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Comment by rebel1 | Hacker News Reader

Great question. I answered in a another post:

I wish something like the Web Monetization API was a viable path to monetization, but I don't think it is in the current state.

I believe the only current path to monetization that preserves user privacy is context based display ads that work like billboards in the real world. I am working on that now, but the idea is a flat fee to display the ad for N days regardless of views or clicks.

It is certainly challenging, but DDG and Startpage both exist and seem to be profitable.

The key is to monetize and 1.) ensure user privacy, 2.) ensure the monetization method doesn't create perverse incentives in contention of providing better search results for users.

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How aggressively are you willing to moderate and kill bad ads?

The biggest issue I see with Google/Bing/AOL/Yahoo Search (and even DDG!) is malicious advertising. It's led me to the general view that any search ads are hostile by default, and I've often found outright dysfunction when it comes to shutting down bad actors.

The other issue I'd be curious about is your position on trademark squatting. i.e., where if I'm Best Buy, my competitors can buy ads over the search term "best buy", so if I want my own site to be the first "result" for my own business name, I have to buy ads.

Maybe the answer is that you buy display time, but with no keywords. Like in the real world, everyone will see the ad.

Or you can just buy ads for a given "theme" and the search engine will try to interpret queries and assign theme the most close theme, displaying relevant ads.

The only way it would work is heavy moderation on the ads served.

Great question on trademark squatting, and I would love to hear the communities' thoughts.

If someone searches for 'nike shoes' and gets an ad for Reebok; is that useful to the user? Half of me thinks that it is not a relevant ad because the searcher clearly stated their intent, but the other half thinks that it might be because they are both shoe companies and their could be value in seeing related products from different brands.

I am leaning toward it not being a relevant ad, but I could see the argument the other way as well.

I think the important point is that if you are selling placement above the first result, trademark squatting means you're actually extorting the trademark holder: Pay up or we'll put a competitor above you. Nobody should have to pay to be the top result for a searcher looking for them directly.

Of course, this problem could alternately be solved by always putting the trademark holder as the top result for the term, and showing relevant ads immediately below. You can still sell to competitors, but nobody feels like they're forced to pay you to own their own name, which is what happens at Google.

Selling the top result is possibly the most problematic thing about Google. And very few nontechnical users can even identify the first organic result. They click the ad thinking it's the top result, not because they found the ad valuable or relevant.

You are right. I understand the temptation from a business perspective, but it is not an ethical practice IMO.

What does the rule look like that enforces that? No ads can be placed that contain the trademark of another company? Would that be too restrictive in practice?

I think it's probably something that'd need to be curated, because the line is probably "I am looking for x, not results about x", sort of like how when your site sees a search for Twitter, it just goes to Twitter. Presumably if I am looking for "Twitter bots", I am not looking for Twitter but products or apps that interact with Twitter and ads are likely to be relevant, not obstructive.

So there should possibly be a way to register specific trademarks as having an authoritative destination that should be the top result, and above any ad placements, but any additional qualifiers in the search term beyond the trademark should exempt this behavior?

What about showing ads from competitors in a sidebar

Then the users can choose themselves if they want to have a look there?

Or two columns: one with, one w/o ads

That would be fine with me. Ultimately if I knew the first listed result when someone searched "mapquest" was mapquest.com and not a malicious ad, I'd switch every senior citizen I know to using that search engine immediately.

I'm working on a similar system. I want to build a business around it, but if you want the Infinite Auction code I can let you use that (only fair, since I nicked the idea from Project Wonderful).

thank you!

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