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Comment by SubiculumCode | Hacker News Reader

Paywalled, so obvious question. Does Google's deep pockets just bid high?

Try outline.com: https://outline.com/a88hX9

I believe if you access it via twitter or facebook, WSJ still lets you in. Try the link from https://twitter.com/nat_droz/status/958396191531728896

I have this bookmarklet I use when I hit paywalls and I don't care if Facebook knows I'm interested in it:

    javascript:location.href='http://facebook.com/l.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)

This is extremely witty. You're the MVP.

How about this:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/read-ft-wsj/

The page says that it's GNU licensed but where I can I find the source?

The .xpi file is essentially a .zip in disguise (all Firefox add-ons work like this). Unzip it as normal and read the source. Aside from the manifest, it's 5 lines.

Got it, thanks for explaining that. I didn't want to download it before reviewing.

https://github.com/JoaoAparicio/read-ft-wsj

Google claims that it operates the buying side as a standalone business that needs to be profitable so it doesn’t overbid. I don’t buy that claim for a second, and I don’t think the EU will either.

Why not?

I'm sure if you bid something ridiculous, say $1 billion for an ad, Google would rather show your ad than one of Google's.

They only need to fudge their numbers by a few percent for them to win the majority of impressions. It's not about bidding $600 for a $10 slot, it's about bidding $11 and then pointing out that their internal operator is still profitable after all sorts of internal cross subsidisation.

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