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Comment by CWuestefeld | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't Google's UX be better if there were no ads? In the short term, maybe. In the long term, it would kill the company, so there wouldn't be any UX at all.

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no, you're confusing UI and UX... without ads, the user interface might be better (less ads, less clutter, etc) however, it could be argued that without the ads the user EXPERIENCE would not be as good... as very often ads are highly relevant to what the user is searching for on google and are therefore of value to the user.

No, adverts are almost always irrelevant for almost everybody. They are a necessary (and sometimes unnecessary) evil. Most of us don't look for something to buy all the time. When I read my mail or a blog or whatever, that huge burger and coke ad right in the middle of the screen is an irrelevant distraction.

When I have to watch that very same 30 second Hoodie Footie Pajamagram - the perfect way to snuggle up - segment before each and every 3m news video on CNBC it's a torture for my brain.

I wish more sites gave me a reasonable way to buy myself freedom from that "highly relevant" bloat.

[Edit] As a service provider, I appreciate the convenient excuse you provide for torturing my users ;-)

I think Google's billions in revenue and profits would beg to differ with you. (ads on google search results are generally highly relevant and get clicked a lot)

you are right, however, if the people you are generalizing for are HN folks, and websites other than Google.

Revenue and relevance is not quite the same. A 1% clickthrough rate would lead to great revenue for all concerned, but it still means I'm annoying 99% of my users (or one user 99% of the time).

Of course, not all non-clickers would be terribly annoyed, but many of the clickers might still be annoyed by the distraction even though the ad was relevant enough to click on.

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