7 ms·

Whatever Google chooses you know it will for Google's benefit and on user's disadvantage.

by nixass 5y ago

john_yaya 5y ago
I was about to dispute this and say, “no, most business relationships are win-win.” Then I remembered that Google’s business relationships aren’t with their users. So, yes, you’re no doubt correct about that.
dylan604 5y ago
Whenever I see news about Googs making a decision, it is always read with "how will this ultimately be screwing the users". If Googs decides to stop doing some invasive data collection it is only because they have found something better.
jefftk 5y ago
Users benefit from a web where sites can make money by showing ads, because the alternatives (primarily paywalls) are worse. More: https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
- dessant 5y ago
  Google's aberrated view of privacy and the role ads should play in our lives is partly why we have to constantly be on the lookout and expect to end up being screwed regardless, even if we pay $4000 for a device that runs Google TV.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  Yes, jeff. We all remember your articles in which you argue that invasive, track-all-of-your-life ads are somehow good. They are not. The world has survived for millenia without tracking ads.
  - greiskul 5y ago
    And how long as the open web survived? Cause I see a lot of it dieing every day, being replaced with walls.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      > And how long as the open web survived For a very, very long time. > Cause I see a lot of it dieing every day, being replaced with walls. That's because companies feel value in silos and extracting every cent they can out of users.
    - Nicksil 5y ago
      >And how long as the open web survived? Since its birth, clearly. No matter how you try and spin this, advertising is not a requite for a free and open Web. If ads were to disappear tomorrow, web sites which society has deemed important will survive, the others (if income was necessary in the first place) will indeed perish. And we will be just fine.
    - gxnxcxcx 5y ago
      The open web never felt the urge to become walled before the ad peddlers made it addicted to revenue.
    - perryizgr8 5y ago
      Just because the open web is being murdered by Google and FB, does not mean we have to go along with their progrom. We need to stand up for what's right, not for what's winning today.
- rchaud 5y ago
  This neatly sidesteps the reality that Google itself takes actions to makes Adsense revenue completely unpredictable. The "confirmed clicks" program created a ton of instability, with no real explanations from Big G: https://digiday.com/media/googles-confirmed-clicks-initiative-deepens-publishers-revenue-woes/ https://digiday.com/media/googles-confirmed-clicks-initiativ...
- luckylion 5y ago
  Without ads, content quality would go up, because very few people will pay for low quality content. And if quality goes up, people are happy to pay for it. With ads, content quality goes down. You don't need to convince people that your content is worth reading, you just need to convince Google. Slap a few expired domains on your text-spinner generated content and off you go. Not all content is created equal, and Made-For-Adsense content would not have been made otherwise and would not take away attention from quality content. I believe you're rationalizing your paycheck.
- gxnxcxcx 5y ago
  It has indeed enabled the professionalization of the endeavor, but the shift in incentives for content creation has irreversibly changed the shape of the mainstream internet, and not necessarily for the better as far as the user is concerned. The monetized web has in a lot of measures exceeded the frontiers of what the ragtag petite bourgeoisie of the early internet could ever be but, in the process, the great majority of us (both users and the very long tail of non-top content creators) have invariably become peasants. I'm not saying there was any other way to have what we have now, but what we have now kinda ain't sooo good when one isn't the middleman in a process architected for the middleman's benefit.
- dogleash 5y ago
  >because the alternatives (primarily paywalls) are worse Weird position to take when most high-quality content is already shifting to a paywall model (or didn't base their business model on advertising in the first place). And ad-supported content is in a race to the bottom meaning any content useful beyond light entertainment is drying up.
- easrng 5y ago
  Tracking and profiling users is completely unnecessary. Context-based, non-intrusive, ads are reasonable and better than paywalls and users won't hate them. I wish someone would make https://ethicalads.io https://ethicalads.io but not just targeted at developers.
  - ericholscher 5y ago
    We're looking into the option of expanding our network or offering it as a SaaS for others who are wanting to build something similar for other audiences. The software works great for any content-based targeting, and we're excited to expand to other niches to push the vision forward as we can :)
    - easrng 5y ago
      That would be amazing! You guys are the only non-awful ad network with primarily text-based ads, which I like. I also love that we can style the ads with CSS which I'm pretty sure nobody else allows.
- rurp 5y ago
  I'm sure you are aware that contextual ads are a thing, and would still be quite profitable. I personally would be fine with wealthiest companies in the world making moderately less money in exchange for everyone having vastly more privacy.
rektide 5y ago
Doing nothing & leaving the internet insecure is in every other media & ad & host's interest, because currently it's insecure. Making privacy better is indeed to Google's benefit. Because Google has a 1st party relationship with users: users visit Google.com, Google sees where we go. But this is not to a user's dis-advantage. Google genuinely is trying to find a good path forward. The proof to me comes in the quest for alternatives. Find anything else pro-user being suggested. Find ANYTHING. There's nothing. It's barren. There is a huge astroturfed war going on. Google is trying to do good. It's trying to find some compromise between content-holders & users. The content-holders are stirring up a colossal storm because they want what they have, which is everything. They're winning this PR blitz. Low, cheap, pervasive attacks on Google are winning this war, & it's users who are losing.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > Google genuinely is trying to find a good path forward. Google is that earns 80% of its money from online ads. There's literally no incentive for Google to "find a good path forward".
- danShumway 5y ago
  > The proof to me comes in the quest for alternatives. Find anything else pro-user being suggested. Find ANYTHING. There's nothing. It's barren. Every major browser other than Google is taking proactive steps to limit cookies right now. Firefox very recently announced better cookie deletion for sites; they'll now try to delete cookies from other domains that are linked to those sites. This is going to get progressively better and better. But the sentiment here is exactly what Google promotes. It begs the question over whether or not we need to compromise with content-holders on privacy. We don't, no browser other than Chrome views user tracking as a necessary compromise with advertisers. There was a point in the past where we might honestly worry about whether it was feasible to block 3rd-party cookies, but since then multiple efforts and improvements from Mozilla and Safari have made it clear that browser manufactures don't have to get advertisers' permission to push code. Google is refusing to proactively move forward with steps that everyone else has agreed are necessary, because Google is mad that we're not thinking enough about their business interests. We have a good path forward, Google is blocking it for a large number of users, and then Google is complaining "why is no one else except us coming up with solutions?" But we have come up with solutions, they're just not solutions that Google likes. The caution from Chrome about cookies is really interesting. Chrome broke web audio, alerts, the dev team is regularly openly hostile to suggestions that the consensus process moves too quickly. They tried tried to deprecate the url for crying out loud, but now they want to be all cautious about cookies? Sure. > There is a huge astroturfed war going on. Agreed, but not in the direction that you're suggesting. The general public wants better privacy, they don't care about whether or not it makes advertisers happy. Nontechnical users are often misinformed about tracking and they often lack technical skills or willpower to increase their privacy on their own. But that doesn't mean the public doesn't care about privacy, ordinary users do support the figerprinting protections Apple is building into iOS, they support the privacy changes Mozilla is building into Firefox. Most ordinary people are on the side of privacy in this debate. Advertisers are desperate to argue that users are being harmed or that moving forward without an alternative tracking system is impossible, when the reality is that even the nontechnical public has turned out to have overwhelmingly positive feelings towards on-by-default technical measures to reduce tracking. The astroturfing here is the FUD coming out of companies claiming that we need (for either moral, technical, or PR reasons) to compromise with advertisers before we can move forward removing 3rd-party cookies. It's really only Google who is lagging on this stuff. If they want the least private browser on the market, then they can have it. I don't think we need to hold back everyone else while we wait for Google to make up their mind about this.

Whatever Google chooses you know it will for Google's benefit and on user's disadvantage.

by nixass 5y ago

Whatever Google chooses you know it will for Google's benefit and on user's disadvantage.

I was about to dispute this and say, “no, most business relationships are win-win.” Then I remembered that Google’s business relationships aren’t with their users. So, yes, you’re no doubt correct about that.

dylan604 5y ago

Whenever I see news about Googs making a decision, it is always read with "how will this ultimately be screwing the users". If Googs decides to stop doing some invasive data collection it is only because they have found something better.

jefftk 5y ago

Users benefit from a web where sites can make money by showing ads, because the alternatives (primarily paywalls) are worse. More: https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)

dessant 5y ago
Google's aberrated view of privacy and the role ads should play in our lives is partly why we have to constantly be on the lookout and expect to end up being screwed regardless, even if we pay $4000 for a device that runs Google TV.
dmitriid 5y ago
Yes, jeff. We all remember your articles in which you argue that invasive, track-all-of-your-life ads are somehow good. They are not. The world has survived for millenia without tracking ads.
- greiskul 5y ago
  And how long as the open web survived? Cause I see a lot of it dieing every day, being replaced with walls.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > And how long as the open web survived For a very, very long time. > Cause I see a lot of it dieing every day, being replaced with walls. That's because companies feel value in silos and extracting every cent they can out of users.
  - Nicksil 5y ago
    >And how long as the open web survived? Since its birth, clearly. No matter how you try and spin this, advertising is not a requite for a free and open Web. If ads were to disappear tomorrow, web sites which society has deemed important will survive, the others (if income was necessary in the first place) will indeed perish. And we will be just fine.
  - gxnxcxcx 5y ago
    The open web never felt the urge to become walled before the ad peddlers made it addicted to revenue.
  - perryizgr8 5y ago
    Just because the open web is being murdered by Google and FB, does not mean we have to go along with their progrom. We need to stand up for what's right, not for what's winning today.
rchaud 5y ago
This neatly sidesteps the reality that Google itself takes actions to makes Adsense revenue completely unpredictable. The "confirmed clicks" program created a ton of instability, with no real explanations from Big G: https://digiday.com/media/googles-confirmed-clicks-initiative-deepens-publishers-revenue-woes/ https://digiday.com/media/googles-confirmed-clicks-initiativ...
luckylion 5y ago
Without ads, content quality would go up, because very few people will pay for low quality content. And if quality goes up, people are happy to pay for it. With ads, content quality goes down. You don't need to convince people that your content is worth reading, you just need to convince Google. Slap a few expired domains on your text-spinner generated content and off you go. Not all content is created equal, and Made-For-Adsense content would not have been made otherwise and would not take away attention from quality content. I believe you're rationalizing your paycheck.
gxnxcxcx 5y ago
It has indeed enabled the professionalization of the endeavor, but the shift in incentives for content creation has irreversibly changed the shape of the mainstream internet, and not necessarily for the better as far as the user is concerned. The monetized web has in a lot of measures exceeded the frontiers of what the ragtag petite bourgeoisie of the early internet could ever be but, in the process, the great majority of us (both users and the very long tail of non-top content creators) have invariably become peasants. I'm not saying there was any other way to have what we have now, but what we have now kinda ain't sooo good when one isn't the middleman in a process architected for the middleman's benefit.
dogleash 5y ago
>because the alternatives (primarily paywalls) are worse Weird position to take when most high-quality content is already shifting to a paywall model (or didn't base their business model on advertising in the first place). And ad-supported content is in a race to the bottom meaning any content useful beyond light entertainment is drying up.
easrng 5y ago
Tracking and profiling users is completely unnecessary. Context-based, non-intrusive, ads are reasonable and better than paywalls and users won't hate them. I wish someone would make https://ethicalads.io https://ethicalads.io but not just targeted at developers.
- ericholscher 5y ago
  We're looking into the option of expanding our network or offering it as a SaaS for others who are wanting to build something similar for other audiences. The software works great for any content-based targeting, and we're excited to expand to other niches to push the vision forward as we can :)
  - easrng 5y ago
    That would be amazing! You guys are the only non-awful ad network with primarily text-based ads, which I like. I also love that we can style the ads with CSS which I'm pretty sure nobody else allows.
rurp 5y ago
I'm sure you are aware that contextual ads are a thing, and would still be quite profitable. I personally would be fine with wealthiest companies in the world making moderately less money in exchange for everyone having vastly more privacy.

rektide 5y ago

Doing nothing & leaving the internet insecure is in every other media & ad & host's interest, because currently it's insecure. Making privacy better is indeed to Google's benefit. Because Google has a 1st party relationship with users: users visit Google.com, Google sees where we go. But this is not to a user's dis-advantage. Google genuinely is trying to find a good path forward. The proof to me comes in the quest for alternatives. Find anything else pro-user being suggested. Find ANYTHING. There's nothing. It's barren. There is a huge astroturfed war going on. Google is trying to do good. It's trying to find some compromise between content-holders & users. The content-holders are stirring up a colossal storm because they want what they have, which is everything. They're winning this PR blitz. Low, cheap, pervasive attacks on Google are winning this war, & it's users who are losing.

dmitriid 5y ago
> Google genuinely is trying to find a good path forward. Google is that earns 80% of its money from online ads. There's literally no incentive for Google to "find a good path forward".
danShumway 5y ago
> The proof to me comes in the quest for alternatives. Find anything else pro-user being suggested. Find ANYTHING. There's nothing. It's barren. Every major browser other than Google is taking proactive steps to limit cookies right now. Firefox very recently announced better cookie deletion for sites; they'll now try to delete cookies from other domains that are linked to those sites. This is going to get progressively better and better. But the sentiment here is exactly what Google promotes. It begs the question over whether or not we need to compromise with content-holders on privacy. We don't, no browser other than Chrome views user tracking as a necessary compromise with advertisers. There was a point in the past where we might honestly worry about whether it was feasible to block 3rd-party cookies, but since then multiple efforts and improvements from Mozilla and Safari have made it clear that browser manufactures don't have to get advertisers' permission to push code. Google is refusing to proactively move forward with steps that everyone else has agreed are necessary, because Google is mad that we're not thinking enough about their business interests. We have a good path forward, Google is blocking it for a large number of users, and then Google is complaining "why is no one else except us coming up with solutions?" But we have come up with solutions, they're just not solutions that Google likes. The caution from Chrome about cookies is really interesting. Chrome broke web audio, alerts, the dev team is regularly openly hostile to suggestions that the consensus process moves too quickly. They tried tried to deprecate the url for crying out loud, but now they want to be all cautious about cookies? Sure. > There is a huge astroturfed war going on. Agreed, but not in the direction that you're suggesting. The general public wants better privacy, they don't care about whether or not it makes advertisers happy. Nontechnical users are often misinformed about tracking and they often lack technical skills or willpower to increase their privacy on their own. But that doesn't mean the public doesn't care about privacy, ordinary users do support the figerprinting protections Apple is building into iOS, they support the privacy changes Mozilla is building into Firefox. Most ordinary people are on the side of privacy in this debate. Advertisers are desperate to argue that users are being harmed or that moving forward without an alternative tracking system is impossible, when the reality is that even the nontechnical public has turned out to have overwhelmingly positive feelings towards on-by-default technical measures to reduce tracking. The astroturfing here is the FUD coming out of companies claiming that we need (for either moral, technical, or PR reasons) to compromise with advertisers before we can move forward removing 3rd-party cookies. It's really only Google who is lagging on this stuff. If they want the least private browser on the market, then they can have it. I don't think we need to hold back everyone else while we wait for Google to make up their mind about this.