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Everyone seems to give Google the benefit of the doubt here. Is it possible they aren't doing anything because they are making lots of money from this ethical g

Everyone seems to give Google the benefit of the doubt here. Is it possible they aren't doing anything because they are making lots of money from this ethical grey area? The incentives seem perfectly aligned... the advertiser doubtlessly doesn't care about whether it's a scrupulous ad or not. Paint.NET authors make money, and Google makes money.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
This is entirely it. It's not nearly offensive enough to get the "you're putting racist ads on my page" level of public uproar for them to do anything about it. And distributing malware is incredibly profitable. They simply have no incentive to stop. And trying to moderate it would cost them money, both in terms of effort to review ad submissions, and lost revenue from the ads themselves. Heck, Google likes to brag about how Chromebooks don't get viruses. Distributing viruses for Windows PCs only helps their bottom line. (You'll also notice that Windows support-related search queries have malicious ads, and no ads display at all for Chromebook or Google support-related search queries.)
Camillo 9y ago
If the toolbars, as is typical, end up hijacking the search engine, or injecting their own ads on pages, then Google loses money.
- pawadu 9y ago
  And yet this happens. All the time. In adsense, on youtube, on Google+, on the Play store and basically in every other customer-facing Google business. I can see two reasons for that: 1. A not-my-problem mentality at Google 2. Google is trying to replace human intelligence with AI pseudo-intelligence which has turned out to be really really easy to fool I believe it's actually a combination of the two and it scares the crap out of me thinking these guys want to create self driving (and flying!) cars.
  - nolok 9y ago
    I think you should look at point 3., slightly different from 1: everytime Google acts on something like this, they show that they can act. If the damage it causes them, both in profit and image, is not very large then it might very well not be worth it to risk setting a precedent than Google is responsible for policing their ads. It is exactly the scenario they were caught in with YouTube, and becoming the police there didn't help them at all compared to the previous status quo. Of course that's the good scenario, the bad one would be that Google, being of a size and importance that can be called a monopoly in the Internet ad space, would be violating these "fraudsters" rights since technically what they do may not be breaking any laws, which would lead to this becoming a precedent and all the others who currently try to keep themselves mostly clean in their ads would be vindicated to go evil too. I'm not saying these are the real reasons, but again if the damage and risk they represent is insignificantly small relative to the whole, why would Google risk opening that can of worms.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

This is entirely it. It's not nearly offensive enough to get the "you're putting racist ads on my page" level of public uproar for them to do anything about it. And distributing malware is incredibly profitable. They simply have no incentive to stop. And trying to moderate it would cost them money, both in terms of effort to review ad submissions, and lost revenue from the ads themselves. Heck, Google likes to brag about how Chromebooks don't get viruses. Distributing viruses for Windows PCs only helps their bottom line. (You'll also notice that Windows support-related search queries have malicious ads, and no ads display at all for Chromebook or Google support-related search queries.)

Camillo 9y ago

If the toolbars, as is typical, end up hijacking the search engine, or injecting their own ads on pages, then Google loses money.

pawadu 9y ago
And yet this happens. All the time. In adsense, on youtube, on Google+, on the Play store and basically in every other customer-facing Google business. I can see two reasons for that: 1. A not-my-problem mentality at Google 2. Google is trying to replace human intelligence with AI pseudo-intelligence which has turned out to be really really easy to fool I believe it's actually a combination of the two and it scares the crap out of me thinking these guys want to create self driving (and flying!) cars.
- nolok 9y ago
  I think you should look at point 3., slightly different from 1: everytime Google acts on something like this, they show that they can act. If the damage it causes them, both in profit and image, is not very large then it might very well not be worth it to risk setting a precedent than Google is responsible for policing their ads. It is exactly the scenario they were caught in with YouTube, and becoming the police there didn't help them at all compared to the previous status quo. Of course that's the good scenario, the bad one would be that Google, being of a size and importance that can be called a monopoly in the Internet ad space, would be violating these "fraudsters" rights since technically what they do may not be breaking any laws, which would lead to this becoming a precedent and all the others who currently try to keep themselves mostly clean in their ads would be vindicated to go evil too. I'm not saying these are the real reasons, but again if the damage and risk they represent is insignificantly small relative to the whole, why would Google risk opening that can of worms.