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Google has a very strong incentive to stop fraud and has entire departments dedicated to fighting ad fraud. Rampant fraud = lack of trust in your product/servi

Google has a very strong incentive to stop fraud and has entire departments dedicated to fighting ad fraud. Rampant fraud = lack of trust in your product/service, which can destroy your whole business. The internet fraud you hear about is only the tip of the iceberg, and there's much more of it that is prevented by various companies (either Google, Cloudflare, etc.)

9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
The problem is that they don't have time or will to help the small guys.
mceachen 7y ago
I think you're overselling how much Google cares (or needs to care) about trust. They dominate search traffic (in the markets/countries they exist for). Businesses don't use AdWords because they "trust" Google. They suffer through using AdWords because it's the only game in town.
- halflings 7y ago
  This article is from 2015: https://adage.com/article/digital/inside-google-s-secret-war-ad-fraud/298652 https://adage.com/article/digital/inside-google-s-secret-war... "If advertisers believed the company's operation were fraud-filled, they could take their money elsewhere and the business would falter." That's it, in a nutshell. (and if they had 100 people working on this in 2015; you better believe that number is much higher now)
  - mirimir 7y ago
    > This article is from 2015 ... Maybe Google had more competition in 2015. Although I find even that difficult to take seriously. Where else would they "take their money"? Facebook? I doubt that Facebook ads show up in web searches.
    - owl57 7y ago
      A lot of people probably see more Facebook ads than Google ones. And Facebook knows a lot about users, probably including some things that Google knows less reliably. The relevant problem is, do they seem any less scummy?
  - skrebbel 7y ago
    > elsewhere And where would that be, exactly?
kabes 7y ago
Google really doesn't care as long as they get paid. They only self-regulate the absolute minimum. I just got this ad in gmail (presented as an email except for the little 'ad' badge): https://imgur.com/xHr7E3e https://imgur.com/xHr7E3e It's in in Dutch, but it's the typical misleading, copyright infringing ad you would find on shady porn sites. Why does Google allow this ad? Don't they have the competence to filter it? It's the same company creating a great spam filter on gmail and leading in a lot of AI fields. Surely they could. But they just don't care when they get paid for it. On the other hand, when they don't get paid or it negatively affects them, they're always happy to make changes "to protect the users" (e.g. changing chrome so adblock plus stops working etc.)
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Stop looking for a neck to wring for a minute and think about the problem. Manual filtering is just plain not viable period. Spam is very different from arbitrary image formats and potential text analysis across language. Nobody really wants ads so spam filter feedback mechanisms of "everyone says to stop sending me this shit" are fundamentally incompatible. Think about it would take to detect it algorithmically. Even if an image is copyrighted there is no mechanism to tell if the source actually has permission from it especially with the "born copyrighted" doctrine. Even if there was some vast self defeating registered copyrighted images database (containing images of everything copyrighted) it woukd be possible to distort images to be human recognizible but not machine recognized. The "alternatives" of demanded manual ad control would mean massively disadvantaging smaller business by marginal costs. Oops.
  - kabes 7y ago
    You really think google doesn't have the capability to create a system to detect these ads? This is Google's core business and they do far more impressive stuff in the AI field. I'm not talking about a 100% bulletproof all-copyright-in-the-world solution. If it would be able to detect logo's from the top 1000 brands and some OCR would already go a very long way. Sure ads would try to outsmart it, just like spam it would be a cat-and-mouse game.
- 7y ago

9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago

The problem is that they don't have time or will to help the small guys.

mceachen 7y ago

I think you're overselling how much Google cares (or needs to care) about trust. They dominate search traffic (in the markets/countries they exist for). Businesses don't use AdWords because they "trust" Google. They suffer through using AdWords because it's the only game in town.

halflings 7y ago
This article is from 2015: https://adage.com/article/digital/inside-google-s-secret-war-ad-fraud/298652 https://adage.com/article/digital/inside-google-s-secret-war... "If advertisers believed the company's operation were fraud-filled, they could take their money elsewhere and the business would falter." That's it, in a nutshell. (and if they had 100 people working on this in 2015; you better believe that number is much higher now)
- mirimir 7y ago
  > This article is from 2015 ... Maybe Google had more competition in 2015. Although I find even that difficult to take seriously. Where else would they "take their money"? Facebook? I doubt that Facebook ads show up in web searches.
  - owl57 7y ago
    A lot of people probably see more Facebook ads than Google ones. And Facebook knows a lot about users, probably including some things that Google knows less reliably. The relevant problem is, do they seem any less scummy?
- skrebbel 7y ago
  > elsewhere And where would that be, exactly?

kabes 7y ago

Google really doesn't care as long as they get paid. They only self-regulate the absolute minimum. I just got this ad in gmail (presented as an email except for the little 'ad' badge): https://imgur.com/xHr7E3e https://imgur.com/xHr7E3e It's in in Dutch, but it's the typical misleading, copyright infringing ad you would find on shady porn sites. Why does Google allow this ad? Don't they have the competence to filter it? It's the same company creating a great spam filter on gmail and leading in a lot of AI fields. Surely they could. But they just don't care when they get paid for it. On the other hand, when they don't get paid or it negatively affects them, they're always happy to make changes "to protect the users" (e.g. changing chrome so adblock plus stops working etc.)

Nasrudith 7y ago
Stop looking for a neck to wring for a minute and think about the problem. Manual filtering is just plain not viable period. Spam is very different from arbitrary image formats and potential text analysis across language. Nobody really wants ads so spam filter feedback mechanisms of "everyone says to stop sending me this shit" are fundamentally incompatible. Think about it would take to detect it algorithmically. Even if an image is copyrighted there is no mechanism to tell if the source actually has permission from it especially with the "born copyrighted" doctrine. Even if there was some vast self defeating registered copyrighted images database (containing images of everything copyrighted) it woukd be possible to distort images to be human recognizible but not machine recognized. The "alternatives" of demanded manual ad control would mean massively disadvantaging smaller business by marginal costs. Oops.
- kabes 7y ago
  You really think google doesn't have the capability to create a system to detect these ads? This is Google's core business and they do far more impressive stuff in the AI field. I'm not talking about a 100% bulletproof all-copyright-in-the-world solution. If it would be able to detect logo's from the top 1000 brands and some OCR would already go a very long way. Sure ads would try to outsmart it, just like spam it would be a cat-and-mouse game.
7y ago