Google Plans to Show Ads Through Your Thermostat and Car | Hacker News Reader

Google Plans to Show Ads Through Your Thermostat and Car

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

28 pointseplanit25 comments

Selective quoting at work: Google telling the SEC "For example, a few years from now, we and other companies could be serving ads and other content on refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, and watches, to name just a few possibilities" to avoid having to disclose specific revenue sources became "Google hopes to put ads 'on refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, and watches, to name just a few possibilities'" very quickly.

Google "pinkie swears" they won't show any ads on Nest. http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/21/google-pinkie-swears-no-ad...

How often does anyone look at their thermostat? Showing ads there seems like a waste of effort. Far more valuable to mine the data and show even more 'relevant' ads when you next go online.

...well if the thermostat was nefariously set to a few degrees below the displayed setpoint in the middle of winter, then I suppose people would be making more trips to look at the thermostat to see why they are colder than they expected...

Indeed. This read to me as "We expect wearables and the Internet of Things to take off, and our ad distribution will follow the platforms available in the future. Obviously."

So really this is more interesting as an admission of what Google expects from the next few years of technology trends than as some proclamation about ad placement.

I know some people say they've lost the "Don't be evil" mojo for quite some time now, but this would finally do it for me. It's a wonder that they're able to avoid making you feel like you're the product (advertising audience) in so many of their products, but now this feeling seems to be changing and many people I know are more acutely aware of the reality.

>they're able to avoid making you feel like you're the product (advertising audience)

instead they are making you feel like a well informed consumer and voter :)

We [Google] are in contact with the SEC to clarify the language in this 2013 filing, which does not reflect Google’s product roadmap. Nest, which we acquired after this filing was made, does not have an ads-based model and has never had any such plans.

http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/21/google-ads-odd-places/

Fairly link-baity title, but honestly even if Google ends up doing this it's not surprising. They don't make money from devices or software; their primary revenue stream stems from advertising. They are, first and foremost, an advertising company that likes to do cool things with technology.

And that's fine, because in a free-market economy we will always have alternatives. Also important to note: nowhere in the filing does Google ever mention how this will pan out. The only reason this alarmist behavior is occurring is due to the Nest acquisition. I personally believe there's no reason to worry.

With apologies to Bill Gates, "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten."

> And that's fine, because in a free-market economy we will always have alternatives

You seem to believe that a free-market economy offers alternatives to those who'd don't want to see advertising, but that simply isn't true. Go outside in any major urban area and you'll see advertising all around you, and the "free-market economy" isn't giving you an alternative (go live in the middle of nowhere?)

About 10 years ago I interviewed with a small company (not nest) that was building thermostats, primarily for hotels. They had a proprietary method to raise and lower the temp based on if there were people in the room. They had a lot of grandiose plans, one of which was the possibility of ads on the thermostat. I can sort of see it, I would suspect people look at the thermostat more often in a hotel room. But the goal of Nest is you STOP looking at the thermostat. Theoretically once it learns about you, you shouldn't really have to look at it again. As for ads elsewhere, as long as I get something free in return. And, yeah, more than one sci fi author has forseen a future like that.

I feel like that would be atrocious. I would certainly pay more for the ad free version. Such a shame that folks who couldn't pay as much would go home to be bombarded with advertisements from their appliances. Obviously it wouldn't stop at the thermostat and the car.

The data collected on the other hand, as much as I'd hate to be a part of the collection process, that would be an amazing data set to tackle. An information stream with things like locations, speeds, temperatures, and more.

Let's see how Nest keeps its privacy promises:

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/01/nest-ceo-promises-op...

I'm seeing a market for an Adblock Plus appliance that sites in-line with your router. For those who don't run Tomato or equivalent to achieve similar functionality.

Adblock already has proxy (that's how Adblock for Android works, for example). Making it into a device would not be hard.

And in other news the DEA and FBI no longer need to break into homes to bug them as they have compelled Google to just insert a listener into your thermostat and refrigerator.

I could see the car dashboard as a viable place...and MAYBE a fridge advertising food sales from local supermarkets even restaurants...but thermostat?

Now we're going to have to jailbreak our "refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, and watches" in addition to our phones.

If it's a free car, I'm ok with seeing ads. Otherwise, no.

why not. If they provide fridge for free and pay electricity...

Time for me to start writting adblock for my thermostat and my car ?:D

You joke, but people need to start thinking about how to translate adblock to the up and coming IoT ecosystem.

Thing is am not joking! but at the same time well I dunno if its just rumors. I own a nexus mobile which is a google product but never had ads on it... Also its a high quality product for a cheap price. I like that, I wouldn't mind it if they were to show me 1 add once a while tbh. Same applies with all of their products. They are reducing their products costs but not its quality and instead they are finding other ways to increase their revenue but without having you paying any hidden fees. I find that fair and square and I wish the rest of the world was that way. (You can go ahead and say watching that Advert is the price you pay, but you can't argue that - that price is affordable by ANYONE!)

Sounds like we might find ourselves using home proxy services again, like how Privoxy was so prevalent in the past.

I'd rather see effort put into decentralized versions of stuff. Access to your home devices as a service is an annoying arrangement.

(It's hard to be too worried, internet itself and internet in your pocket are a lot more compelling than internet [for reasons we haven't figured out yet] on your fridge)

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