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Even if you don't share their opinion, you have to accept that some people honestly believe that advertising is necessary for funding the open Web and keep it o

Even if you don't share their opinion, you have to accept that some people honestly believe that advertising is necessary for funding the open Web and keep it open for people who either can't afford tons of subscriptions or hate them for privacy reasons. Realistically, Mr Vincent is not in charge of being an advocate for anything other than Google's corporate interests. But he is not in charge of destroying extensions either. He may well be in charge of destroying ad blockers though.

otabdeveloper4 7y ago
> ...advertising is necessary for funding the open Web and keep it open for people who either can't afford tons of subscriptions or hate them for privacy reasons That's a minor issue. The bigger issue is the fact that, if adblockers become truly popular, websites will go back to serving opaque binary blobs instead of HTML+CSS+JS. Remember Flash and 'Flash pages' back in the day? That, except worse.
- yabadabadoes 7y ago
  I'm not sure that is worse. A vast majority of the primary source web has no in page ads as it is things like orgs talking about their own products. If I could reliably filter the entire ad funded web from my search results on the basis of their using a blobs/DRM feature, I'm not sure how often I would do a search on the derivative web.
- naringas 7y ago
  > websites will go back to serving opaque binary blobs instead of HTML+CSS+JS. they will just serve web assembly
- big_chungus 7y ago
  I don't think sites will bake ads into the blob. It's too much server-side hassle. The equivalent today is just serving the ads from your own domain, and precious few people do that. The other option is a binary blob making a network request to an ad server, which can be blocked.
  - blep-arsh 7y ago
    I know people who are building this as a service. It renders this new adblocking API completely helpless. Since it's just a proxy with relatively low CPU load, it's feasible e.g. Cloudflare could also build something like this.
malvosenior 7y ago
I don’t accept that these people think they are helping create an open web. I think they’re trying to make their stock options worth more and appease their bosses.
- fauigerzigerk 7y ago
  I don't know Mr Vincent or anyone else at Google, but it seems unrealistic to assume that no one at Google could possibly believe that advertising is helping not hurting the open Web. Stock options and bosses with different incentives are available at other employers as well.
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    I don’t think anyone could be naive enough to believe ads help the open web. > Stock options and bosses with different incentives are available at other employers as well. Most other employers don’t have a near monopoly on the web browser market.
    - fauigerzigerk 7y ago
      >I don’t think anyone could be naive enough to believe ads help the open web I don't think assuming bad faith with absolute certainty is a productive form of debate. [Edit]: As a matter of fact, I don't believe that advertising is entirely replaceable as a funding mechanism for the open web at this point in time. That doesn't mean we have to accept all its excesses without resistance. >Most other employers don’t have a near monopoly on the web browser market. A near monopoly is not a prerequisite for an employee to make a lot of money somewhere else, especially not for someone in a PR role like "advocate".
      - malvosenior 7y ago
        > I don't think assuming bad faith with absolute certainty is a productive form of debate. It’s not a debate though, Google is removing these user friendly features and sprinkling some marketing speak over their actions. It’s right to call them out on that. Also, if your job is to be the face of that marketing speak, you should expect people to question what you say. [edit] Funding and openness are tangential. A system need not be profitable to be open. Look at open source.

otabdeveloper4 7y ago

> ...advertising is necessary for funding the open Web and keep it open for people who either can't afford tons of subscriptions or hate them for privacy reasons That's a minor issue. The bigger issue is the fact that, if adblockers become truly popular, websites will go back to serving opaque binary blobs instead of HTML+CSS+JS. Remember Flash and 'Flash pages' back in the day? That, except worse.

yabadabadoes 7y ago
I'm not sure that is worse. A vast majority of the primary source web has no in page ads as it is things like orgs talking about their own products. If I could reliably filter the entire ad funded web from my search results on the basis of their using a blobs/DRM feature, I'm not sure how often I would do a search on the derivative web.
naringas 7y ago
> websites will go back to serving opaque binary blobs instead of HTML+CSS+JS. they will just serve web assembly
big_chungus 7y ago
I don't think sites will bake ads into the blob. It's too much server-side hassle. The equivalent today is just serving the ads from your own domain, and precious few people do that. The other option is a binary blob making a network request to an ad server, which can be blocked.
- blep-arsh 7y ago
  I know people who are building this as a service. It renders this new adblocking API completely helpless. Since it's just a proxy with relatively low CPU load, it's feasible e.g. Cloudflare could also build something like this.

malvosenior 7y ago

I don’t accept that these people think they are helping create an open web. I think they’re trying to make their stock options worth more and appease their bosses.

fauigerzigerk 7y ago
I don't know Mr Vincent or anyone else at Google, but it seems unrealistic to assume that no one at Google could possibly believe that advertising is helping not hurting the open Web. Stock options and bosses with different incentives are available at other employers as well.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  I don’t think anyone could be naive enough to believe ads help the open web. > Stock options and bosses with different incentives are available at other employers as well. Most other employers don’t have a near monopoly on the web browser market.
  - fauigerzigerk 7y ago
    >I don’t think anyone could be naive enough to believe ads help the open web I don't think assuming bad faith with absolute certainty is a productive form of debate. [Edit]: As a matter of fact, I don't believe that advertising is entirely replaceable as a funding mechanism for the open web at this point in time. That doesn't mean we have to accept all its excesses without resistance. >Most other employers don’t have a near monopoly on the web browser market. A near monopoly is not a prerequisite for an employee to make a lot of money somewhere else, especially not for someone in a PR role like "advocate".
    - malvosenior 7y ago
      > I don't think assuming bad faith with absolute certainty is a productive form of debate. It’s not a debate though, Google is removing these user friendly features and sprinkling some marketing speak over their actions. It’s right to call them out on that. Also, if your job is to be the face of that marketing speak, you should expect people to question what you say. [edit] Funding and openness are tangential. A system need not be profitable to be open. Look at open source.