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Kind of ironic that a page that offers to hide adsense on gmail uses adsense on its own site to support itself. It's almost as if they knew gmail couldn't exist

Kind of ironic that a page that offers to hide adsense on gmail uses adsense on its own site to support itself. It's almost as if they knew gmail couldn't exist without adsense and yet still offer their users to hide those ads while cashing on adsense themselves. Maybe the right word is shameless, not ironic.

neals 13y ago
I don't know. Words like business and freedom come to mind.
- patrickaljord 13y ago
  Oh sure, they're free to do so (not sure the gmail TOS allows scrapping ads though). But I'm also free to call them up on that :)
ozh 13y ago
Ironic or shameless or whatever, this goes against Adsense TOS: you cannot promote a service of theirs (here: Gmail) and explain how to hack that service. I was recently "kindly" asked by Google(had 48 hours to comply) to remove Adsense from a innocuous post on my blog because said post was just a couple lines explaining how I used some online service to download a video from Youtube (which, apparently, hurts their TOS and feelings)
- yelnatz 13y ago
  I don't know if you can compare this to what you did. This seems more like a client side hiding and moving things around with CSS/javascript.
  - gcb0 13y ago
    And his just like client side moving things from the cache directory to the download directory...
rickhanlonii 13y ago
I don't see the irony. If I'm Florian Bersier, the creator, and I believe that it's ultimately the users choice to manipulate the the UI--up to and including removing ads--then I can still use those same ads on my site without contradiction as long as I also believe that users have the right to remove those ads as well. The contradiction, as I see it, would come if he made somehow it impossible for users to remove ads on his site while presenting a product that removes those same ads.
- Killswitch 13y ago
  Cool, I'm gonna write an extension that removes ads from your page, and encourage people to use it when using your site... I don't know why people do this... Google provides Gmail and other services free of charge because of Adsense, don't ruin that by facilitating the removal of their ads... Here's a great trade off, don't want to see ads in your email? Don't use Gmail. This is why we can't have nice things.
  - xpressyoo 13y ago
    Not sure ad-avoiders should be always seen as content-killers. I think this is a bit more complex than that. A good read: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/10/is-ad-avoidance-a-problem.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/10/is-ad...
    - Killswitch 13y ago
      Avoiding ads and completely removing ads are two different things. Avoiding ads is just not paying attention to them, which most people who give their content and services away free of charge in exchange for displaying ads are still making money from those users, even if the user doesn't think they are... CPM ads... Sure the quality of payouts on CPM is based also on click through ratios, but even at the lost CPM it's still something. Now completely removing the ad using JavaScript also kills that CPM revenue. These people are leeches. I see removing ads on a site the same way I see pirating movies... Don't want to pay for the cost of a movie ticket because they're so outrageous? Then wait for the movie to come out on DVD, get cheaper, and possibly hit the TV and watch it then... But don't go out and pirate the movie because you feel entitled to watching it free of charge. Same thing with Gmail, or any service that is ad supported. You are not entitled to using that service free of charge... You are entitled to using it by enduring the advertisements. Removing them is costing the provider money without even recouping a bit of it. You come to my site, watch a video or view a gallery of pictures or read a bunch of text, whatever... Still costs me money, If I make a penny off you, it's better than nothing... If I make a penny off every user who visits my site, and 100 people come, that's a dollar a day, $30 a month... Paying the bare minimum at least the cost of the VPS I run to give you that content... Completely remove my ads and guess what... I am now paying $30/mo and it's no longer feasible for me to entertain or offer you something without charging you for it... Guess what? Service gets shut down, and then you spend your time griping about how all the good free services end up shutting down and that you wish you could have donated or even paid a small monthly fee to keep it alive... But in reality, all you had to do was endure a simple Adsense block that wasn't even intrusive, but you felt entitled to view the content or use the service while blocking it... And now your service is gone.

neals 13y ago

I don't know. Words like business and freedom come to mind.

patrickaljord 13y ago
Oh sure, they're free to do so (not sure the gmail TOS allows scrapping ads though). But I'm also free to call them up on that :)

ozh 13y ago

Ironic or shameless or whatever, this goes against Adsense TOS: you cannot promote a service of theirs (here: Gmail) and explain how to hack that service. I was recently "kindly" asked by Google(had 48 hours to comply) to remove Adsense from a innocuous post on my blog because said post was just a couple lines explaining how I used some online service to download a video from Youtube (which, apparently, hurts their TOS and feelings)

yelnatz 13y ago
I don't know if you can compare this to what you did. This seems more like a client side hiding and moving things around with CSS/javascript.
- gcb0 13y ago
  And his just like client side moving things from the cache directory to the download directory...

rickhanlonii 13y ago

I don't see the irony. If I'm Florian Bersier, the creator, and I believe that it's ultimately the users choice to manipulate the the UI--up to and including removing ads--then I can still use those same ads on my site without contradiction as long as I also believe that users have the right to remove those ads as well. The contradiction, as I see it, would come if he made somehow it impossible for users to remove ads on his site while presenting a product that removes those same ads.

Killswitch 13y ago
Cool, I'm gonna write an extension that removes ads from your page, and encourage people to use it when using your site... I don't know why people do this... Google provides Gmail and other services free of charge because of Adsense, don't ruin that by facilitating the removal of their ads... Here's a great trade off, don't want to see ads in your email? Don't use Gmail. This is why we can't have nice things.
- xpressyoo 13y ago
  Not sure ad-avoiders should be always seen as content-killers. I think this is a bit more complex than that. A good read: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/10/is-ad-avoidance-a-problem.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/10/is-ad...
  - Killswitch 13y ago
    Avoiding ads and completely removing ads are two different things. Avoiding ads is just not paying attention to them, which most people who give their content and services away free of charge in exchange for displaying ads are still making money from those users, even if the user doesn't think they are... CPM ads... Sure the quality of payouts on CPM is based also on click through ratios, but even at the lost CPM it's still something. Now completely removing the ad using JavaScript also kills that CPM revenue. These people are leeches. I see removing ads on a site the same way I see pirating movies... Don't want to pay for the cost of a movie ticket because they're so outrageous? Then wait for the movie to come out on DVD, get cheaper, and possibly hit the TV and watch it then... But don't go out and pirate the movie because you feel entitled to watching it free of charge. Same thing with Gmail, or any service that is ad supported. You are not entitled to using that service free of charge... You are entitled to using it by enduring the advertisements. Removing them is costing the provider money without even recouping a bit of it. You come to my site, watch a video or view a gallery of pictures or read a bunch of text, whatever... Still costs me money, If I make a penny off you, it's better than nothing... If I make a penny off every user who visits my site, and 100 people come, that's a dollar a day, $30 a month... Paying the bare minimum at least the cost of the VPS I run to give you that content... Completely remove my ads and guess what... I am now paying $30/mo and it's no longer feasible for me to entertain or offer you something without charging you for it... Guess what? Service gets shut down, and then you spend your time griping about how all the good free services end up shutting down and that you wish you could have donated or even paid a small monthly fee to keep it alive... But in reality, all you had to do was endure a simple Adsense block that wasn't even intrusive, but you felt entitled to view the content or use the service while blocking it... And now your service is gone.