I usually shake my head at these rants, but The real problem here is not the ads per se. It's that they are not marked well, so users are tricked into clicking

I usually shake my head at these rants, but The real problem here is not the ads per se. It's that they are not marked well, so users are tricked into clicking them. I've seen the ads degrade over all these years from clearly obvious, to plausible-deniability obvious. This is actively harmful to users. I find basecamp to be pretty mediocre but I'm glad they've raised this issue in a public enough way that Google was forced to respond. Too bad their response just cemented the notion that they don't care about users anymore. You do have to laugh when they say with a straight face, "it's for the users". Basecamp: > When Google puts 4 paid ads ahead of the first organic result for your own brand name, you’re forced to pay up if you want to be found. It’s a shakedown. It’s ransom. But at least we can have fun with it. Search for Basecamp and you may see this attached ad. Google: > To provide users with the most relevant ads, ... implying that ads are a service for the users. lol. It's official, Google sucks.