Doomsday: Why Google needs its own browser | Hacker News Reader

Doomsday: Why Google needs its own browser

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15 pointsbdfh428 comments

I don't buy Cringely's logic. He rarely makes sense to me, and this column is no different.

Microsoft is working very hard to get into the Internet advertising business. They need a big, technology-centered growth business like advertising to power future growth because they're certainly not going to get it from Vista or Office.

If you assume that Microsoft won't block ads from its own ad network, the idea that Microsoft would block Google ads is unthinkable. Such obviously anti-competitive behavior would bring down the Wrath of Kahn from every government agency in Washington and Brussels.

It simply isn't going to happen.

IMHO, Google launched Chrome because Google has unlimited resources, a desire to play on the desktop, fuzzy notions about a web OS, and because Googlers just don't know what to do with themselves these days. Advertising is so profitable but, alas, so boring.

There's no reason why Chrome won't be successful, but there's also no clear business case for the product at present. Then again, there's no business case for Lively or YouTube either...

"You'll also notice that Microsoft recently has been putting on some very compelling web content that is only available if you use Windows and IE."

Does anyone know what this 'compelling web content' is?

"Google's greatest fear - that Microsoft will turn off ads in IE."

Google's ads are discreet text links, not blinking banners - does anyone want to turn them off? As the commenters point out, Firefox already has adblock.

Firefox does have adblock, but: - only certain % of people use FF - of those, only certain % of people install Adblock - of those, only certain % block also text ads

But, if IE (most used browser) would contain "block all ads" dedicated button, that would really bring Google much trouble. So those two things are not comparable. But I still think that M$ will not do that...it's too dangerous for everyone and I don't agree that the fear of this was the primary Google motivator to create this. In this case, I do believe what they proclaim - they want to speed up the browsers development in general, since it's in their interest.

People who block Google ads don't make too much sense to me. I agree with what you said: they're text-based, oftentimes they're relevant, and they don't get in the way at all.

all advertising is bad advertising. I don't want to be distracted by an ad. I don't want to be tricked into hitting an ad link by mistake. And I don't want to see numerous ads(that usually have NOTHING to do with anything I'm looking for.

+ adblock doesn't seem to block search results ads, and imho thats where most people click ads anyways.

If the owner of the website uses advertisements to keep his site afloat, that's a noble cause. It's not as noble as making a profit more actively, but for personal and casual sites advertisement is a good thing. And Google Ads tries to give readers ads that they actually will care about.

the people who block advertisements won't be clicking them anyways, so the person loses nothing.

As far as Google contextual ads? They are useless in 99% of the time...just because I'm looking at a blog post describing a new TV, doesn't mean I want to buy it, from the first person who tells me they have it for sale.

If the site owner wants to make it a noble cause, then he should just throw some affiliate links to the item he discusses.

The p2p bit at the end makes no sense to me.

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