Hacker News Reader

the first result is an ad (not sure why my ad blocker decided to let it through)

If it's adblock plus they let ads through for which they receive money.

it's uBlock Origin and they aren't supposed to do this as far as I know... hopefully their filter is just outdated.

holy cow, that ad looks exactly like a normal result with a very low contrast small link on the upper-right.

I wonder if you could buy an ad that looks like that from Google or if only Google is allowed to use them...

It says google promoted so I doubt it. the ones that are ads say Ad in a little box near where you click.

no ads for me, used uBlock Origin too, but I used below URL

I got the same "Google promotion" add with Google encrypted. BTW I'm using uBlock Origin.