Google Reverses Its Decision to Ban Ad Blocking Apps from the Google Play Store | Hacker News Reader

Google Reverses Its Decision to Ban Ad Blocking Apps from the Google Play Store

techcrunch.com

122 pointsAJAlabs35 comments

Google is set to launch their own mobile HTML replacement (AMP[1]) where ad blocking may be difficult or impossible. Allowing ad blocking apps on the Play Store would encourage publishers to switch to AMP.

[1] http://adage.com/article/digital/google-amp-launch-looms-sea...

Wow - thats the first I've heard of AMP. I've gotta say, I can't say I'm comfortable with the idea...

Why not? The current HTML standard and downloadable apps is so oldschool, AMP looks like a leap forward.

The concept behind amp is also quite "old school".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Markup_Language

Yep, but with Google, there is a big chance of success. The technology itself was not enough, it needs an execution, an example for others to follow, like Google did with material design

AMP doesn't do anything you couldn't do just by shipping an optimized website. The only difference is that you're outsourcing a lot of the experience to Google, hoping that better ad sales will balance out the loss of control.

There's also a difference from the user perspective. Presumably Google will indicate AMP content in the search results page (with an icon, etc), which will let users know the page will open "instantly." If you build a great mobile site yourself, users will never know that until they actually load your page. I can definitely see myself being more likely to open a result that I know will be performant.

Given that recent reporting has shown that ads and tracking are the biggest culprits in page load times, AMP appears to be solving an ad/tracking problem more than a web page problem.

That certainly could be the case, although I'd imagine Google will tread lightly in that regard to avoid anti-trust concerns. They've already taken a policy of using load speed as a quality signal and I wouldn't be surprised if they simply stuck with metrics like that where AMP will do well without showing any sign of favoritism.

AMP is open source. The problems begin when companies do indeed just let Google handle everything, like they've done with Google Analytics.

Right, I would have much wished it provided access to dropping in native Android components (even simple things, such as a ViewPager) into a webpage. Implementing a simulated ViewPager in HTML5 including swipe gestures is a horrible CSS and JavaScript mess, a waste of resources, clunky, a choppy experience on anything but the most high-end phones, and is very easy to become inconsistent if your implementation of said gestures differs slightly from someone else's.

Let's dispel once and for all with this fiction that Apple/Google/Facebook doesn't know what they're doing. They know exactly what they're doing. Apple/Google/Facebook is undertaking an effort to change content creation and consumption, to make their own platform less like the rest of the Web for their own gain.

Having seen this now several times, I find myself wondering if people are aware that it should either be "dispense with once and for all the fiction that..." or "dispel the fiction once and for all that...". To "dispel with" is to use a thing to dispel, such as "Let us dispel the fiction that the sky is green with this spectrograph result." (although that is still so klunky I'd never say that).

The phrase is a meme that comes from an actual (repeated) quote. In the context of that original quote there have been plenty of people who have commented on its grammatical errancy, but in the context of the meme it perhaps would make less sense if you fixed it.

What about AMP prevents ad blocking? Wouldn't blocking be trivial since all ads are in a special AMP/HTML element (<amp-ad>)?

You may be right, and I must admit ignorance on the technical side of the format. But the intent seems to be clear [1]:

> A goal of the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project is to ensure effective ad monetization on the mobile web while embracing a user-centric approach.

[1] https://www.ampproject.org/docs/support/faqs.html#how-will-a...

AMP is just a subset of HTML/JS/CSS, but there is also an AMP CDN and the implication that you agree to allow your content to be cached by third parties.

I think this means that the agreement concerning the AMP CDN says you don't use bad ads, thus discouraging ad blocking.

Does "cached by 3rd parties" = "serve from same origin so ads appears to be content" ?

Well, it might. The FAQ only says this:

https://www.ampproject.org/docs/support/faqs.html#who-will-b...

  By using the AMP format, content producers are making the content in AMP files
  available to be crawled, indexed & displayed (subject to the robots exclusion 
  protocol) and cached by third parties.

https://www.ampproject.org/docs/support/faqs.html#how-do-acc...

  In addition, AMP files can be cached in the cloud in order to reduce the time 
  content takes to get a user’s mobile device. By using the AMP format, content 
  producers are making the content in AMP files available to be cached by third 
  parties. Under this type of framework, publishers continue to control their content, 
  but platforms can easily cache or mirror the content for optimal delivery speed to 
  users. Google has stated that it will provide a cache that can be used by anyone at 
  no cost, and all AMPs will be cached by Google’s cache. Other companies may build 
  their own cache as well.

I imagine that means Google will be caching AMP pages in full, so if your search turns up an AMP page, it will be served from Google's CDN. Presumably, it will be more difficult to determine what is an ad if it's all cached, but maybe ads are an exception to cache -- you can't target a static ad very well.

Their text wrapping on that page is atrocious. o_o

ogle

celerated

Some testing: Apparently the text flows fine in Chrome. The AMP team would like you to believe their open standard that should be good for everyone everywhere has a website that only renders correctly in their own browser.

Ads from third-parties are supposed to be placed in special amp-ad elements. Those would be trivial to block. Ads that are served as standard images would probably be limited to blogs that deal directly with advertisers (e.g what slatestarcodex does) which is about as inoffensive as it gets.

They are in charge of every aspect of AMP, what's stopping them from rendering ads as native content without the identifying tags in the future?

Beyond that, AMP conveniently gives Google all of the data from all of the ads running through an AMP-configured site, whereas before they might only get data from stuff hitting their ad network or if the publisher was using DFP (and only a fragment of that from advertisers using DCM).

It is a massive data play on Google's part against competing display inventory networks/exchanges, and ALSO happens to be pretty beneficial for end users from a speed standpoint. Pretty genius business move on their end.

Now if Google would just reverse their blocking of applications that allow us to limit certain what apps have access to on my phone for privacy concerns, then I'd be happy. Might switch over to a Blackphone 2 just for this reason alone.

This is already part of the built-in permissions management in the latest version of android, no?

Adds are not the problem, the problem is the problem is the quantity of Adware. I whitelist the pages and creators I want to support because I know they make a living out of that. Removing add blockers won't fix the problem, removing adware will.

"In case you haven't heard ... I'm kind of a big deal."

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