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Clickfraud has been a problem for as long as online ads exist. Its widespreadness has caused ad revenues to decline to the point of non-profitability years ago,

Clickfraud has been a problem for as long as online ads exist. Its widespreadness has caused ad revenues to decline to the point of non-profitability years ago, and many web media outfits to close shop. On what basis should customers be refunded without actual, objectively measured clickstream data? This piece feels like a media campaign to make AdSense appear as premium service over alternatives to me. The point is that, without incentives for quality content creation, there aren't that many web resources worth searching anymore. Have you checked your web usage recently? Do you actually go to Google search for your daily web consumption? Or could your search needs be fulfilled by, say, better StackExchange search? Google is struggling to keep growth as ad revenues go to more evil companies such as Facebook, as their AMP project shows.

bartread 9y ago
That's an interesting point and I suppose the answer is maybe but what I've found is that the best, or certainly the easiest, way of searching StackExchange is Google.
- drewmol 9y ago
  I agree, but wonder if it's mostly habit(been using that single search box for over ten years, and I'm reluctant to add one more click/step to the process when I can just press enter right now and then filter through the results page). I still have to remind myself to use the !bang function of DDG even though it's often a faster, more direct path to the results I want. For me, only after it slowly becomes habit does it truly feel easier
baybal2 9y ago
Small time bloggers switched to affiliate schemes ages ago