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I am shaken to my core (sorry, wife hates that phrase, so I have to use it everywhere) at how many posters here see ads. I'm of the opinion that if you're seei

by mmh0000 10mo ago

I am shaken to my core (sorry, wife hates that phrase, so I have to use it everywhere) at how many posters here see ads. I'm of the opinion that if you're seeing ads on your hardware, which you paid for, your computer is broken. That advertisements are always evil, always wrong, and never morally just. And everything possible should be done to avoid, remove, or deface them. To that end: Andriod: - Root your damn phone! And install AdAway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdAway) - Firefox + uBlock - Don't install malware/spyware (Arguably, Android is spyware, but custom ROMs fix it.) iOS: - AdGuard (free, works well, but not perfect, enable the "extra" filters) - Don't install malware/spyware (Arguably, iOS is spyware, but Apple thinks you're a simp, so Good Luck.) Windows (note, I don't actively use Windows, so these are the things I've collected and used in the past, no idea of their current state): - Seriously, you probably shouldn't be using Windows, but I "get it" sometimes you have to. - Don't install malware/spyware - https://christitus.com/windows-tool/ - https://old.reddit.com/r/WindowsLTSC/wiki/index - https://windhawk.net/ - https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu - https://wpd.app/ - https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 Linux: - Firefox + uBlock and done. - OpenSnitch if you run random executables from the Internet. Firefox as a whole: - https://github.com/arkenfox

suriya-ganesh 10mo ago
I used to think this. and I do run some of your suggestions. But how is the internet economy supposed to function without these micro transactions, in the form of ads. A lot of the abundance in software and technology we've seen in the past decade is possible only through this mechanism.
- crims0n 10mo ago
  I too struggle with this. It's not like people can't publish things on the web without ads. If the author/artist wanted it to be free, the ads wouldn't be there. So people who use ad blockers are either making a moral choice to consume a paid service for free, or are ignorant of how the internet economy works. There is an argument to be made that advertisements are so detrimental to the user experience and mental health of the recipient that they are morally justified in blocking them. However, that is debatable when you consider the alternative, which is that the medium you are consuming may not exist at all if not for the advertisements published along with it.
  - deckard1 10mo ago
    The day I stopped giving half a fraction of a shit was the day Google served me malware in an ad. It was one of those fake "Download" buttons on a very popular open source tool. I wonder how many people have been harmed by that. > medium you are consuming may not exist at all I've realized that's not my problem. It's not like most of the internet is healthy anyway. It's psychologically manipulative and designed to keep you fearful, angry, spiteful, jealous, and above all, depressed. Fuck Google. Fuck Meta. And fuck every single last person working for them.
  - tcfhgj 10mo ago
    If a medium doesn't exist because of the lack of ads and you think it's a loss, you should have paid for it (which overall is cheaper than paying though ads).
  - BeetleB 10mo ago
    > If the author/artist wanted it to be free, the ads wouldn't be there. That's a logical leap. The artist can want both things. There are two payments involved: 1. The user pays with his time/attention 2. The ad company pays the site In most cases, the author doesn't mind getting the payments from number 2 even if you skip 1. Many, many sites explicitly point out they don't find a it a problem if you install an ad blocker. I don't have ads on my site. I'm OK with you consuming it for free. If I put ads one day, I'll still be OK with it, because I know I'll get some money regardless. It's practically free money. I will not miss the vast majority of sites I go to that serve ads if they all decided to shut down and/or go paid only. I should be spending a lot less time on the Internet/phone to begin with!
- godelski 10mo ago
  I struggle with this too. I struggle less when I remind myself of how much the tech sector has grown in the past 20 years. Not even just in power and control over critical infrastructure, but in wealth. Market Cap by Year Year 0 1 2 3 4 2025 Nvidia (4.6T) Apple (3.9T) Google (3.8T) Microsoft (3.5T) Amazon (2.6T) 2020 Apple (2.3T) Microsoft (1.7T) Amazon (1.6T) Google (1.2T) Meta (777M) 2015 Apple (598M) Google (534M) Microsoft (440M) Berkshire (324M) Exxon (325M) 2010 Exxon (369M) PetroChina (303M) Apple (296M) BHP (244M) Microsoft (239M) Some Billionaires... Year Musk Page Bezos Ellison Zuck Buffett Current 714B 257B 251B 244B 227B 148B 2024 195B 114B 194B 141B 177B 133B 2023 180B 79B 114B 107B 64B 106B 2022 219B 111B 171B 106B 67B 118B 2021 151B 92B 177B 93B 97B 96B 2020 25B 51B 113B 59B 55B 68B 2016 11B 35B 45B 44B 45B 61B - There are currently 19 people worth more than $100bn! - 4 of them are not American (Arnault, Ortega, Ambani, Helu) - 27 of the top 50 richest are non-Americans - 57 of the top 100 are non-Americans - Bill Gates was first worth $100bn in 1999, becoming the first centibillionaire It is hard to feel bad when we've seen such an explosion of wealth, especially over the last 5 years. I mean we had a fucking pandemic and all the big players doubled (or nearly) their market caps. We constantly hear about how these companies are having "money issues" but then keep announcing record profits and record bonuses to CEOs. > A lot of the abundance in software and technology we've seen in the past decade is possible only through this mechanism. So I don't agree that it is *ONLY* through this mechanism. Or that if it is that it needs to be done to this degree. It is hard for me personally to take pity when we're on the verge of having the first trillionaire. Honestly, I don't care about a wealth cap and I don't think there should be. It isn't a zero-sum game. But I do care about the wealth floor. It is hard to think of that floor when just the top 5 richest made $887B last year and $1.47T in the last 5 (2024 was a "good" year. Musk is 519B/689B so 368B/781B excluding) and average people are feeling the pressure. If times were good for the rest of us I honestly couldn't care less if Musk became a trillionaire. Good for him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But while wages are stagnant, while the job market is very competitive, we have major layoffs, while inflation is hitting average people hard, and while they keep pretending they can replace us all with AI; then hell fucking yeah I do care. It ends up being a question about what is more right, than what is right. I'd feel more conflicted if we all, or the majority of us, were benefiting from the advancements. But sympathy is difficult when we look at those numbers. https://companiesmarketcap.com/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by_market_capitalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by... https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/ https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/ P.S. here's a fun game for understanding how much a billion dollars is. It's difficult because that level of money generates so much interest. Imagine you have a billion dollars. You put it in an investment account that earns 10% yearly interest, compounded daily. On day 1 you need funds, so sit on your ass and do nothing. After than, on each weekday you hire a new employee at the cost of $250k/yr and is also paid daily. How many employees can you hire before you have less than a billion dollars? There's a lot of variants you can run on this kind of thought experiment and I think they're helpful for understanding that level of wealth.
- kibwen 10mo ago
  > But how is the internet economy supposed to function If the existence of a given industry requires the annihilation of individual privacy and the elimination of free thought, then that industry does not deserve to exist. Kill the ad industry.
  - suriya-ganesh 10mo ago
    And in the process kill all the possibilities the internet has empowered? Medicine being better delivered, all the research that has been accelerated because of reducing compute and storage costs, the list is infinite.
    - sumalamana 10mo ago
      Yes, kill it all. None of that is worth the panopticon that is being built.
    - nananana9 10mo ago
      You will need to provide stronger justification how "medicine being delivered" hinges upon me watching a 60 second unskippable ad before a YouTube video.
- tcfhgj 10mo ago
  Other types of micro transactions and payments are possible
- akersten 10mo ago
  Behavioral (invisible) analytics alone is the secret trillion dollar industry that online advertisers want to distract you from by focusing on the morality of ad blocking. A good blocker should block many of those scripts too, but there's no stopping server-side analytics at scale.
- OkayPhysicist 10mo ago
  Most things worth doing on the internet are either A) paid for B) garner enough good will that they can be supported via some polite pan-handling or C) cheap enough to operate that it's a perfectly acceptable hobby expense for 1 person in your community. Streaming services and E-commerce are the classic examples for A. Wikipedia is the quintessential example for B. C includes pretty much all the social outlets: Web forums, a Matrix server, private game servers (public game servers fall under A), blogs, etc.
godelski 10mo ago
> iOS: - uBlock Origin now exists - Settings > Apps > Safari > (General) Extensions > uBlock Origin Lite https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id6745342698 - Alternatively, use Orion Browser (Kagi) - Pros: a bit better ad blocking - Cons: more buggy https://apps.apple.com/us/app/orion-browser-by-kagi/id1484498200 I'd also recommend installing Firefox, logging in, but use Safari. That way you can export a tab to Firefox where you can still get the send tabs feature. > Firefox as a whole: Also check out BetterFox - https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox Side Note: Phones are also general computer systems. Fuck this bullshit of pretending they're anything less. If you don't have control over your computer, your computer is broken. You don't have to be forced to adhere to Big Tech's short comings. > Andriod: - Install Termux (from F-droid, not Playstore) - It is trivial to write scripts to handle a lot of things that work through third parties. Less than 100 lines. I find these scripts *better* than many app alternatives and infinitely more trustworthy. We're on HN, everyone here should be able to write basic scripts. Hell, the AI could probably do these things easily (make it use functions! Bash needs functions!) Some ideas to show scope of what you can do: - Automated backups: just a fucking rsync to your folders (god fuck Apple, why can't I rsync my pictures on an iPhone!!!!) - I have my script check for WiFi. If on my SSID I rsync locally. If not, I go through Tailscale. If not on WiFi I don't backup, minimizing my data usage. I'm lazy and just set the cron job to run once a day, making each backup usually pretty small but can cause larger backups when traveling - rsync can also remove files from your phone if you're concerned about storage. - You can backup to multiple locations! Even if you use google drive or whatever you should still rsync to your local machine. Remember, Google photos doesn't save full resolution. - Loss Prevention: Your phone hasn't accessed a set of predetermined WIFI SSIDs in a set time period? Send a file to a known computer (Tailscale), email yourself, or something else with the device's coordinates. Add an easing function, check battery health, and whatever info you want. Hell, even take pictures. You can also make it play music or whatever to help find it. - Replicate Apple's Check In: - You can read GPS coordinates, SSIDs, and send SMS messages. This is a lot easier than you think - Enforce the actual WIFI SSID you want! - Phone sometimes jumping on the wrong SSID? Have no fear a few lines of code can tell it to fuck off! - I had this issue living in graduate housing where a university AP was near my unit. My phone would randomly decide to join the uni's connection despite sitting a few feet from my router and having better signal strength... - Install Tailscale and get access to your local machines remotely - Setup a raspberry pi at home and make an exit node that uses pihole (suggestion: check out systemd-nspawn)
BeetleB 10mo ago
> Root your damn phone! I did for many years, and finally gave up. With recent Androids, life in the rooted world is much more difficult: Netflix automatically drops to a lower quality tier. Many apps now just refuse to work on a rooted phone. But the worst thing: If I want to update the ROM to get the latest security benefits, I have to wipe my data. Surprised you didn't mention something like PiHole.
- mmh0000 10mo ago
  PiHole is fine, I guess. I'm not a huge fan of it personally because: - It's local network only, and while I can VPN home, I don't always want to - It has a high maintenance overhead, at least for me. It would block too much, then my wife would complain, and I'd have to spend time figuring out the magic rule that was breaking. - It's DNS-level blocking only, which is helpful but doesn't cover nearly as much ground as just uBlock can. - The DNS server has annoying preconfigured caching rules, that, while I can work around, it was just more effort for something I don't want to put more effort into. It's far easier to just install uBlock and tell my wife, if something breaks, just click the red shield icon, then click the giant power button.
  - BeetleB 10mo ago
    But doesn't uBlock only block stuff via the browser? I want to block ads from most apps.
    - mmh0000 10mo ago
      A hosts file will do the same as pihole, but locally. Buttttt, this goes back to my original post. DO NOT INSTALL MALWARE. Because that's my first rule, I don't use apps with ads. Generally, if I can't do a thing from a standard website, I probably don't need to be doing it. Otherwise, I have nothing against paying for a good app. For example, I LOVE AutoSleep.
      - BeetleB 10mo ago
        On Android, it sometimes is hard to find a paying app to replace an ads app. The ads model is much more lucrative, so developers go that route.
globular-toast 10mo ago
Yeah, it's crazy. Imagine if you let people into your home every day to slap advertising posters on to your walls. This is obnoxious shit and I don't understand how people tolerate it. I'm beginning to wonder if many people are not comfortable with simply being content. They actually want someone to come and tell them why they aren't happy. Ads do that for them.
Tepix 10mo ago
You paid for your hardware. But did you pay for all the services you use (like search engines, games, mail, other services)? If not, how do you think they should make money? (I don't like ads myself).
- nananana9 10mo ago
  > If not, how do you think they should make money? Figure it out or go bankrupt, for all I care. They're the ones who chose a business model directly adversarial to their users. Plenty of games, mail and other services work without ads already, I'm sure if we're one day lucky enough to see Google go belly up someone will fill that hole as well.

by mmh0000 10mo ago

suriya-ganesh 10mo ago

I used to think this. and I do run some of your suggestions. But how is the internet economy supposed to function without these micro transactions, in the form of ads. A lot of the abundance in software and technology we've seen in the past decade is possible only through this mechanism.

crims0n 10mo ago
I too struggle with this. It's not like people can't publish things on the web without ads. If the author/artist wanted it to be free, the ads wouldn't be there. So people who use ad blockers are either making a moral choice to consume a paid service for free, or are ignorant of how the internet economy works. There is an argument to be made that advertisements are so detrimental to the user experience and mental health of the recipient that they are morally justified in blocking them. However, that is debatable when you consider the alternative, which is that the medium you are consuming may not exist at all if not for the advertisements published along with it.
- deckard1 10mo ago
  The day I stopped giving half a fraction of a shit was the day Google served me malware in an ad. It was one of those fake "Download" buttons on a very popular open source tool. I wonder how many people have been harmed by that. > medium you are consuming may not exist at all I've realized that's not my problem. It's not like most of the internet is healthy anyway. It's psychologically manipulative and designed to keep you fearful, angry, spiteful, jealous, and above all, depressed. Fuck Google. Fuck Meta. And fuck every single last person working for them.
- tcfhgj 10mo ago
  If a medium doesn't exist because of the lack of ads and you think it's a loss, you should have paid for it (which overall is cheaper than paying though ads).
- BeetleB 10mo ago
  > If the author/artist wanted it to be free, the ads wouldn't be there. That's a logical leap. The artist can want both things. There are two payments involved: 1. The user pays with his time/attention 2. The ad company pays the site In most cases, the author doesn't mind getting the payments from number 2 even if you skip 1. Many, many sites explicitly point out they don't find a it a problem if you install an ad blocker. I don't have ads on my site. I'm OK with you consuming it for free. If I put ads one day, I'll still be OK with it, because I know I'll get some money regardless. It's practically free money. I will not miss the vast majority of sites I go to that serve ads if they all decided to shut down and/or go paid only. I should be spending a lot less time on the Internet/phone to begin with!
godelski 10mo ago
I struggle with this too. I struggle less when I remind myself of how much the tech sector has grown in the past 20 years. Not even just in power and control over critical infrastructure, but in wealth. Market Cap by Year Year 0 1 2 3 4 2025 Nvidia (4.6T) Apple (3.9T) Google (3.8T) Microsoft (3.5T) Amazon (2.6T) 2020 Apple (2.3T) Microsoft (1.7T) Amazon (1.6T) Google (1.2T) Meta (777M) 2015 Apple (598M) Google (534M) Microsoft (440M) Berkshire (324M) Exxon (325M) 2010 Exxon (369M) PetroChina (303M) Apple (296M) BHP (244M) Microsoft (239M) Some Billionaires... Year Musk Page Bezos Ellison Zuck Buffett Current 714B 257B 251B 244B 227B 148B 2024 195B 114B 194B 141B 177B 133B 2023 180B 79B 114B 107B 64B 106B 2022 219B 111B 171B 106B 67B 118B 2021 151B 92B 177B 93B 97B 96B 2020 25B 51B 113B 59B 55B 68B 2016 11B 35B 45B 44B 45B 61B - There are currently 19 people worth more than $100bn! - 4 of them are not American (Arnault, Ortega, Ambani, Helu) - 27 of the top 50 richest are non-Americans - 57 of the top 100 are non-Americans - Bill Gates was first worth $100bn in 1999, becoming the first centibillionaire It is hard to feel bad when we've seen such an explosion of wealth, especially over the last 5 years. I mean we had a fucking pandemic and all the big players doubled (or nearly) their market caps. We constantly hear about how these companies are having "money issues" but then keep announcing record profits and record bonuses to CEOs. > A lot of the abundance in software and technology we've seen in the past decade is possible only through this mechanism. So I don't agree that it is *ONLY* through this mechanism. Or that if it is that it needs to be done to this degree. It is hard for me personally to take pity when we're on the verge of having the first trillionaire. Honestly, I don't care about a wealth cap and I don't think there should be. It isn't a zero-sum game. But I do care about the wealth floor. It is hard to think of that floor when just the top 5 richest made $887B last year and $1.47T in the last 5 (2024 was a "good" year. Musk is 519B/689B so 368B/781B excluding) and average people are feeling the pressure. If times were good for the rest of us I honestly couldn't care less if Musk became a trillionaire. Good for him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But while wages are stagnant, while the job market is very competitive, we have major layoffs, while inflation is hitting average people hard, and while they keep pretending they can replace us all with AI; then hell fucking yeah I do care. It ends up being a question about what is more right, than what is right. I'd feel more conflicted if we all, or the majority of us, were benefiting from the advancements. But sympathy is difficult when we look at those numbers. https://companiesmarketcap.com/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by_market_capitalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by... https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/ https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/ P.S. here's a fun game for understanding how much a billion dollars is. It's difficult because that level of money generates so much interest. Imagine you have a billion dollars. You put it in an investment account that earns 10% yearly interest, compounded daily. On day 1 you need funds, so sit on your ass and do nothing. After than, on each weekday you hire a new employee at the cost of $250k/yr and is also paid daily. How many employees can you hire before you have less than a billion dollars? There's a lot of variants you can run on this kind of thought experiment and I think they're helpful for understanding that level of wealth.
kibwen 10mo ago
> But how is the internet economy supposed to function If the existence of a given industry requires the annihilation of individual privacy and the elimination of free thought, then that industry does not deserve to exist. Kill the ad industry.
- suriya-ganesh 10mo ago
  And in the process kill all the possibilities the internet has empowered? Medicine being better delivered, all the research that has been accelerated because of reducing compute and storage costs, the list is infinite.
  - sumalamana 10mo ago
    Yes, kill it all. None of that is worth the panopticon that is being built.
  - nananana9 10mo ago
    You will need to provide stronger justification how "medicine being delivered" hinges upon me watching a 60 second unskippable ad before a YouTube video.
tcfhgj 10mo ago
Other types of micro transactions and payments are possible
akersten 10mo ago
Behavioral (invisible) analytics alone is the secret trillion dollar industry that online advertisers want to distract you from by focusing on the morality of ad blocking. A good blocker should block many of those scripts too, but there's no stopping server-side analytics at scale.
OkayPhysicist 10mo ago
Most things worth doing on the internet are either A) paid for B) garner enough good will that they can be supported via some polite pan-handling or C) cheap enough to operate that it's a perfectly acceptable hobby expense for 1 person in your community. Streaming services and E-commerce are the classic examples for A. Wikipedia is the quintessential example for B. C includes pretty much all the social outlets: Web forums, a Matrix server, private game servers (public game servers fall under A), blogs, etc.

godelski 10mo ago

> iOS: - uBlock Origin now exists - Settings > Apps > Safari > (General) Extensions > uBlock Origin Lite https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id6745342698 - Alternatively, use Orion Browser (Kagi) - Pros: a bit better ad blocking - Cons: more buggy https://apps.apple.com/us/app/orion-browser-by-kagi/id1484498200 I'd also recommend installing Firefox, logging in, but use Safari. That way you can export a tab to Firefox where you can still get the send tabs feature. > Firefox as a whole: Also check out BetterFox - https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox Side Note: Phones are also general computer systems. Fuck this bullshit of pretending they're anything less. If you don't have control over your computer, your computer is broken. You don't have to be forced to adhere to Big Tech's short comings. > Andriod: - Install Termux (from F-droid, not Playstore) - It is trivial to write scripts to handle a lot of things that work through third parties. Less than 100 lines. I find these scripts *better* than many app alternatives and infinitely more trustworthy. We're on HN, everyone here should be able to write basic scripts. Hell, the AI could probably do these things easily (make it use functions! Bash needs functions!) Some ideas to show scope of what you can do: - Automated backups: just a fucking rsync to your folders (god fuck Apple, why can't I rsync my pictures on an iPhone!!!!) - I have my script check for WiFi. If on my SSID I rsync locally. If not, I go through Tailscale. If not on WiFi I don't backup, minimizing my data usage. I'm lazy and just set the cron job to run once a day, making each backup usually pretty small but can cause larger backups when traveling - rsync can also remove files from your phone if you're concerned about storage. - You can backup to multiple locations! Even if you use google drive or whatever you should still rsync to your local machine. Remember, Google photos doesn't save full resolution. - Loss Prevention: Your phone hasn't accessed a set of predetermined WIFI SSIDs in a set time period? Send a file to a known computer (Tailscale), email yourself, or something else with the device's coordinates. Add an easing function, check battery health, and whatever info you want. Hell, even take pictures. You can also make it play music or whatever to help find it. - Replicate Apple's Check In: - You can read GPS coordinates, SSIDs, and send SMS messages. This is a lot easier than you think - Enforce the actual WIFI SSID you want! - Phone sometimes jumping on the wrong SSID? Have no fear a few lines of code can tell it to fuck off! - I had this issue living in graduate housing where a university AP was near my unit. My phone would randomly decide to join the uni's connection despite sitting a few feet from my router and having better signal strength... - Install Tailscale and get access to your local machines remotely - Setup a raspberry pi at home and make an exit node that uses pihole (suggestion: check out systemd-nspawn)

BeetleB 10mo ago

> Root your damn phone! I did for many years, and finally gave up. With recent Androids, life in the rooted world is much more difficult: Netflix automatically drops to a lower quality tier. Many apps now just refuse to work on a rooted phone. But the worst thing: If I want to update the ROM to get the latest security benefits, I have to wipe my data. Surprised you didn't mention something like PiHole.

mmh0000 10mo ago
PiHole is fine, I guess. I'm not a huge fan of it personally because: - It's local network only, and while I can VPN home, I don't always want to - It has a high maintenance overhead, at least for me. It would block too much, then my wife would complain, and I'd have to spend time figuring out the magic rule that was breaking. - It's DNS-level blocking only, which is helpful but doesn't cover nearly as much ground as just uBlock can. - The DNS server has annoying preconfigured caching rules, that, while I can work around, it was just more effort for something I don't want to put more effort into. It's far easier to just install uBlock and tell my wife, if something breaks, just click the red shield icon, then click the giant power button.
- BeetleB 10mo ago
  But doesn't uBlock only block stuff via the browser? I want to block ads from most apps.
  - mmh0000 10mo ago
    A hosts file will do the same as pihole, but locally. Buttttt, this goes back to my original post. DO NOT INSTALL MALWARE. Because that's my first rule, I don't use apps with ads. Generally, if I can't do a thing from a standard website, I probably don't need to be doing it. Otherwise, I have nothing against paying for a good app. For example, I LOVE AutoSleep.
    - BeetleB 10mo ago
      On Android, it sometimes is hard to find a paying app to replace an ads app. The ads model is much more lucrative, so developers go that route.

globular-toast 10mo ago

Yeah, it's crazy. Imagine if you let people into your home every day to slap advertising posters on to your walls. This is obnoxious shit and I don't understand how people tolerate it. I'm beginning to wonder if many people are not comfortable with simply being content. They actually want someone to come and tell them why they aren't happy. Ads do that for them.

Tepix 10mo ago

You paid for your hardware. But did you pay for all the services you use (like search engines, games, mail, other services)? If not, how do you think they should make money? (I don't like ads myself).

nananana9 10mo ago
> If not, how do you think they should make money? Figure it out or go bankrupt, for all I care. They're the ones who chose a business model directly adversarial to their users. Plenty of games, mail and other services work without ads already, I'm sure if we're one day lucky enough to see Google go belly up someone will fill that hole as well.