7 ms·

Apple’s assault on advertising and Google

44 points by tswartz 11y ago

michaelpinto 11y ago
I've been watching the web now for about 20 years and the one thing I've noticed is that we now seem to be at the turning point where Apple is dictating what the web is. It wasn't that long ago when Google calling the shots and developers paying attention to every last word that someone like Matt Cutts would say. From what I seeing those days are now over. This isn't to say that the open web is dead is dead, but I'm seeing it turn into a backwater. Also what I'm not crazy about is that unlike the old days of packaged software where there were several distribution networks, it feels to me in the US that there are maybe only two app stores that have any merit. And keep in mind that back in the day you didn't need Microsoft's permission to make a title. So this walled garden feels even more closed than what I use to see in the 90s.
- muddi900 11y ago
  I am just shocked that people think that Apple's implementation has much bearing on how most people use the web. Most hits come from webview through Facebook and twitter, which do not get extensions. I personally use Chrome on my iPad, because the Safari UI has the same problems it had in 2010. Neither, Google nor Apple have much control over the web; Facebook does. I'd say the only people who should fret is porn sites. Most people who browse porn on their mobile devices will probably be the first to jump on these, because those are really awful.
  - roymurdock 11y ago
    > Neither, Google nor Apple have much control over the web; Facebook does. Mind explaining this further?
    - michaelpinto 11y ago
      I think the argument is that most people when browsing on iOS aren't even using the Safari app, but in fact clicking on links inside of Facebook and Twitter which use the built in browser rather than going to Safari. And to be fair I can see that being the case depending on the site.
    - muddi900 11y ago
      I did. Facebook drives most of the traffic towards news and media sites; http://fortune.com/2015/08/18/facebook-google/ http://fortune.com/2015/08/18/facebook-google/ It is also the most used app on the mobile devices by a large margin; http://marketingland.com/facebook-most-used-mobile-app-google-10th-67109 http://marketingland.com/facebook-most-used-mobile-app-googl... [Primary sources seem to be behind paywall) There is a large group of users whose first internet connected device is a smartphone, so Facebook has an cultural grip on the net that seems unassailable. Facebook still hasn't figured out how to capitalize on that besides forcing businesses to shell out to reach the userbase, but if they do, Google have a lot to worry about. My original comment was an oversimplification though; The big G is still the largest contributor to referrals to specific info, like ecommerce listings and scholar texts. Apple's attempt at information services have been stillborn till now. Maps does not work in most of the world and Siri might as well be the world's most racist digital assistant since it can't understand any accents in English. The additions in iOS9 seems well integrated, but I have to test them in my other home on the other side of the world, where Apple does not have a significant market share. I don't think Apple takes this section of their business all that seriously.
  - r00fus 11y ago
    I'm agreeing with this. MobileSafari is literally about half of my iOS browsing usage - I end up in Chrome a lot because I use feedly/minihack/flipboard and my wife uses Facebook. This will change if more of the above begin using browsers leveraging SFSafariViewController. Obviously I doubt anything embedding Chrome will ever benefit from iOS content blocking.
    - muddi900 11y ago
      I specifically use Newsify over Feedly's own app because it allows me to use Chrome to open links. Ironically I use Firefox on my Android phone, because you can use extensions...such as adblock :)
dr1337 11y ago
I think iOS9 is the strongest evidence of Apple's war on Google. The number of website that I visit that now automatically redirect to an installed mobile app took me by surprised. I wasn't even asked for my permission to choose between viewing the content on the browser or in the app! Bit by bit, iOS and Apple is eroding away the free and open nature of the web. Almost every app that I have seen on the AppStore are merely consumers and senders of JSON to a REST API that could have easily been implemented as a HTML5 web app.
- JimDabell 11y ago
  This exemplifies a misunderstanding I see a lot of people make. The web isn't whatever happens to be rendered by a browser. It's a shared information space full of linked resources. The protocol and document format aren't defining characteristics of the web, they are implementation details. It's the links and distributed nature that are the defining qualities of the web. If you followed a link to some content, then it's on the web – even if the native application that is rendering it isn't called a general-purpose web browser, and even if a general-purpose web browser can't render that content. There is no dichotomy between native applications and the web. HTML document in a web browser -> Link -> JSON document in a native app -> Link -> HTML document ina web browser is one unbroken chain of surfing the web. Deep links in iOS 9 just make this a more seamless experience than before, and they do it in a way that is more compatible with non-native applications. Before, you had to mess about with application-specific schemes. Now you can do it with standard HTTP URIs that can be useful to non-iOS devices as well. If you prefer an HTML document rendered in Mobile Safari to a JSON document rendered in a different iOS application, then you can argue that, but you aren't arguing for the web over the non-web – you're arguing for a single generic document viewer over specialised ones. In both cases, you are using a native iOS application to view a remote document that you followed a link to.
  - magicalist 11y ago
    This just redefines the web to include, for instance, all excel documents because they can be linked to on a web page and my OS will automatically open them in excel. Which means the web is really all digitized information and can never be harmed because it's just a Deep Link away. That's fine, but not a particularly useful definition (you could just refer to "all data formats that have a program that can display them") and it completely misses the worries of the GP around "the free and open nature of the web".
fweespeech 11y ago
This is honestly a bad thing. I get people want to kick Google in the shins every so often but a war on advertising on this scale is going to put more and more things behind a paywall. Trying to force us back to the days of the AOL-style walled garden is bad for everyone. The fact the OP hasn't figured that out is a clear sign he is out of touch.
- blibble 11y ago
  Jason likely hates Google as it killed his search-engine-result-spamming startup Mahalo with an algorithm tweak: http://www.seobook.com/matt-cutts-eats-mahalo-spam http://www.seobook.com/matt-cutts-eats-mahalo-spam
  - thedevil 11y ago
    Thanks. I was wondering why this guy was so extremist. But now it makes sense.
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    Yeah. However, the number of pro-OP comments made me facepalm.
  - jasonmcalacanis 11y ago
    I'm way over Google taking away the 140th largest site in USA with 10m in revenue from me.... :-) I mean, they are targeting everyone for extinction, from Yelp to content sites to comparison shopping. They used partnerships to build their business... literally meeting with all of us startups 10+ years ago and saying "let's win together!" and then they double crossed all of us, studied our traffic and moved us 600 pixels down the page. Its a great lesson for folks: never build your business inside of someone else's.... unless you have a really good idea of how you can pull and Aliens-like move and eat the host!
    - fweespeech 11y ago
      You are aware that Apple has screwed "partners" over before, including their own employees?
monochromatic 11y ago
I don't really care what their motives are. It makes the user experience better, and as a user, that's all I care about.
- greggman 11y ago
  Will it be a better experience? Web sites will just start making more native apps where ads are not blocked. That seems like a massive conflict of interest. Apple's story "We're blocking ads". The real story. Ads are being blocked on web only but we have millions of apps that serve video ads every minute or two and those are not blocked. You can even choose iAds and we make more money! Personally I don't feel that browsing the web where every site is like "if you want to read this on iOS use our app because otherwise we can't make money" is going to be a better experience for users. Or you might think sites won't do that but if they can't make money they'll go out of business. So again, users lose.
  - monochromatic 11y ago
    iAds seem less shitty than most web ads. And the web isn't going away anytime soon.
    - greggman 11y ago
      iAds might seem less shitty but AFAICT most apps don't use them. Download any app that lives off ads (think most F2P games) and they certainly aren't using iAds. I often see an unskippable video commercial between every round. I usually delete the app at that point just like I close the tab in my browser if something similar happens on the web. But the fact that Apple is only blocking web ads and not app ads suggests it's at least possible Apple has an ulterior motive than "it's good for users". Also the web, or at least ad supported sites, will go away if they can no longer make money. Given that more people browse the web through phones than PC and that difference is growing, blocking so many ads could easily be the end of many websites that are living off ads. Some examples of such sites. Arstechnica, Tom's Hardware, Slashdot, Boingboing, Polygon, ...
artnep 11y ago
Google's stock doesn't seem to be reacting too badly to the ad-blocking developments, so maybe investors know something OP doesn't.
- aikah 11y ago
  ad blockers aren't that popular yet, but their rise will be exponential. At some point in time, Google will face a serious problem, because Google is an ad company. Every service they provide is aimed at serving ads.
  - epistasis 11y ago
    As currently implemented, I can't see adblocking on iOS taking off very much. It requires 1) knowing that it exists, 2) searching for and selecting an app, 3) installing the app, 4) entering settings. That's about 3 steps too many for the vast majority of people.
    - IkmoIkmo 11y ago
      Well it'll be one of those things that every single tech website will run 100s of articles about, become a standard in the list of 'things to do when you get your new iPhone', 'apps to install on your new iPhone', 'things you didn't know your iPhone could do', something colleagues will ask each other over lunch 'hey did you try the new adblocker on your iPhone? It's a world of difference' etc. I think it'll get pretty big quickly. But I agree, there's no real network effect going on, none of the major browsers will integrate it. I think the early apps that allowed you to e.g. turn on your camera's light as a flashlight, early calculators etc are probably indicative of how popular these adblockers may get, but those were still pretty damn ubiquitous, not Whatsapp level growth but if you add up all the different apps that did this... it's up there. And we shouldn't underestimate the power of a better internet experience, I still remember when I first got Firefox and then later Chrome, looking back IE was just insanely bad and those two browsers ate up a ton of market share really quickly without any real network effects (although Chrome obviously had a lot of power behind it and even Firefox was marketed pretty aggressively).
guelo 11y ago
Wow this dude has massive sour grapes about Google killing Mahalo. Hey Calcanis, get over it, it's just business.
- jasonmcalacanis 11y ago
  Umm.... I'm way over it. I've invested in 150 startups, four unicorns in the first 50.... get to interview founders 2x a week on this week in startups... My life is REALLY amazing right now. So, I'm fine with Google killing off their partners, from yelp to mahalo, and my editorial is not anti-Google. the facts are the facts... Apple is trying to kill Google. google is go buck wild ramming ads down people's throat. it's an awesome, huge battle
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
jetskindo 11y ago
This article is saying, Apple is awesome and Google is bad. Saved you a click.
- Natsu 11y ago
  Thank you.
laxatives 11y ago
This seems like thinly veiled advertising for those two apps, one of which was released just 3 days ago. The other was released 7 days ago. Crystal is also pushing an article on WSJ around the same time.
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
I quite liked some aspects of the article but a lot of it is ridiculous and a lot of it is biased bitterness as this guy ran a company that suffered when Google changed its search algorithm (which he took as an attack without providing anything to back up that claim.) Anyway one particular aspect I thought was pretty silly: > IS IT MORAL FOR APPLE TO BLOCK ADS? > It’s your device, so you can do whatever you want with it. When you download something onto your device, it is now yours to remix and play with in any way you want – provided you don’t republish it and make money from it. That's like saying it's moral to download the free trial of adobe, and then modify it so it doesn't shut off access to the software after 30 days or call home or require payment, because hey it's your device and you can do whatever. It's ridiculous reasoning. Obviously the whole morality of adblocking isn't black and white, but at the end of the day, when a content-creator makes something and is willing to share it with you for free on a single condition which is that you keep the ads intact, you're either supposed to accept that, or reject the content. Taking the free content and rejecting the condition of the ads isn't simply completely fine because it happens to have landed on a device you own. There are plenty of well known arguments for and against that are reasonable, this isn't one of them. If you actually already paid for the content (like in the NYT example he follows up the above quote) then sure, you can do whatever, that's the principle behind gamers wanting a right to mod their games for personal.
- derefr 11y ago
  If you get a newspaper delivered to your door, you're free to pay someone to cut all the advertisements out of it before giving it to you. Yes, even if it's one of those free local 90%-ads-by-volume dealies. The manner in which you consume the content is yours to decide. > willing to share it with you for free on a single condition which is that you keep the ads intact It's very easy to detect ad-blocker usage (ad-blockers do nothing to mask their presence) and prevent the ad-blocking users from getting your content. No content provider does this. They instead choose to serve you the content anyway. There is no "condition" attached; they are choosing to hand you the newspaper, knowing you're holding the scissors. If 1. content providers started refusing to serve content to ad-blocker users, and then 2. ad-blockers made themselves undetectable to skirt this, then yes, you could say the users were doing something "mean." Probably mean to about the same level as using Google to skirt the NYT paywall.
veidr 11y ago
> Apple ... doesn’t see the subversion of ads as stealing – which all of us in the real world know it is. What the fuck. I am so sick of seeing this absurd and obviously false idea repeated. Did a cabal of content producers hire Frank Luntz to redefine basic English words for them?
- r00fus 11y ago
  Considering the premise of the advertising industry is to subtly manipulate their audience (not unlike the movie industry), why should you be surprised at this framing of the argument?
  - veidr 11y ago
    I'm not surprised by the advertising industry's propaganda, just disappointed how widely it has been vacuously parroted in recent days. I thought this issue was settled years ago, when this same argument was been made (and rejected) back when Tivo came out.
- monochromatic 11y ago
  I glossed over that while skimming the article. How ridiculous. "Anything you do that interferes with my shitty business model is stealing." Whatever you say, Jason.
  - jasonmcalacanis 11y ago
    I actually moved to a paid model for launchticker.com and didn't look back, and 99% of the money I've ever made in this life is from being an angel investor (in marketplaces mainly... no ads!). however, the Ad blocking companies are a bit of a fraud, as they're blocking ads then allowing certain advertisers to buy their way back in! Like an extortion racket. However, you should read the whole piece, because I do clearly put in there that it's folks right to do what they want on their desktops/mobile phones. The issue really is the overall approach of apple saying "we're going to impose our distaste for advertising on the world by not only enabling, but endorsing/encouraging this stuff." It's certainly a juicy topic for discussion.
draw_down 11y ago
I think all this is just gravy. I suspect it's more likely they did it because mobile web ads are ridiculous, ruin the web, and drain the battery. I don't think it's about Android... and, you know, Steve Jobs did actually die.
negamax 11y ago
I don't understand the hype around this topic. Adblock and adblock plus, both freely available in Chrome store have more than 250 million downloads together. Let in sync that number a little.
retrogradeorbit 11y ago
> Undermining a publisher’s ability to monetize is stealing That is ridiculous. Stealing is taking what is not given. Stealing is not the lack of taking what is given. We really are in an era of redefining words to mean whatever suits you. Everybody seems to be doing it!
tasdev 11y ago
I think this is a very well written article, potential sour grapes aside. My concern is for the future though, what happens when/if Apple has it all but still wants more? Will they then sell you out? There was a post here a few days about Apple advocating for CISA or some other act (not American, I don't remember the exact act) and how Apple is amongst those pushing to want to share data. There is no doubt about it the way Google has managed to entrench itself is disgusting - Google Analytics is so common and that alone lets Google correlate your viewing habits to your user account. I realised this a while back and have been browsing with SafeScript and 3rd party cookies off. The web is still surprisingly useful. Just need to wean myself off Gmail... But I don't see that happening any time soon.
rajington 11y ago
Google needs to release a content blocker for Apple Music's ads once it launches on Android.
BinaryIdiot 11y ago
So I love listening to Jason and his podcast; it's always interesting and he's right on the money so much. This piece though has me scratching my head a little bit. > Apple draws the line at stealing content, and doesn’t see the subversion of ads as stealing – which all of us in the real world know it is. Undermining a publisher’s ability to monetize is stealing, but it’s Robin-Hood, feel-good stealing. This is wrong on so many levels. The ad model relies on the honor system. Yes, the honor system. You are served content and it's expected-no, trusted-that whatever you view the content inside will download and show you ads. This business model made sense initially because there was no other way to get people to pay for content on a network that is based around standards versus vendor lock-in when little to no e-commerce was happening or really even possible. As ads became worse and started to require clients download sometimes MORE data than the content they are viewing it's only natural the users would fight back against such shitty behavior. This was written about and predicted over 10 years ago and I'm honestly surprised it has taken so long before people began complaining about it. I remember when some of the first ad blockers became popular and many websites were writing about how this was stealing, the internet was going to die, blah blah blah. Markets change when technology disrupts the status quo. Online advertisement through resource-hogging third-party ads has been the status quo and it has been eroding for quite some time. Why do you think Google makes ads look more and more like search results? Why do you think so many sites are doing "fake content" that's basically an ad disguised as content? People realize that the ad of the early 2000s just isn't going to cut it anymore. Calling it theft when you give it away for free is asinine. Adapt or get out.
brianstorms 11y ago
I think Jason's wrong about self-driving cars being so "refined" and different from the core Google ad business. I see Google eyeing Tesla not for its zero-emissions, electric vehicles, but for its always-on, always-connected vehicles. I believe Google, whether they realize it or not, views cars as a gigantic new market for hyper-personalized, hyper-local, just-in-time advertising of a sort we have never seen before. While you're driving. The car, and by extension, the cloud, know where you are. Which means everything paying a fee to the Google is gonna know you're passing by right now, or about to. You really think Google's not going to enable that kind of advertising? "You're one mile from a great burger at McDonalds." "Hey you're about to pass a great sale going on at Lenscrafters. Stop by in the next 5 minutes for a 20% discount." "Hey there Claire, you have 87000 miles on your Celica. Turn right in 500 feet and stop by Bob's Toyota for a fantastic deal on a trade-in right now." Et cetera. It is coming. It is going to suck. Advertising is coming to cars and it's going to get ugly. And I fully predict Apple wants to get in on this game too. Just watch. It's coming.
- _up 11y ago
  Or self driving cars that pick you up and let you try on pre selected shoes for you while driving you around. Or an eye exam, take the one filled with devices that can remotely take a look. The cars will be free for the customer. But the "Seller" has to outbid everyone else.

44 points by tswartz 11y ago

I've been watching the web now for about 20 years and the one thing I've noticed is that we now seem to be at the turning point where Apple is dictating what the web is. It wasn't that long ago when Google calling the shots and developers paying attention to every last word that someone like Matt Cutts would say. From what I seeing those days are now over. This isn't to say that the open web is dead is dead, but I'm seeing it turn into a backwater. Also what I'm not crazy about is that unlike the old days of packaged software where there were several distribution networks, it feels to me in the US that there are maybe only two app stores that have any merit. And keep in mind that back in the day you didn't need Microsoft's permission to make a title. So this walled garden feels even more closed than what I use to see in the 90s.

muddi900 11y ago
I am just shocked that people think that Apple's implementation has much bearing on how most people use the web. Most hits come from webview through Facebook and twitter, which do not get extensions. I personally use Chrome on my iPad, because the Safari UI has the same problems it had in 2010. Neither, Google nor Apple have much control over the web; Facebook does. I'd say the only people who should fret is porn sites. Most people who browse porn on their mobile devices will probably be the first to jump on these, because those are really awful.
- roymurdock 11y ago
  > Neither, Google nor Apple have much control over the web; Facebook does. Mind explaining this further?
  - michaelpinto 11y ago
    I think the argument is that most people when browsing on iOS aren't even using the Safari app, but in fact clicking on links inside of Facebook and Twitter which use the built in browser rather than going to Safari. And to be fair I can see that being the case depending on the site.
  - muddi900 11y ago
    I did. Facebook drives most of the traffic towards news and media sites; http://fortune.com/2015/08/18/facebook-google/ http://fortune.com/2015/08/18/facebook-google/ It is also the most used app on the mobile devices by a large margin; http://marketingland.com/facebook-most-used-mobile-app-google-10th-67109 http://marketingland.com/facebook-most-used-mobile-app-googl... [Primary sources seem to be behind paywall) There is a large group of users whose first internet connected device is a smartphone, so Facebook has an cultural grip on the net that seems unassailable. Facebook still hasn't figured out how to capitalize on that besides forcing businesses to shell out to reach the userbase, but if they do, Google have a lot to worry about. My original comment was an oversimplification though; The big G is still the largest contributor to referrals to specific info, like ecommerce listings and scholar texts. Apple's attempt at information services have been stillborn till now. Maps does not work in most of the world and Siri might as well be the world's most racist digital assistant since it can't understand any accents in English. The additions in iOS9 seems well integrated, but I have to test them in my other home on the other side of the world, where Apple does not have a significant market share. I don't think Apple takes this section of their business all that seriously.
- r00fus 11y ago
  I'm agreeing with this. MobileSafari is literally about half of my iOS browsing usage - I end up in Chrome a lot because I use feedly/minihack/flipboard and my wife uses Facebook. This will change if more of the above begin using browsers leveraging SFSafariViewController. Obviously I doubt anything embedding Chrome will ever benefit from iOS content blocking.
  - muddi900 11y ago
    I specifically use Newsify over Feedly's own app because it allows me to use Chrome to open links. Ironically I use Firefox on my Android phone, because you can use extensions...such as adblock :)

dr1337 11y ago

I think iOS9 is the strongest evidence of Apple's war on Google. The number of website that I visit that now automatically redirect to an installed mobile app took me by surprised. I wasn't even asked for my permission to choose between viewing the content on the browser or in the app! Bit by bit, iOS and Apple is eroding away the free and open nature of the web. Almost every app that I have seen on the AppStore are merely consumers and senders of JSON to a REST API that could have easily been implemented as a HTML5 web app.

JimDabell 11y ago
This exemplifies a misunderstanding I see a lot of people make. The web isn't whatever happens to be rendered by a browser. It's a shared information space full of linked resources. The protocol and document format aren't defining characteristics of the web, they are implementation details. It's the links and distributed nature that are the defining qualities of the web. If you followed a link to some content, then it's on the web – even if the native application that is rendering it isn't called a general-purpose web browser, and even if a general-purpose web browser can't render that content. There is no dichotomy between native applications and the web. HTML document in a web browser -> Link -> JSON document in a native app -> Link -> HTML document ina web browser is one unbroken chain of surfing the web. Deep links in iOS 9 just make this a more seamless experience than before, and they do it in a way that is more compatible with non-native applications. Before, you had to mess about with application-specific schemes. Now you can do it with standard HTTP URIs that can be useful to non-iOS devices as well. If you prefer an HTML document rendered in Mobile Safari to a JSON document rendered in a different iOS application, then you can argue that, but you aren't arguing for the web over the non-web – you're arguing for a single generic document viewer over specialised ones. In both cases, you are using a native iOS application to view a remote document that you followed a link to.
- magicalist 11y ago
  This just redefines the web to include, for instance, all excel documents because they can be linked to on a web page and my OS will automatically open them in excel. Which means the web is really all digitized information and can never be harmed because it's just a Deep Link away. That's fine, but not a particularly useful definition (you could just refer to "all data formats that have a program that can display them") and it completely misses the worries of the GP around "the free and open nature of the web".

fweespeech 11y ago

This is honestly a bad thing. I get people want to kick Google in the shins every so often but a war on advertising on this scale is going to put more and more things behind a paywall. Trying to force us back to the days of the AOL-style walled garden is bad for everyone. The fact the OP hasn't figured that out is a clear sign he is out of touch.

blibble 11y ago
Jason likely hates Google as it killed his search-engine-result-spamming startup Mahalo with an algorithm tweak: http://www.seobook.com/matt-cutts-eats-mahalo-spam http://www.seobook.com/matt-cutts-eats-mahalo-spam
- thedevil 11y ago
  Thanks. I was wondering why this guy was so extremist. But now it makes sense.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  Yeah. However, the number of pro-OP comments made me facepalm.
- jasonmcalacanis 11y ago
  I'm way over Google taking away the 140th largest site in USA with 10m in revenue from me.... :-) I mean, they are targeting everyone for extinction, from Yelp to content sites to comparison shopping. They used partnerships to build their business... literally meeting with all of us startups 10+ years ago and saying "let's win together!" and then they double crossed all of us, studied our traffic and moved us 600 pixels down the page. Its a great lesson for folks: never build your business inside of someone else's.... unless you have a really good idea of how you can pull and Aliens-like move and eat the host!
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    You are aware that Apple has screwed "partners" over before, including their own employees?

monochromatic 11y ago

I don't really care what their motives are. It makes the user experience better, and as a user, that's all I care about.

greggman 11y ago
Will it be a better experience? Web sites will just start making more native apps where ads are not blocked. That seems like a massive conflict of interest. Apple's story "We're blocking ads". The real story. Ads are being blocked on web only but we have millions of apps that serve video ads every minute or two and those are not blocked. You can even choose iAds and we make more money! Personally I don't feel that browsing the web where every site is like "if you want to read this on iOS use our app because otherwise we can't make money" is going to be a better experience for users. Or you might think sites won't do that but if they can't make money they'll go out of business. So again, users lose.
- monochromatic 11y ago
  iAds seem less shitty than most web ads. And the web isn't going away anytime soon.
  - greggman 11y ago
    iAds might seem less shitty but AFAICT most apps don't use them. Download any app that lives off ads (think most F2P games) and they certainly aren't using iAds. I often see an unskippable video commercial between every round. I usually delete the app at that point just like I close the tab in my browser if something similar happens on the web. But the fact that Apple is only blocking web ads and not app ads suggests it's at least possible Apple has an ulterior motive than "it's good for users". Also the web, or at least ad supported sites, will go away if they can no longer make money. Given that more people browse the web through phones than PC and that difference is growing, blocking so many ads could easily be the end of many websites that are living off ads. Some examples of such sites. Arstechnica, Tom's Hardware, Slashdot, Boingboing, Polygon, ...

artnep 11y ago

Google's stock doesn't seem to be reacting too badly to the ad-blocking developments, so maybe investors know something OP doesn't.

aikah 11y ago
ad blockers aren't that popular yet, but their rise will be exponential. At some point in time, Google will face a serious problem, because Google is an ad company. Every service they provide is aimed at serving ads.
- epistasis 11y ago
  As currently implemented, I can't see adblocking on iOS taking off very much. It requires 1) knowing that it exists, 2) searching for and selecting an app, 3) installing the app, 4) entering settings. That's about 3 steps too many for the vast majority of people.
  - IkmoIkmo 11y ago
    Well it'll be one of those things that every single tech website will run 100s of articles about, become a standard in the list of 'things to do when you get your new iPhone', 'apps to install on your new iPhone', 'things you didn't know your iPhone could do', something colleagues will ask each other over lunch 'hey did you try the new adblocker on your iPhone? It's a world of difference' etc. I think it'll get pretty big quickly. But I agree, there's no real network effect going on, none of the major browsers will integrate it. I think the early apps that allowed you to e.g. turn on your camera's light as a flashlight, early calculators etc are probably indicative of how popular these adblockers may get, but those were still pretty damn ubiquitous, not Whatsapp level growth but if you add up all the different apps that did this... it's up there. And we shouldn't underestimate the power of a better internet experience, I still remember when I first got Firefox and then later Chrome, looking back IE was just insanely bad and those two browsers ate up a ton of market share really quickly without any real network effects (although Chrome obviously had a lot of power behind it and even Firefox was marketed pretty aggressively).

guelo 11y ago

Wow this dude has massive sour grapes about Google killing Mahalo. Hey Calcanis, get over it, it's just business.

jasonmcalacanis 11y ago
Umm.... I'm way over it. I've invested in 150 startups, four unicorns in the first 50.... get to interview founders 2x a week on this week in startups... My life is REALLY amazing right now. So, I'm fine with Google killing off their partners, from yelp to mahalo, and my editorial is not anti-Google. the facts are the facts... Apple is trying to kill Google. google is go buck wild ramming ads down people's throat. it's an awesome, huge battle
- deleted 11y ago
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jetskindo 11y ago

This article is saying, Apple is awesome and Google is bad. Saved you a click.

Natsu 11y ago
Thank you.

laxatives 11y ago

This seems like thinly veiled advertising for those two apps, one of which was released just 3 days ago. The other was released 7 days ago. Crystal is also pushing an article on WSJ around the same time.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

I quite liked some aspects of the article but a lot of it is ridiculous and a lot of it is biased bitterness as this guy ran a company that suffered when Google changed its search algorithm (which he took as an attack without providing anything to back up that claim.) Anyway one particular aspect I thought was pretty silly: > IS IT MORAL FOR APPLE TO BLOCK ADS? > It’s your device, so you can do whatever you want with it. When you download something onto your device, it is now yours to remix and play with in any way you want – provided you don’t republish it and make money from it. That's like saying it's moral to download the free trial of adobe, and then modify it so it doesn't shut off access to the software after 30 days or call home or require payment, because hey it's your device and you can do whatever. It's ridiculous reasoning. Obviously the whole morality of adblocking isn't black and white, but at the end of the day, when a content-creator makes something and is willing to share it with you for free on a single condition which is that you keep the ads intact, you're either supposed to accept that, or reject the content. Taking the free content and rejecting the condition of the ads isn't simply completely fine because it happens to have landed on a device you own. There are plenty of well known arguments for and against that are reasonable, this isn't one of them. If you actually already paid for the content (like in the NYT example he follows up the above quote) then sure, you can do whatever, that's the principle behind gamers wanting a right to mod their games for personal.

derefr 11y ago
If you get a newspaper delivered to your door, you're free to pay someone to cut all the advertisements out of it before giving it to you. Yes, even if it's one of those free local 90%-ads-by-volume dealies. The manner in which you consume the content is yours to decide. > willing to share it with you for free on a single condition which is that you keep the ads intact It's very easy to detect ad-blocker usage (ad-blockers do nothing to mask their presence) and prevent the ad-blocking users from getting your content. No content provider does this. They instead choose to serve you the content anyway. There is no "condition" attached; they are choosing to hand you the newspaper, knowing you're holding the scissors. If 1. content providers started refusing to serve content to ad-blocker users, and then 2. ad-blockers made themselves undetectable to skirt this, then yes, you could say the users were doing something "mean." Probably mean to about the same level as using Google to skirt the NYT paywall.

veidr 11y ago

> Apple ... doesn’t see the subversion of ads as stealing – which all of us in the real world know it is. What the fuck. I am so sick of seeing this absurd and obviously false idea repeated. Did a cabal of content producers hire Frank Luntz to redefine basic English words for them?

r00fus 11y ago
Considering the premise of the advertising industry is to subtly manipulate their audience (not unlike the movie industry), why should you be surprised at this framing of the argument?
- veidr 11y ago
  I'm not surprised by the advertising industry's propaganda, just disappointed how widely it has been vacuously parroted in recent days. I thought this issue was settled years ago, when this same argument was been made (and rejected) back when Tivo came out.
monochromatic 11y ago
I glossed over that while skimming the article. How ridiculous. "Anything you do that interferes with my shitty business model is stealing." Whatever you say, Jason.
- jasonmcalacanis 11y ago
  I actually moved to a paid model for launchticker.com and didn't look back, and 99% of the money I've ever made in this life is from being an angel investor (in marketplaces mainly... no ads!). however, the Ad blocking companies are a bit of a fraud, as they're blocking ads then allowing certain advertisers to buy their way back in! Like an extortion racket. However, you should read the whole piece, because I do clearly put in there that it's folks right to do what they want on their desktops/mobile phones. The issue really is the overall approach of apple saying "we're going to impose our distaste for advertising on the world by not only enabling, but endorsing/encouraging this stuff." It's certainly a juicy topic for discussion.

draw_down 11y ago

I think all this is just gravy. I suspect it's more likely they did it because mobile web ads are ridiculous, ruin the web, and drain the battery. I don't think it's about Android... and, you know, Steve Jobs did actually die.

negamax 11y ago

I don't understand the hype around this topic. Adblock and adblock plus, both freely available in Chrome store have more than 250 million downloads together. Let in sync that number a little.

retrogradeorbit 11y ago

> Undermining a publisher’s ability to monetize is stealing That is ridiculous. Stealing is taking what is not given. Stealing is not the lack of taking what is given. We really are in an era of redefining words to mean whatever suits you. Everybody seems to be doing it!

tasdev 11y ago

I think this is a very well written article, potential sour grapes aside. My concern is for the future though, what happens when/if Apple has it all but still wants more? Will they then sell you out? There was a post here a few days about Apple advocating for CISA or some other act (not American, I don't remember the exact act) and how Apple is amongst those pushing to want to share data. There is no doubt about it the way Google has managed to entrench itself is disgusting - Google Analytics is so common and that alone lets Google correlate your viewing habits to your user account. I realised this a while back and have been browsing with SafeScript and 3rd party cookies off. The web is still surprisingly useful. Just need to wean myself off Gmail... But I don't see that happening any time soon.

rajington 11y ago

Google needs to release a content blocker for Apple Music's ads once it launches on Android.

BinaryIdiot 11y ago

So I love listening to Jason and his podcast; it's always interesting and he's right on the money so much. This piece though has me scratching my head a little bit. > Apple draws the line at stealing content, and doesn’t see the subversion of ads as stealing – which all of us in the real world know it is. Undermining a publisher’s ability to monetize is stealing, but it’s Robin-Hood, feel-good stealing. This is wrong on so many levels. The ad model relies on the honor system. Yes, the honor system. You are served content and it's expected-no, trusted-that whatever you view the content inside will download and show you ads. This business model made sense initially because there was no other way to get people to pay for content on a network that is based around standards versus vendor lock-in when little to no e-commerce was happening or really even possible. As ads became worse and started to require clients download sometimes MORE data than the content they are viewing it's only natural the users would fight back against such shitty behavior. This was written about and predicted over 10 years ago and I'm honestly surprised it has taken so long before people began complaining about it. I remember when some of the first ad blockers became popular and many websites were writing about how this was stealing, the internet was going to die, blah blah blah. Markets change when technology disrupts the status quo. Online advertisement through resource-hogging third-party ads has been the status quo and it has been eroding for quite some time. Why do you think Google makes ads look more and more like search results? Why do you think so many sites are doing "fake content" that's basically an ad disguised as content? People realize that the ad of the early 2000s just isn't going to cut it anymore. Calling it theft when you give it away for free is asinine. Adapt or get out.

brianstorms 11y ago

I think Jason's wrong about self-driving cars being so "refined" and different from the core Google ad business. I see Google eyeing Tesla not for its zero-emissions, electric vehicles, but for its always-on, always-connected vehicles. I believe Google, whether they realize it or not, views cars as a gigantic new market for hyper-personalized, hyper-local, just-in-time advertising of a sort we have never seen before. While you're driving. The car, and by extension, the cloud, know where you are. Which means everything paying a fee to the Google is gonna know you're passing by right now, or about to. You really think Google's not going to enable that kind of advertising? "You're one mile from a great burger at McDonalds." "Hey you're about to pass a great sale going on at Lenscrafters. Stop by in the next 5 minutes for a 20% discount." "Hey there Claire, you have 87000 miles on your Celica. Turn right in 500 feet and stop by Bob's Toyota for a fantastic deal on a trade-in right now." Et cetera. It is coming. It is going to suck. Advertising is coming to cars and it's going to get ugly. And I fully predict Apple wants to get in on this game too. Just watch. It's coming.

_up 11y ago
Or self driving cars that pick you up and let you try on pre selected shoes for you while driving you around. Or an eye exam, take the one filled with devices that can remotely take a look. The cars will be free for the customer. But the "Seller" has to outbid everyone else.