, that is
something I'd totally object to. If the ad is clearly marked, doesn't confuse
the user and works as designed, especially without maligning or baselessly
smearing the targeted keyword, is it really a shakedown?

~~~
sharkmerry
>> I do not believe Basecamp needs to buy an ad if someone is already
searching for "basecamp".

Did you do the search? I got the same results hes speaking of. If I am
searching for "Basecamp" which is a company's trademarked name, they are not
the top result. They label the ad, but most users are not HNers and dont
notice.

[https://imgur.com/a/S03I1zK](https://imgur.com/a/S03I1zK)

------
mikestew
I think part of the problem is that folks didn't notice when Google
transitioned from a search engine to an ad engine. For a long time we
collectively thought of Google as a search engine, and a damned fine one it
was. But we missed the switcheroo, and now we get pissed off when we try to
treat an ad engine as if it is the old Google search engine.

------
Keverw
I hate how the ads people confuse as actual results... Stuff like this happens
on other search engines too, not just a Google problem.

someone I know was looking for a open source office suite and downloaded one
that had adware installed. Same software, but with bundled extra junk, so they
just made a new installer and splash page for it. So people don’t realize it’s
not the official site but see it as the first result.

Then someone was running keywords for a broker for retirement accounts but
when you clicked it you got a fake anti-virus wanting you to call a boiler
room in India pretending they are from Microsoft. Non tech savvy people
including the elderly falls for this stuff mistakenly. I see it as a form of
elder abuse. I had to help a relative clean up after that and they had to also
contact their bank.

I understand advertising is so they can provide free services but I wish
advertising was done more ethical. However with ad blockers some news sites
want you to pay too, which I don’t really want a subscription for every news
site I might see a link to a article for. I used to be against ad blockers but
with all this shady stuff I don’t blame people anymore for using them. So
don’t really want to pay for things, but wish the ads would more transparent
and sites could offer a reasonable priced premium option to remove ads and
some extra features.

I know people like to hate on Google lately and other big tech, but I feel
they have contributed a lot to society and even open sourced a lot of great
stuff such as the V8 Engine used by Chrome and Node. I just wish advertising
was better and if anything goes wrong actually being able to get ahold of
someone for help would be great, especially when paying for stuff. I think at
one point the advertisements used to have a yellow background instead of
blending in with search results, but that was probably like a decade ago if my
memory is right.

Seems like every few weeks there's some support horror story with Google,
someone had issues with their Google Fi, their Android app on the market,
someone recently claimed they were banned from Adwords for using the Apple
Card, etc... So I'm a bit conflicted when it comes to companies as I like some
things they do but not a fan of others. Same with Microsoft, but they have
opened up more as a company supporting open source and Windows 10 looks really
great even though I wish it had a *nix foundation under the hood. So
personally not a huge fan of Windows, but I sure like Xbox and TypeScript.
Even Microsoft Office on a Mac is popular.

So I guess I just pick and chose and not really loyal to any tech company.
Also I have the React Chrome extension which lights up blue for sites using
it, and so ironic Twitter uses React, a technology built by Facebook which I
see them as competitors. Tech seems like a weird industry sometimes. But then
again the iPhone has parts made by Samsung in it. I guess the same happens in
the car industry, where some companies use each others parts. Netflix uses
AWS, while Amazon is also offering it's own competing video service.

~~~
squiggleblaz
> I hate how the ads people confuse as actual results... Stuff like this
> happens on other search engines too, not just a Google problem.

Well everyone hates it. Part of the original understanding of Google's onetime
informal motto "do no evil" was that "putting ads where they can be confused
for organic results is evil". We can see exactly why here.

We switched away from search engines that confused us for Google which, in
those days, ran its ads on empty space on the right hand side of the browser.

I genuinely hope historians of the future are able to get the early history of
Google right. I guess they probably won't; probably, the only documentation is
people's memory and that will fade with time. (I assume Google will still be
around in some form or another in 150 years.)

------
kull
We had a competition using our name in ads, we sent complain to google legal
team as we have trademark on our company name. It fixed the issue of
competitors not using our name in the content of ads but they still show ads
when our name is googled. At one point we just gave up to fight with it.

~~~
romanovcode
Yeah, this is exactly what Google replied to this tweet.
[https://twitter.com/GoogleAds/status/1169040432787013632](https://twitter.com/GoogleAds/status/1169040432787013632)

------
squiggleblaz
Isn't this trademark infringement? Or perhaps it's time we extended some IP
law to protect smaller companies against bigger ones for a change.

~~~
wmf
[https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6118](https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6118)

Sounds like Google considers it OK as long as the ads don't mention Basecamp
by name.

~~~
squiggleblaz
Google doesn't make trademark law nor do they get decide if some behavior
follows the law or not. Google obviously considers it okay; they get to profit
from both the aggrieved party and the malicious party. The question of whether
a business practice is illegally unethical should not be determined by a
person who profits from it.

~~~
wmf
I assume Google's policy is informed by trademark law and all the lawsuits
that they have defended.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman/2015/06/02/google-a...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman/2015/06/02/google-
and-yahoo-defeat-last-remaining-lawsuit-over-competitive-keyword-advertising/)

------
mikepurvis
Maybe I'm just not in a targeted locale, but the "basecamp" serp on Google for
me looks totally reasonable:

[https://imgur.com/AVRTl60](https://imgur.com/AVRTl60)

If anything, this is an over-commitment to a single interpretation of that
query, which could also be about a variety of different topics, including
climbing, an Airstream trailer, and others which appear farther down the page.

~~~
ac29
You must have an Ad blocker - there are no ads in your picture. If I search
without an Ad blocker, I see an ad for a competing product before the organic
basecamp result.

~~~
mikepurvis
Oh shoot, I totally do. Well that explains that, sorry for the noise.

------
Nicksil
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=basecamp](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=basecamp)

Yields Basecamp's website as first result on desktop[1] and, hell, even gives
a Wikipedia snippet when on mobile[2]!

Thanks, DuckDuckGo!

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/XBI4Wxs.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/XBI4Wxs.jpg)

[2] [https://i.imgur.com/BaPuiUO.png](https://i.imgur.com/BaPuiUO.png)

DuckDuckGo > Google

~~~
tqi
FWIW when I refresh the page I get ads for monday.com [1] and visymo.com [2].

[1] [https://imgur.com/a/cffTwf7](https://imgur.com/a/cffTwf7) [2]
[https://imgur.com/a/Y1HoGBr](https://imgur.com/a/Y1HoGBr)

