Thanks for your reply. It was really interesting. > This is exactly the kind of conspiracy-theory mindset I was talking about in my upthread comment. This is

Thanks for your reply. It was really interesting. > This is exactly the kind of conspiracy-theory mindset I was talking about in my upthread comment. This is however unneccessary IMO. Im referring to observed behaviour. I might be wrong but calling it a conspiracy-theory mindset doesn't help. > What reason could they have for preferring ads, given the extra risks (esp legislative) and PR issues associated with it? I don't know but if I had to guess Googles infrastructure and organization is heavily optimized for it. > As I said, Google (I can't personally speak to Facebook) has put effort behind getting micropayments off the ground in a couple different formats, but there're substantial hurdles and substantial pushback on the part of publishers. Ok, so now we are finally talking. So the reason I couldn't "buy the ad spots" and sponsor writers of tech blogs (and here I'm referring to personal blogs, not news outlets dressed up as one) was because "publishers"? Do we really think blog owners with google ads would complain if parts of their revenue came from users who hadn't had to suffer ads? I can see one issue here and that is a lot of sites would probably try double dipping by trying to install a second ad network. I'm honest but a bit annoyed here: I guess it is because Google used to be focused on creating good products for me but now it is about whatever publishers want. Edit: also this doesn't explain Google's hesitation to introduce Youtube red, does it? Or are publishers also active in deciding what Google does on their own properties too?