Google Chrome is preparing a widget with shopping ads on the new tab page?

https://techdows.com/2020/10/shopping-ads-on-chrome-new-tab-page.html

by rbinv • 6 years ago

119 101 6 years ago

saagarjha• 6 years ago

Google clarified these are not “ads.” The company points out that they only source free shopping listings for this widget and that the content is not sponsored.

I'm not sure I understand how these aren't ads? In any case, is this something that literally anyone asked for?

ssorallen• 6 years ago

The title in the screenshot says “Continue search for Office Chairs,” which sounds like it shows recent Google searches that have significant presence in the “Shopping” tab of google.com. Sure these aren’t “ads,” like the article says, but if they are links to Google Shopping then they indirectly generate revenue for Google by sending you back to google.com.

Agreed... who asked for this?

shostack• 6 years ago

It's sort of like video search results. I search for a question. I get a result that looks like a video and not an ad. I click the link and get taken to YouTube where... an ad plays. And likely generates a higher RPM for Google than a text ad.

intellirogue2• 6 years ago

Yeah. This doesn't seem like something that users would actually want, so there has to be a financial incentive for Google to do it. Perhaps they start off as "not ads" in order to minimise complaints about the feature, but intend to gradually allow companies to e.g. pay for prime spot.

eznzt2• 6 years ago

It's like when Mozilla says that the "Pocket recommended articles" they show on the new tab page are not ads.

danShumway• 6 years ago

For the average person, the definition of an "ad" isn't contingent on whether or not Google is getting paid for it. For the average person, a promotional 3rd-party text that is trying to get them to buy an office chair is an ad.

It's like Google claiming that if they give you free credits for adwords that it suddenly stops counting as an ad. Users don't care.

dna_polymerase• 6 years ago

These aren’t ads in that they directly profit Google’s baseline just by displaying them. Google profits from increased ad-spend on search result sites that those things link to. If however you think every product mention is an ad, of course these are ads.

Either way, these things shouldn’t happen. Browsers should enable everyone to use the web.

xnyan• 6 years ago

These are unsolicited offers to buy a good. In what world are they not ads?

ocdtrekkie7• 6 years ago

is this something that literally anyone asked for

Google executives probably. This is what you get when you hand control of the entire web platform over to an ad company. And the only way to stop it is to depose Chrome as the dominant platform.

And no, that does not mean switch to Brave or Edge. Chrome forks by and large fall in line with Chrome's choices. Firefox or Safari are the only choices.

_Understated_• 6 years ago

And no, that does not mean switch to Brave or Edge. Chrome forks by and large fall in line with Chrome's choices

Not sure I'd agree with that.

Of course, Edge is built on Chromium, but Microsoft are free to make their own changes, and to reverse any changes from Google that they don't like.

So, in this case, Edge can give you all the performance characteristics of Google's own Chrome browser but without the ads... win-win I reckon.

dsissitka• 6 years ago

And no, that does not mean switch to Brave or Edge. Chrome forks by and large fall in line with Chrome's choices. Firefox or Safari are the only choices.

What choices? After seeing how they responded to Manifest v3 Mozilla seems pretty spineless compared to Brave.

TrinaryWorksToo• 6 years ago

So we're basically back to ad-supported Opera then?

simonsarris• 6 years ago

You can replace that page via extensions, which I did long ago to this one that shows scenes from Google Earth:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/earth-view-from-go...

(I did this to be intentional with new tabs instead of occasionally mindlessly clicking one of the "most visited" links over and over)

donmcronald• 6 years ago

You can also replace it with Edge or Firefox.

fbn79• 6 years ago

Or Chromium

anoncake• 6 years ago

Until Google removes the APIs these extensions need for made-up privacy and security reasons, like it's doing to ad blockers.

codazoda• 6 years ago

Or they stop supporting extensions all together.

Yver• 6 years ago

I replaced mine with a static HTML page via a custom extension loaded in "Developer mode". It only takes a small JSON file for the manifest and the HTML page itself.

gondolf• 6 years ago

Update: Google clarified these are not “ads.”

Not yet.

wlesieutre• 6 years ago

They're already ads. It's just instead of being 3rd party ads, they're ads for Google Search pages.

Every hit to those search pages makes Google money, and these "widgets" are ads for search pages.

netsharc• 6 years ago

Google bragged when they were new, that it was better than other search engines ("portals") because it just had the search text field and 2 buttons, and no articles with pictures and attention-grabbing headlines in their home page.

And now? The freaking Google Search app on Android has "trending searches" under the search bar. There's an "Explore" button that shows you articles/videos it thinks you like because it knows what you googled/watched on YouTube.

I'm so glad there are still settings to turn these off (from the default of on!), but the changes pissed me off when I saw them for the 1st time.

aasasd• 6 years ago

Weirdly enough, this actually corresponds to my habits, if I understand the workings right. I tend to open a dozen tabs when looking for a product, with different models, reviews, and second-hand prices. Then I get tired of sitting down, go do something else, do work, get sidetracked into researching other things, and when I get back to the topic of the product I have fifty more tabs and it's time to nuke the whole mess. To start anew, I would again go to those listings on local analogues of Google Product Search/Amazon and Craigslist, so I guess linking to them would sorta help.

netfl02• 6 years ago

I don’t understand how folks are still putting up with Google. The only thing I need a replacement for is YouTube, that’s where the content is.

SwiftyBug2• 6 years ago

It seems that you replaced Google Calendar. What do you use instead?

unhammer• 6 years ago

Not OP, but I use Fastmail's calendar

ocdtrekkie7• 6 years ago

Google Calendar really has nothing inherently advantageous over every other calendar solution on every other email app. Calendar invites are pretty much a universal standard, and it's perfectly easy to interoperate other people's Google Calendar with your not-Google calendar.

netfl02• 6 years ago

I use office 365, it works great.

FandangoRanger3• 6 years ago

Just use youtube-dl (it still works and will be forked) to suck the content you want out of Youtube. Use Tor Browser to screw Google out of your precious precious data as well.

fsflover3• 6 years ago

Not much content there yet, but https://joinpeertube.org

falcolas3• 6 years ago

Nostalgia for a time when Chrome was a breath of fresh air, and when Google was a creative haven funded by ads.

skinkestek• 6 years ago

The only thing I need a replacement for is YouTube, that’s where the content is.

Rumble seems to be growing.

Hippocrates• 6 years ago

Whatever the motivation, this is heinous.

Why do people jump to replace safari on their laptops, and even their iPhones (often with chrome)?

Even before I became aware, and strongly opposed to Google's advertising and privacy practices, I had been a Chrome user. I was on a long road trip and was frantically trying to solve a P1 for my company. My new laptop battery was was chunking downward at a staggering rate and I felt like I was trying to diffuse a bomb. I dug into the energy metrics and found that the culprit was, by and large, Chrome. Switching to Safari has made a huge improvement for me and I actually don't remember now why I was using chrome in the first place.

Firefox and brave are excellent too, though they aren't default in the Apple ecosystem. I just don't understand why the draw to chrome and why it still commands such a large market share.

MikusR2• 6 years ago

I just checked 6 laptops. None have Safari available. Also checked three smartphones - no Safari possible there also.

benbristow• 6 years ago

Were you by any chance looking at 6 non-Mac laptops and 3 non-iOS smartphones?

falcolas3• 6 years ago

The sentence reads just as well with 'Edge' in place of Safari, and they call out iPhones quite explicitly.

The snark does not take the parent's comment in good faith.

eznzt2• 6 years ago

We get it, you are poor.

hesarenu• 6 years ago

Why bother changing in iOS devices. Its just a skin on safari engine. No choices there.

solarkraft• 6 years ago

Integration. Your history is synced, your bookmarks are synced, your passwords are synced, I think your tabs can be too.

MattGaiser• 6 years ago

Mostly because I don't want to re-learn where buttons and settings are and how the dev tools work.

Timpy• 6 years ago

Firefox is my daily driver but I keep Chromium installed, sometimes I want FF dev tools and sometimes I want Chromium.

moksly• 6 years ago

I’m an avid safari user on iOS and Mac, and I suspect I’ll be an avid Edge user on Microsoft now that it’s basically a better chrome.

I can see why people would want to switch it up. Especially if you use different operating systems, and want to synchronise your browser experience between them. Not having things synced has actually been a major advantage for me, as I use my phone and Mac very differently than I use my windows devices, but I can see why you wouldn’t want to run safari on Windows/Linux.

Hell, these days I gotta say that I can see why you wouldn’t want to run Safari at all. It’s terrible at Disney plus, and others, and while that may be a Disney plus and others problem, that’s still technology that doesn’t work right out the box like it’s supposed to.

I do think the fact that the new Edge is so good is going to eat into Google’s market. Exactly because of people like you and me who aren’t going to bother unless we have to.

gxx• 6 years ago

I'd like to switch to Edge but there is apparently no way to have it default to opening links in a new tab:

https://www.tenforums.com/browsers-email/67169-can-i-make-op...

I know about Command-Click to open in a new tab (Mac) but I want thie to be the default. It's crazy that Edge does not support this because every other browser does. (If someone from Micthe Edge team happens to read this post, please fix it.)

52-6F-62• 6 years ago

I use Safari and Firefox nearly exclusively. There is the odd page I use chrome for due to compatibility issues, but for the most part I really prefer the former two. I, on a daily basis, have 4-7 Safari windows (work and new home-hunting) with tabs open all over the place as well as a Firefox full screen with another series of tabs (personal tasks). Never any problems.

gruez• 6 years ago

Why do people jump to replace safari on their laptops, and even their iPhones (often with chrome)?

totally unsupported conjecture: because to non-technical people, chrome is "the internet". It also didn't hurt that it was evangelized by many of their technical friends/family members/coworkers for being "the best", and that google bugged you to install it on many of their sites.

toper-centage• 6 years ago

For a long time it was a indeed the best in many regards. I've always been a Firefox fan and users, but for a while I had to admit that continuing with Firefox meant making big sacrifices. Today, those sacrifices are only the rare website that was never tested on anything but chrome or brings my 8 cores to a halt.

mc32• 6 years ago

Some add ons and plugins don’t work with Safari. Thus people are enticed to switch out of convenience.

robotnikman• 6 years ago

I think the fact that Google advertises the Chrome browser on all their major services plays a part in its adoption.

Funny enough, when I sometimes go to the google search page in Firefox, a pop up appears saying I should switch to Chrome because it saves battery life

abrowne2• 6 years ago

Not a solution for most people, but if you didn't know, it's very easy to replace the new tab page with a custom one using a minimal, local extension. In your manifest.json include

    "chrome_url_overrides": { "newtab": "ntp.html" }

and if you want it to work in incognito tabs

    "incognito": "split"

(you will also need to go to your extensions's detail page and flip on "Allow in incognito").

Then create your ntp.html page (can be named whatever, just change the json to match), with CSS file(s) and image(s) as needed. I made a simple flexbox "speed dial" page with sites I specify rather than changing based on some kind of "frecency".

In chrome://extensions/, flip the "Developer mode" switch and then click "Load unpacked" and choose your extension's folder.

renke1• 6 years ago

I wonder if one can rely on this working forever. I might have a product idea that relies on being able to change the new tab page, but I am kind of afraid Chrome forbids it one of these days.

abrowne2• 6 years ago

There seem to be a lot of extensions that do it, with nice pictures or wherever, so it seems unlikely, but you never know.

erikrothoff• 6 years ago

It's quite a common extension use-case so I dobut it. It's also hard to abuse unlike certain tab related permissions, which is what they are mostly cracking down on.

frankjr• 6 years ago

If you want to participate in the discussion about this feature, you can go ahead and comment on it in the tracking issue over at [0]. Oh wait, you cannot - it's set to private. It's almost as if Google didn't want any input from the community about Chromium, the open source project. Weird.

More seriously though, it seems the feature calls [1] to get the list of products to show on the new page. The call is made every time the new page is opened as long as Google is your search provider and the user is signed in (not sure if to the browser or Google services).

[0] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=113085...

[1] https://www.google.com/async/newtab_shopping_tasks

po1nter2• 6 years ago

I get a "permission denied" on the first link. guess they don't want other opinions on the subject.

flattone• 6 years ago

Oh cool! I hate when i forget that i could be shopping.

FandangoRanger3• 6 years ago

I'm still using IceCat, I will continue to do so. Chrome's ugly, something about the font rendering and smooth scrolling is really off-putting, plus I just know everything I do is being reported to the Google mothership.

marketingPro2• 6 years ago

We don't need an anti trust breakup of big tech. Their own decisions are causing them to lose customers.

I'm doing the unthinkable, I cut half my Google usage. No more music, no more photos, no more Android Chrome, significantly less Google search.

It's happening, although I feel like anti-consumer practices hurts Google more than Apple. Maybe my original claim about not needing anti trust is a bit simple.

ocdtrekkie7• 6 years ago

We don't need an anti trust breakup of big tech.

This is a really bad take. The amount of Google's power and control isn't something a handful of HN users switching to Firefox can fix. Most people literally don't realize there's alternatives. There's a silent majority feeding the Google beast, and they aren't going to switch from the defaults. Tech industry members can set the tone, we can spread good behavior to our friends and family, but the government is needed to move the majority.

Bear in mind, everyone hates Microsoft (seems like sometimes anyways), they did face antitrust law, and still in 2020, they're one of the world's most powerful and valuable companies, and everyone still uses Windows at work. Which is to say, if we want to take Google down, it needs to come from every direction, and it needs to be incredibly harsh. And once Google is no longer running the web, stronger privacy and consumer protection laws need to be passed to make sure it's understood that behavior like Google's will never be tolerated again.

zepto• 6 years ago

As I remember it, a major reason why Chrome became so dominant is that the tech community fell in love with it and recommended it unreservedly to everyone else.

That same process can be reversed.

0goel0• 6 years ago

Just switch to brave. It's chrome without google

beervirus• 6 years ago

What is it gonna take for y’all to switch back to Firefox?

caymanjim2• 6 years ago

A UI that doesn't suck.

po1nter2• 6 years ago

disclaimer: I'm a Firefox user.

I'm genuinely interested in why you think Firefox's UI sucks? What could be done better?

IMO it's more customizable than Chrome's which is a big plus for me.

intellirogue2• 6 years ago

Mozilla to fix the years-old issue (massive CPU usage and battery drain) using it on macOS with a high DPI display.

qwnp• 6 years ago

For those who are required (or prefer) to use a Chromium-based browser, you might want to give ungoogled-chromium [0] a shot.

I switched recently based on a recommendation from a HN reader, and so far it has been a surprisingly seamless transition. I have yet to encounter any issues aside from being unable to install extensions directly from the Chrome Web Store, which was easily remedied by first installing the chromium-web-store extension [1].

My biggest gripe is that there are no 'official' binaries, so you'd either have to build your own or trust the user-submitted builds, though apparently the project owner is currently working on setting up an official build server [2].

[0] https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

[1] https://github.com/NeverDecaf/chromium-web-store

[2] https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium/issues/1198

ant6n• 6 years ago

Is there a way to get this on chrome os?

cmdshiftf4• 6 years ago

I quite literally laughed out loud.

Well done.

jabroni_salad• 6 years ago

I recall this specific 'continue searching for....' appearing in Assistant in a previous iteration, back when it had magic widgets and wasn't just a chatbot. Are other widgets coming to this space?

SanchoPanda• 6 years ago

Dear Chrome team,.

I'll give you this and one more if I can have igoogle back.

Love,

SanchoPanda

rbinv• 6 years ago

I was going to recommend Netvibes as a viable iGoogle alternative, but it seems that it has become quite "enterprisey". I, too, miss iGoogle (which ironically would be much better suited for ads like these).

brianzelip• 6 years ago

Stop using chrome.

crazygringo3• 6 years ago

I mean, Google's a business and Chrome is free so I'm not exactly surprised.

But I've used the "Empty New Tab Page" for I guess something like 7 years [1]. I don't like seeing any junk on a new tab page, I don't care if it's shopping or not.

Now if they take away the ability to customize the new tab page, then I'd be bothered...

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/empty-new-tab-page...

fsflover3• 6 years ago

Now if they take away the ability to customize the new tab page, then I'd be bothered...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...

crazygringo3• 6 years ago

Oh please.

This is just a consumer product from a for-profit corporation. It's an ad.

Comparing it to a situation where millions of people were murdered is incredibly offensive.

Please don't blithely throw around comparisons like that. It doesn't help anything, and is incredibly disrespectful.

haberdasher• 6 years ago

Shout out to a great alternative new-tab page: Goal Board: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/goal-board-vision-...

ravenstine• 6 years ago

Google owns Chrome and always have, and they're an advertising mill. What did you people expect? This may be one of the least worst things that Google has done to Chrome.

FreakyT• 6 years ago

Google's continued meddling with adding useless content on the new tab page is what pushed me to Chromium Edge. (The weird little news snippets on the bottom with no way to disable them was the first of these poorly-conceived experiments.)

Edge has a ton of awful content on its new tab page too, but there's an option to turn it off which makes all the difference.

TheCoelacanth• 6 years ago

What do you expect when you use a browser made by an advertising company?

onion2k• 6 years ago

It's not the case for Google, obviously, but sticking random adverts in prominent places in a desperate attempt to increase revenue is the sort of thing web businesses do immediately before they go bust, and this has exactly the same optics to me.

tareqak• 6 years ago

Does Google know that the US Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against them a week ago? https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-monop...

siproprio• 6 years ago

This is just horrible!

And the bug reporter issue is blocked!

PokemonNoGo• 6 years ago

I really really enjoy https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/earth-view-from-go... by Google to show a new view of earth in the new tab. Sometimes my mind wonders but it's very enjoyable.

dang• 6 years ago

Url changed from https://9to5google.com/2020/10/23/google-chrome-shopping-new..., which points to this.

Google Chrome is preparing a widget with shopping ads on the new tab page?

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