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Google to push new ads on its apps
- Despegar 7y agoThis is "break glass in case of emergency" levels of desperation.
- XaoDaoCaoCao 7y agoIndeed. The reason I used the google homepage in the first place was how uncluttered it was. Adding ads and disturbing that quality seems like a phyrric move.
- kumarm 7y agoThis is about mobile apps. Not desktop homepage.
- i_am_nomad 7y agoWhy would Google be desperate, though? They are hugely cash positive, have enormous cash reserves, and essentially no competition outside of China.
- paganel 7y ago> and essentially no competition outside of China They have less eyeballs, I presume. Their competition is FB + IG + Whatsapp + whatever it is today's young people spend their time on. They could have made YT as socially engaging as Instagram but they failed along the way.
- sova 7y agoHave you ever heard of niko niko douga? (niko niko video)
- paganel 7y agoNo, I have not, but I find quotes like the ones bellow (taken from the article) as pure lies told to their investors: > The company wants to make it easier for users to discover and buy new products because they shop in spurts while watching TV or sitting in the bathroom No, no-one in the under-40 target is sitting in front of the TV and then is deciding to shop for stuff, almost everyone in the under-40 target is sitting on their phones (mostly on FB + IG + Whatsapp) even when watching TV, even when in the bathroom, and it's in there (on FB + IG + Whatsapp + other social networks) that the buying decision is made. TV is for the older-than-40 audience.
- Despegar 7y agoGrowth is slowing and ad load has already reached its limits. If Google has any undeveloped real estate left, there's going to be ads on it.
- JaimeThompson 7y agoBecause they appear to be obsessed with growth at nearly all costs. Which each passing month it looks more and more likely that short term thinking has began to drive how Google acts and reacts.
- resters 7y agoThis has been getting more and more clear for a while. I had already lost a lot of respect after Google decided to become a defense contractor, but this is just greedy and antithetical to the values that made most of us start using Google in the first place. Google has been selling garbage ad placements for years which has been an obvious revenue boosting game, but nobody seemed to care. Let’s hope Google gets its priorities back in order. I had thought Schmidt leaving the board was a good thing, but he seems to have been pushed out by those whose incentives are much more short term. Companies can be hijacked by people with the wrong incentives.
- tyingq 7y agoThey have had many years of revenue growth that exceeds eyeball growth. They did that by slowly pushing organic results down the fold in favor of ads. That trick is played out now...there's little real estate above the fold left to cede to ads now. So, to maintain revenue growth that exceeds eyeball growth, they need new tricks. Basically, they set the bar very high.
- mc32 7y agoMy wish is that adds fill the first SERP so that I can just go to page 2 and be done. Damn you, Overture, why did you have to do that!
- JohnFen 7y agoIn my experience with Google search, it rarely gives me useful results on the first page. So much so that I've developed a bit of muscle memory. When I have to resort to doing a Google search, I have to consciously stop myself from immediately clicking to get the next page of results.
- tanilama 7y agoGreed? Please Wall Street? I don't really know really. Maybe the executives are in fear they will be swept out if they are not delivering on hiking the stock price?
- x2f10 7y ago>no competition outside of China For now. Duck is growing and I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple build their own. Not to mention, the use of content blockers is rising.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 7y agoFor some years now I have the feeling Apple is investing in / helping DuckDuckGo. The most obvious indications are that DDG was added to the list of search engines in Safari, and DDG uses Apple Maps (example [1]). I bet Apple is using DDG to weaken Google while officially keeping a distance. I also bet Apple is not interested in running a search engine themselves. They would either have to muddy their brand by allowing questionable results, or filter everything that is not family friendly and risk being seen as the big censor. [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=silicon+valley%2C+usa+map&t=h_&ia=maps&iaxm=maps https://duckduckgo.com/?q=silicon+valley%2C+usa+map&t=h_&ia=...
- microdrum 7y agoNow that they've used DBM, DFP, and AdExchange to cement their U.S. ad monopoly, they can only get more growth by shutting down the flow of money to the rest of the internet. So they need more inventory of their own to compete with that of their clients' (e.g. other websites that use Google Analytics, DFP, GCP, AdWords, etc). I would love to see an estimation of the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted by companies (and by consumers who buy their products) on Google ads.
- shostack 7y agoIf an advertiser buys ads and attributes results to them, how is that a waste?
- jklinger410 7y agoWhat a boring take. They haven't even started selling your personal data to 3rd parties yet.
- WalderFrey 7y agoTo be honest I’m surprised it took them this long.
- lalos 7y agoProbably AMP sites? I wonder what will be the carrot and stick in this scenario for ad buyers.
- giggles_giggles 7y agoduck.com has really gotten good recently.
- airstrike 7y agoTime to install a mobile browser with ad-blocking capabilities. Suggestions? I haven't used Firefox on my phone in years, but I remember it being slower than a snail
- arthurcolle 7y agoBrave on iOS is legit
- Simon_says 7y agoDoesn't Brave substitute their own ads?
- brianpgordon 7y agoYou can opt out of that revenue sharing thing if you don't want it.
- wybiral 7y agoAds aren't really the problem for me, it's the trackers.
- manifestsilence 7y agoI use firefox on Android. I think it's gotten better lately.
- chipperyman573 7y agoFirefox on android works fine for me and supports all the extensions of their desktop browser.
- ProAm 7y agoI was a FF on android fan for year but wouldnt take the initial super long page loads anymore. The first webpage of the day was taking 10+ seconds to load, almost like it was fighting with DNS. I switched to Kiwi Browser and have been super happy. Fork of Chrome, lets you use any extension you want, no tracking and nightmode
- yesplorer 7y agoThe article has been corrected to reflect the fact that it doesn't include mobile site, only the app. Perhaps OP could edit their headline as well?
- sctb 7y agoThanks! We've updated the headline from “Google to show ads on homepage of mobile site, app”.
- gchokov 7y agoPathetic.
- dmix 7y agoWhat would the default ads be on a search homepage considering there are no "keywords" to scope it to? I'd imagine non-targeted billboard-style ads by default with some targeting at the account level? Would it include retargeted ads? Edit: nevermind, it's not on a blank search page, it's embedded within some news-feed style UI, so it's probably just straightforward google mobile ads
- fjsolwmv 7y agoRemember that on mobile by default google pushes the feed on the search page instead of leaving it blank. Desktop is spared the indignity, for now.
- millstone 7y agoWhat is "the feed?" Feed of what?
- prepend 7y agoSince google tracks customers they can target a lot without keyword searches. I can imagine the homepage click price would be high for “pregnant women over 45 with an income over $100k” and stuff like that.
- ryanwhitney 7y ago> The gallery ads are part of an effort to make search results more visual. By distracting from legitimate results? Like others will say here, I finally switched to DDG earlier this week. It’s good enough and you get accustomed to doing a !g pretty quickly when needed.
- hellcow 7y agoAdding !s for startpage is a good option too. Google results without the tracking.
- ryanwhitney 7y agoThat's great, thanks. Didn't know about Startpage.
- snazz 7y agoThey often lag behind the Google and even DDG results by a while, so search anything time-sensitive first with DDG then with Google if you still can’t find it.
- JasonCEC 7y agoDoes anyone have suggestions for an Android based alternative to Google Maps? (preferably open source, etc)
- brianpgordon 7y agoI've seen https://maps.me https://maps.me recommended on HN before. It's based on OSM.
- petschge 7y agoI would suggest osmand. The basic version is free, you can download data state by state (country by country when you are traveling) so it doesn't need a data connection on the road (but online search is available if you do have a data connection). It does routing for cars / bikes / pedestrian and has decent turn-by-turn instructions that you can configure to your liking. The underlying data comes from OpenStreetMap (hence the name of OSM + and(roid)), so if the data is wrong you can fit it yourself.
- snazz 7y agoYou can get the paid version for free if you download it from F-Droid.
- maxxxxx 7y agoThera are a ton of OSM apps that are quite good but Google Maps still wins with the search function.
- egman_ekki 7y agoHere (WeGo) maps maybe?
- pizzazzaro 7y agoMaps (Offline OpenStreetMap maps) - https://f-droid.org/app/com.github.axet.maps https://f-droid.org/app/com.github.axet.maps Forked from maps.me, but without their tracking or ads. Please tell me you have F-Droid installed.
- yumraj 7y agoApple pretty please launch a slightly cheaper phone for us tightwads so that we can ditch Android and Google, once and forever. Already using DDG. Been trying to run my own mailserver.
- lotu 7y agoThe cheapest iPhone (iPhone7) is selling for $449 new in the US. I'm not sure how cheap you are but this is reasonable compared to Android phones
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- yumraj 7y agoThat is definitely a good price point, and works for me, and I'm genuinely tempted. I'm waiting for the fall update to see if we're going to finally see the SE2.
- snazz 7y agoYou can get an iPhone 7 for a lot less than that too if you wait for a sale from a retailer like Best Buy or a cell carrier and not from Apple directly.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pxtail 7y ago"In Maps, ads will now appear in recommended search queries, on routing pages and during navigation" Ugh, this is sad and clever at same time - during navigation screen is on all the time and one usually glances at route from time to time even if it is just "straight ahead" for couple of kilometers. Moreover ad will be potentially visible to all passengers as well.
- michaelbuckbee 7y agoMy thought was always that they were going to start using businesses as landmarks, aka: "At Monument Dr. - just past the Starbucks where if you stop now you can get a piping hot Venti coffee for only $1.50 - make a right"
- bsamuels 7y agoThey already do this; it's roughly in the form of: "take a left at sunset boulevard, right past the jack in the box". I suspected it was a paid ad, but never knew for sure
- foota 7y agoI believe they've stated these are not ads, but are strictly for navigation.
- fjsolwmv 7y agoThat makes it an unpaid ad.
- cameronbrown 7y agoCynically, yes, but this is how humans follow directions anyway. Are your friends giving you an unpaid ad when they say "head down main st, past the Burger King"?
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- ape4 7y agoNow Google maps will use more bandwidth, yipee.
- Marsymars 7y agoThis is actually the reason I stopped using Google Maps for most of my navigation. It used up most of my 5 gb monthly allotment over the timespan of a week of travel/driving. I typically only use ~500 mb of data per month otherwise.
- asdff 7y agoYou can download a local cache of the map data. I have my whole city saved and I think the app is around 500mb in size now.
- wetpaws 7y agoA lot of places outside of US (like Tokyo for example) simply don't support offline caching mode, which makes google maps a real data hog when you travel.
- Marsymars 7y agoYes, that's what I've done for my home city, but it's not especially practical when travelling, when compared to other mapping apps that let you download entire countries' map data at once.
- asdff 7y agoAre there any navigation apps that don't use any bandwith? Phones have GPS receivers, why do they need data to navigate while a Garmen doesn't.
- stordoff 7y ago> In Maps, ads will now appear [...] during navigation. Unless I'm missing something, distractions whilst navigating (and thus possibly driving) seems like it could be dangerous.
- pizzazzaro 7y agoLadies and gentlemen, we have a threadwinner. Why has nobody else mentioned this? This is how google's gonna either get slapped with lawsuits, find that folks switch and make openstreetmap.org suddenly usable, or even both. Whoa.
- p2t2p 7y agoAaaaand none of that matters. Not many people enjoy sitting there, mapping stuff, so openstreetmap is not going to get any better without corporations contributing to it like they do with Linux kernel. Lawsuits doesn't matter much as well - with Google's power they can either: - Afford a settlement, bunch of them - Make the litigation to take long-long-long time - Lobby for some law to protect them. Nobody ain't gonna switch to anymore. Folks that are ok with Apple maps are already using it and besides Apple maps there is no huge competitor. Here we Go maps are good for navigation but they don't know anything about business around you so good luck finding anything that you don't know precise address for. Even folks on iPhones who use Apple Maps have Google Maps installed. For me it: - I just drive around to a place I know about: Apple Maps - I need to find a place by name: Google Maps - I go to bush: Here we Go maps a maybe Google Maps because I can download them as well. People need to realise that Google is unstoppable machine right now with _enormous_ resources and they can do almost whatever. Recently EU slapped a "huge" fine on Google. So what? What happened? Has anything changed? The real solution is for corporations who depend on navigation services is to pay people to contribute to openstreetmap like it happens with Linux kernel right now. Freedom for people, tool for business, all win.
- zuron7 7y agoOSM has better data in certain aspects. The big problem with OSM is not about the data, but that it isn't designed to be used as a map. When someone visits osm.org, it is very barebones and the search feature doesn't work very well to find places unless you know the syntax. The team working on OSM themselves say that OSM is not a map, but instead a database. Anyway, Google would never have gotten the data that it has without the contributions of the people. And the dedicated mappers in my city have all turned to OSM now. Hence leading to better mapping in terms of road data, bicycle paths and other features that businesses do not care about mapping.
- koyote 7y agoI'm already considering ditching the Gmail app as it displays ads at the top that look just like new e-mails (I was an Inbox user before); although I am not quite sure what app to switch to. Sadly there isn't really an alternative that even approaches Maps. There are a lot of 'ok' alternatives but Maps is just in an other league in terms of POI, Navigation and UI.
- kryptn 7y agoI experienced the same thing too until I disabled the Promotions tab.
- LordHeini 7y agoFor mails i would highly recommend K-9 Mail. Using it for years now works really well. Has a bunch of Features like dark mode and what not. As for maps tough...
- 29083011397778 7y agoAs someone who disabled GApps on my phone and uses only OSMAnd, I've found it acceptable for me, but know others would not be satisfied. At least if/when I search and fail to find, I remember and add it later when I get to a desktop. Slowly, OSM should end up being able to serve my uses well enough, and hopefully others too.
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- hcnews 7y agoAs an investor this makes me wary. How much short term value are they gaining by sacrificing user satisfaction? Google's UX is pretty top notch today and they don't really have any relevant competitors. With this move, they are creating space for differentiation along better UX and potentially losing out a share of users over time.
- JohnFen 7y ago> Google's UX is pretty top notch today I very much disagree, but I also think that's a subjective thing.
- s17n 7y ago"Sun to rise, set"
- vulptx 7y agoSimply avoid using google services. They are pathetic. Let's see what the European Union says about this aggressive advertisement. Especially the Google Maps thing will obviously trigger our consumer care responsibles.
- ahje 7y agoSeeing as there are other options freely available, I doubt there will be any action because ads are annoying. The safety aspect of displaying ads in a navigator on the other hand...
- drenvuk 7y agoNot gonna lie, I would rather just pay for google maps.
- asdff 7y agoI would pay $1 a month, which would be exponentially more money google extracts from me than with ads I'll never engage with.
- 29083011397778 7y agoYou're here; therefore, we can assume you're a high-value consumer to advertise to. When enough people take the $1/month option, advertisers will be primarily advertising to consumers with low purchasing power. As that happens, the cost of advertising on Google AdWords nosedives, and Google is left making substantially less money. Maybe most people aren't like you and I. But I don't think anyone at Alphabet is willing to risk adding complexity to potentially earn less. This ignores the potential fallout as the message can be distorted from "Optional payment for Google Maps" to "Google starts collecting money for Maps", and finally to "Google Maps costs $X".
- djanogo 7y agoI get down voted often for saying iPhone is cheaper, like the old man said, price is what you pay and value is what you buy. Android and Google are expensive.
- throwaway55554 7y agoI traded my 6S for an 8. Got the 8 for $399 after trade. That's pretty cheap for a great phone.
- asdff 7y agoI got a 128gb SE for less than $250 shipped on ebay, graded at B condition but I couldn't find a scratch on it, not even by the ports (yes, plural :^) and the battery is at 95% health. Just as quick as an x in real world use, the screen repair is way cheaper, and I could stretch the battery life two days. I love the size too, the last one handed iPhone and I forget it's in my pocket.
- droidist2 7y agoI love the SE too, I really hope they release another small phone within the next year.
- wetpaws 7y agoIt's only expensive if you want to pay extra for a status symbols. I have a 5500mah Android phone with a great screen and hardware that costed me around $150
- djanogo 7y agoThat's not at all what I am referring to. With Android you are basically carrying Google's (play services) remote monitoring device. For $150 device (whichever company subsidized that device) you are the product.
- wetpaws 7y agoFor the sake of argument, let me point out that you don't have to install google play services on Android device. (Unlike Apples's world, here you actually have a control over your phone)
- propogandist 7y agoGoogle had a massive multi-quarter campaign to get people to install their Google App recently across all possible mediums...now it's clear it was tied to this ad-push.
- JohnFen 7y agoI'm so glad that I gave up using Google's apps and services.
- sidcool 7y agoI am from India and sometimes jealous of China and Russia for having good local Google alternatives, Baidu and Yandex respectively. Google has more than 95% search market share in India and there is no competitive product even close.