Google: Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

This is like ten years too late, but whoa. This is huge. Malicious search ads are the top threat vector I see, and with things like the URL line being dishonest, it's been impossible to verify an ad came from a given company or entity. The only solution to securely clicking on ads has been to never ever click on ads.

Hopefully this will make it much easier to prosecute malicious actors that do business via ad networks.

EDIT: "scale the program while continuing to ensure we are surfacing helpful information to our users, we expect that this process will take a few years to complete"

I love how Google pretends the slow rollout is to ensure they are "surfacing helpful information", not "making fistfuls of cash from ads". The dishonesty in that line is a bit overbearing. Taking a few years to complete is unfortunate, but hopefully they will make it very clear which ads are verified and which are not in the interim, and ensure that advertisers are pushed to implement verification to improve visibility.

This a dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955606