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Comment by jamesdhutton | Hacker News Reader

The author blames Google for the fact that recipe sites force you to wade through a long preamble before you get to the recipe. But if internet advertising didn't exist, then the recipe site would be charging him for the recipe. Recipe authors have to make a living somehow. If he doesn't want ads in his recipes, then he could always go out and buy a recipe book.

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If internet advertising didn't exist then there would be only half a dozen recipes for scrambled eggs to be found, not the thousands there are now.

... and probably not much else. I love the way I can type in whatever combination of ingredients I happen to have in my pantry, and get a bunch of free recipes with those ingredients. I doubt that would have happened without internet advertising.

Fair point

I don't understand all this whining about recipes sites. I have never had a problem with them and I am using an 8 year old creaky laptop.

And Nigellas' or the Hairybikers sites are not encumbered with adds.

I don't think this would be the case. (A proportion of) People love to share things like recipes, they would share them regardless. Some other people found they can monetise recipes by putting ads on their sites. They have an incentive for SEO while the other people likely care less and so when we look around we see a bunch of ad-supported recipe sites.

It is a little short sighted to then conclude that only ad-supported websites share recipes.

I also find the claim itself rather implausible and it makes me think the author just has a generic anti-tech bias. (Know what else Google is responsible for? Forwards from Grandma! And reposts on your favorite subreddit! And people ghosting you on Tinder!)

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