Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

There's nothing wrong with it, if you are told about this up front and it's part of your purchasing calculation.

Retroactively adding ads to an ad-free device after the customer has purchased it, sometimes buying it specifically to avoid competing devices with ads, is inexcusable bullshit.

View on HN

If you subscribe to cable/satellite television, you expect there to be advertising. I'm not certain, but i suspect the agreement you sign while signing up for cable or streaming services, would include some sort of advertising clause.

Ie, u less a service explicitly promotes am ad-free experience, there should be no expectations of such.

I guess I can come to your house tomorrow and paint some ads on the walls, or were you promised an ad free experience?

How about their car’s infotainment system? Can we start showing them ads when stopped at a light or were they promised an ad free experience there as well?

You’re late to the game, Ford is working on that already.

I mean, it's been the new hotness at gas stations for a minute now. Which is something childhood me never would have expected.

"Once screens and connectivity costs fall below a threshold, advertising is guaranteed to follow."

This isn't about a service, it's about devices. The Google TV launcher is the de-facto UI for Android TV devices (like my Nexus Player, which is...7 YEARS OLD and now gets ads) and Google/Android TV-powered TVs, which are made by a bunch of different manufacturers. While my Nexus Player is rooted and I could theoretically install a different launcher, many of these TVs can't be modified. So if you purchased a TV thinking that it's smart capabilities were like a dumb OS UI into services like Netflix or Hulu (which may or may not have ads in their service agreement, as you point out), now they're getting pushed Amazon Fire-esque ads that prioritize spending money with Google from the UI over the services that you want to use.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com