Hacker News Reader

Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

Firefox is also dabbling with built-in tracking protection (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9594158). I'll be curious to see how Google faces this trend with Chrome going forward. Apple may be able to get away with enabling users to block web ads while serving them native ads (in the guise of privacy), but if Google tried to do the same (i.e. with Google-served ads being somehow "blessed" by virtue of not sharing your personal details with advertisers) then they'd be painting a target on their forehead for antitrust lawsuits.

View on HN

They can do the same justification AdblockPlus does: Don't disable unintrusive ads, only intrusive ones, and thus allow google text ads.

And yes, the adblock devs were given money by google shortly before making that choice.

>the adblock devs were given money by google shortly before making that choice.

(No offense, but you're an anonymous writer on the internet.) Do you know of a URL or something I can use to verify that statement?

http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/2/7963577/google-ads-get-thro... http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/5/4496852/adblock-plus-eye-go...

I was using Adblock Plus, but this made me think a lot about this. Now, I'm using Privoxy + NoScript with custom filters.

Personally I am more shocked that MS didn't include adblocking by default in their browsers. It would have been right up their alley and it would have given their users a better experience.

Is it a guise of privacy when iAds is actually more private? Google has already done this with blocking Flash ads which blocks their own ad network as well.

It is indeed more private, and I welcome the move. Users need choice. But let's not overlook the obvious bid here to entice content providers into Apple's walled garden while also taking a direct swipe at the business model of their biggest competitor.

The content blockers stuff is not a "block Google" checkbox.

It's a way a safari extension on OS X or iOS can prevent load or hide literally any object requested by the browser/web view

It won't affect Google ads if they're in loaded in native apps.

Personally I view this as being inevitable given their recent high profile privacy push. I'm not saying they weren't pro-privacy before, but they're enhancing and promoting that factor more now than ever.

It won't affect Google ads if they're loaded in native apps, but what's keeping Apple from ousting Google ads from their platform entirely? iOS doesn't have a monopoly on mobile, so Google would have no recourse if Apple decided that all new apps must use iAd rather than AdMob. App developers wouldn't care, advertisers wouldn't care, and users definitely wouldn't care.

Some developers may care. I'm not saying they should or shouldn't do that, I'm just saying that while this can be used to prevent GA tracking via web ads it isn't an out-and-out attack on googles ad network

Are free websites going to last much longer if we keep attacking ads?

I'd take you more seriously if you referred to them as "ad supported websites" rather than "free" websites.

I think "free" is the most accurate succinct terminology to be used here, when used with it's most common definition. An ad-supported site/service can still cost money to use (e.g. Hulu Plus), so just referring to a site as ad-supported to distinguish the business model is no clearer than calling it free. The way to resolve this is to be more explicit, such as saying it's "monetarily free".

But we all knew what was meant, so why bother?

Yeah; Google seems to make quite a bit of coin off their "free" search engine and with their "free" maps website.

As for why bother discussing this: I don't think I'm alone in believing in a better B2C business model for the internet than "we'll get lots of users to spend lots of time with our thing, then make them look at ads". It's been said many times here before, but I'll repeat that it seems like a waste to have so many smart and talented people spending so much time on making people look at ads.

Ads aren't being attacked, they're being ignored. This is a reflection of that.

Ads seem to be paid attention to enough for webmasters to bother using them. Vendors blocking them by default could be problematic

Google/DoubleClick has been using Swiffy to convert their customers' Flash ads to non-Flash HTML/SVG for mobile websites. It would be easy to use Swiffy ads on desktop, too. If other ad networks can't convert Flash ads, then ad agencies that want to continue use their Flash toolchain will move to Google/Doubleclick's ad network (to get Swiffy) thanks to a change in Google's own browser (which also happens to be the world's most popular browser).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com