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Comment by mseebach | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty clear that Google's strategy is that making the web better for everyone and everything is what will grow their ad business long term, rather than violently shoving as many ads as possible into their users faces as fast as possible. It's also pretty clear that they are capable of pursuing a long term strategy over chasing short-term cash.

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> It's pretty clear that Google's strategy is that making the web better for Google

FIFY.

I have no idea why the belief that "what's good for Google is good for the internet" persists - those days are long past. Google is best understood as a huge surveillance operation with bait services attached.

The obvious reason for them to push their own ad blocker seems most likely; it is to suck the oxygen out of the space by exploiting their privileged position as a browser maker to destroy 3rd parties that can block their ads. The ad blocker-makers are tiny, fragmented and unfortunately muddled with some crappy products that sell whitelist entries; this is a good time for Google to try to knife them, before a market leader emerges.

I didn't say "what's good for Google is good for the internet", I said, in effect, "what's good for the internet is good for Google".

And please do refrain from fixing my posts for me, I am perfectly capable of expressing my opinions without your assistance.

> what's good for the internet is good for Google

This presumes complete congruence between these two sets, which is precisely what is being criticized above.

How exactly is:

" The obvious reason for them to push their own ad blocker seems most likely; it is to suck the oxygen out of the space by exploiting their privileged position as a browser maker to destroy 3rd parties that can block their ads. "

If true, good for 'the internet' in general, rather than being good for Google primarily with some related good and harm for 'the internet' ?

Or that 'what is good for the internet' is a subset of 'what is good for Google'. Language is murky but that's a more reasonable interpretation.

It's the only interpretation after the initial clarification.

It also doesn't hurt that Google will be able to control what is considered an "ad" and what isn't.

Are Google product listings ads? Google flight results? Featured destinations?

If you request it, it's not an ad. I think that's a pretty reasonable line to draw.

I didn't request the ad, I requested the page.

If you put ads on page e.g. Amazon product that relates to your content with affiliate link, that's fair and acceptable and appreciated.

If you put an ad that your audience may be interested in, unrelated to your content e.g. content creator reviewing restaurants also advertises for gyms in my area. It is fair and tolerated.

If you outsource what ad gets shown to me, leaving me at mercy of brokers and exchanges who target me with ads based on my entire profile, ads not just related to content that I requested, but ads created based on what the ad broker/exchange know about me personally. Seeing ads for athletes foot remedy that I searched for last week, when I am looking at camera reviews is not acceptable and makes me feel totally ethical when I use ad-blockers. You, the content host, is basically luring me in with promise of content and pulling bait and switch by bombarding ads on me, things like splitting content into bite size pieces across 20 pages to convert single request into 20 impressions is waste of my time, I don't have to deal with it and will use ad-blockers without any guilt on such sites.

People have trained their eyes to not register the ads, e.g. mobile ads that scroll over the page. This is similar to browsing a print magazine and not registering ads at all consciously.

The advertisers declared war on people, looking at them as crop to be harvested. Well, the people have an opinion about this and I am totally fine with the battle raging on.

By "request it", you mean typing something into the search box and hitting enter? That would mean everything on the current search results is not an ad, right?

That's like saying if you didn't ask for it, food is not food. You appear to be defining the nature of a thing by your internal mental state, and that only works with a relatively small number of certain things.

What makes an ad an ad has nothing to do with potential-viewer intent. Lack of viewer intent is what makes it an _unwanted_ ad.

I happen to have a certain ad framed and on my wall at home. I spent money on the ad, and more money to frame it. Pretty sure that meets the definition of 'request'.

Guess what? It is still an ad.

That definition would make sense only if there was a way to explicitly tell that you request ads or promoted content of some sort, most of the time you don't, you type a search query in Google's text box or click on a link to some web page, that's all. The extra content gets bundled and is loaded without asking.

Interesting Question.

My Take: Redefine what ad means for web browsing, e.g. any information coming from a third party like iframes. All other types of information, paid or not paid, is part of the web page and not worth blocking.

It's not an easy problem, as the war being waged for many years now I think demonstrates. A too simple definition will have too many exceptions: a newspaper that includes an article from another reputable news site, ad? A paid piece extolling the virtues of product X, posing as a fake article, not an ad?

Bit like how Bezos said if something is going to canniblize your business, you may as well be the one doing it

Pretty sure that line predates anyone paying attention to Bezos. It is a natural implication of the disruption model of product design, and was discussed heavily in terms of changes in the computer industry before the web existed, let alone Amazon.

None of that changes the usefulness or correctness of the idea.

If a new tech comes along that destroys your business, you should invest in that tech or you risk becoming blockbuster while Netflix rises. If Blockbuster had taken its opportunity to buy netflix or build a competitor it would still be in business today.

Same thing with all those oil companies becoming energy companies. Solar and wind are displacing coal and oil, and all the big energy companies are in on it. They don't look at risk of going under soon.

I think it is more about destroying the competition and also that they believe that there will be no antitrust enforcement whatseoever in the Trump Administration.

Yeah, because Google only does business in the US, and there's no political capital to be reaped anywhere in the world from standing up to rich American firms, especially when such standing up can at the same time be construed as standing up to the Trump administration. Also, Google has specifically and most certainly never been slapped around by the European Union for anticompetitive practices, so there's nothing to worry about there.

> they are capable of pursuing a long term strategy

Except when it comes to chat/text communication. In that case they run around like chickens with their heads cut off.

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