Adwords is probably one of the main infection vectors for malware these days.
Previous rant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8879229
It's not about not wanting to support independent bloggers. It's about making sure that unsuspecting users don't accidentally download malware when they're doing something mundane like downloading their web browser.
In the age of the web, Adblock is the new anti-virus.
Also the javascript late load "oops click" tricks they're pulling to scam advertisers now (google search, youtube, bing search - all use late load javascript to get misclicks).
Same here. I couldn't be bothered to install AdBlock for many years, but the mandatory before-video ads were the straw that broke the camel's back for me.
> Also the javascript late load "oops click" tricks they're pulling to scam advertisers now (google search, youtube, bing search - all use late load javascript to get misclicks).
I've lost track of who is trying to scam who. The users are collateral damage anyway.
That's because people in general don't mind wasting a bit of screen space but the mandatory wasting of time is of a completely different order. Time is our most precious capital.
Of course, go back a year or so and everyone was screaming at ad providers for using blocking JavaScript.
On the other hand, it takes a long time, but they do learn to be more cynical about the Internet if they're exposed to its raw state.
My rule of thumb is "if nobody would write this without getting paid for it, then somebody probably got paid for it."
http://ipensatori.com/2015/03/20/google-update-to-software-d...
Of course there is no way to tell Google that these aren't real sites (I tried) and distinguishing real text from Markov chains using a computer is hard.
I keep wondering what it will take for them to figure out bad content, both for the computer (javascript etc) and for people (english etc).
Do you have a source for that information?
As I wrote in another comment, even YCombinator invested in a bundleware company and PG defended it, so I guess the problem is deep rooted.
It looks more like the OP's version to me, including 'softonic' as the third linked one. The top two are mozilla's (and I use an ad blocker so I don't see the ad).
On Chrome the first 6 links are mozilla's then the 'download sites' start.
The ads are not gone.