Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.horizont.at%2Fhome%2Fdetail%2Fgoogle-ist-geldgeber-von-adblock-plus.html&act=url

by cowchase • 13 years ago

426 233 13 years ago

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naner• 13 years ago

I thought this was assumed to be the case when AdBlock added the "Allow non-intrusive advertising" feature?

scotth• 13 years ago

Is this a bad thing? AdBlock has made no promises to me, and it continues to be useful. The day it doesn't, I uninstall it and find an alternative.

bwy• 13 years ago

That explains Google sponsored links showing up again. Oh well, that's just another filter I'll have to add.

lfcode• 13 years ago

There is a setting to disable whitelisting ,so you don't have to add the filter manually.

hobs• 13 years ago

And it is in a very obvious place, even though I dislike the whitelisting, they did tell me about it and make it clear how to change it. I see it as the adware installers in legit software you can uninstall, it is there to catch the unwary and make money off of them.

jpdoctor• 13 years ago

Quick ref to get rid of Google Ads (and some others too) on Adblock Plus:

FOR CHROME:

Go to "Settings"

Find Extensions in the list on the left

Find AdBlock, select "Options"

Click the tab "Filter Lists"

Uncheck: "Allow some non-intrusive advertising"

FOR FIREFOX:

Go to the Firefox menu in the upper left corner

Select "Add-ons"

Select "Extensions"

Find Adblock Plus, select Options.

Find the "Filter Preferences" Button

Select the tab "Filter Subscriptions"

Uncheck: "Allow some non-intrusive advertising"

cake• 13 years ago

And don't forget to support the websites that you visit the most by whitelisting them.

programminggeek2• 13 years ago

Um, that's dumb unless you plan on clicking their ads. Seriously, just showing a CPC ad doesn't help them. Showing a CPM ad doesn't help much either if they are getting $5-10 CPM. You literally could just pay them $5 or $10 and be more valuable than whitelisting them.

CrazedGeek• 13 years ago

Alternatively, for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/

zobzu2• 13 years ago

And that's why I used adblock-edge as well :)

kryten• 13 years ago

Thanks for posting this. Much better than adblock plus I.e. Much faster and more moral.

kefs• 13 years ago

For those curious, AdBlock Edge is a fork of ABP before they decided to add 'Acceptable Ads'.

1qaz2wsx3edc• 13 years ago

Just to clarify, on chrome if you're using AdBlock (vs Adblock Plus), there is no such options. :)

gcb03• 13 years ago

Still shocks me that people on this site uses those lame extrensions (which are a security risk no less)

someonewhocares.org/hosts_zero/

Save this hosts file in your house's router and be safely free of advertising, shock sites, tracking.... On ALL devices

With no added attack vector as with an extension and not limited to one browser in one device

medde• 13 years ago

I use a browser that blocks nothing and one that blocks almost everything. (when something breaks, sometimes it's easier to load it in a stock browser)

driverdan2• 13 years ago

How exactly are ad blocking extensions a security risk?

Blocking at the domain level gives you no control. What if you need to see what a site looks like without ads blocked? I have a few of my own content sites that use ads. By blocking outside of the browser I wouldn't be able to see what they look like to other users.

gingerlime• 13 years ago

This doesn't however block things like google ads inside Gmail, which ad blocker browser extensions typically can and do block.

furyofantares• 13 years ago

Would you also be shocked if there are people who make no attempt to block ads at all? I would not be shocked by that, but I'd guess not blocking ads at all is a greater security risk than running ABP.

ferdo• 13 years ago

Many thanks for the hosts file. I always prefer a DIY solution as opposed to trusting others.

I'll pass this on.

ubojan• 13 years ago

it's useful to have extension if you want to disable it and temporarily see ads; also it's easy to whitelist ads on particular sites/pages - there are non intrusive and useful ads.

mcovey• 13 years ago

I use this but it does have the disadvantage of being difficult to disable when you are getting issues because of blocked ads.

I also use Fanboy's adblock list ( https://www.fanboy.co.nz/ ) in Opera which requires no browser add-on, it's a feature of the web browser (RIP).

takluyver2• 13 years ago

On the other hand, I'm really pleased to find that they're whitelisting some ads by default, although I'm disappointed that money factors into it.

I use ad blockers, because so much of the web is a hideous mess without them. But I'm somewhat conflicted about it, because I know that a lot of sites depend on ad revenue. I see this as a kind of collective agreement with advertisers: I don't mind adverts, but I don't want them flashing all over my screen when I'm trying to get stuff done.

wallunit8• 13 years ago

I don't think that you have any reason to feel disappointed, unless you have donated a significant amount of money to Adblock Plus. And even then, just disable that feature.

After all that's the way Adblock Plus makes most of its money, needed to develop the browser extension, port it to new platforms, maintaining and hosting the filter lists (which by the way are also used by every other ad blocker). I doubt that if Adblock Plus wouldn't have done this step, it would have ever been ported to other browsers and platforms, and that the filter lists (as mentioned, also used by other ad blockers, like AdBlock), would have been that well curated as of today.

So I don't see anything wrong with that. Or does anybody complain, that most free Android apps show adds, and you have to buy the paid version, to get rid of them? No, everybody understands that this is the way they make money. The only difference in case of Adblock Plus is, that you don't actually have to give them money, but just have to disable a checkbox in the options.

gtirloni3• 13 years ago

I add the websites I care to the whitelist so they can benefit from the ad revenue.

oneeyedpigeon2• 13 years ago

Can advertisers tell whether their ad has been blocked via Adblock, et al? Because, if not, you really shouldn't worry about using a blocker.

perlpimp• 13 years ago

Very true. Imagine every commercial entity that delivered something to your place - would plaster some sort of advertisement poster.

Completely unacceptable. I think the answer is a permission based advertising. have a button on every website that turns on Ads. this way engagement would be higher at least IMO.

adPothier• 13 years ago

Combined with AdBlock, I use Ghostery[1], which is a nice add-on (Chrome/FF/Safari/Opera/IE) : it blocks any javascript from ads networks, but also from analytics, trackers, socials plugins (and more) , and also cookies from the same trackers. Everything is configurable per-tracker and per-website.

It's quite a must-have if you don't want to be the product on the Internet. And a good failover over Ad-block.

[1]. http://www.ghostery.com/

StacyC• 13 years ago

Agreed on Ghostery. I have been using it for quite a while and it seems to work well.

guelo2• 13 years ago

The Ghostery extension tracks you and sells the data to ad companies, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5897682

mparramon• 13 years ago

Another alternative is blacklisting sites via your hosts file, which means it applies to all applications and not only the browser. Also, it works in any UNIX-based OS: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

kevingadd3• 13 years ago

As long as they're only whitelisting text ads, I don't think I mind. Even image ads that aren't animated are okay with me if they aren't offensive. The only reason I have AdBlock plus installed in the first place is the really vile shit - noisy SWFs, scantily clad women, drive-by PDF 0 day exploits, etc...

diggan• 13 years ago

Well, what others find offensive, you find funny and what you find offensive, other people don't even notice. It's a pretty subjective thing no?

kevingadd3• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure it would require an extreme amount of subjectivity to find random noise blaring out of your speakers or drive-by trojan installs acceptable. But sure.

Dylan168072• 13 years ago

Fine, get rid of the image ads that offend even 0.1% of people. The general idea is that some people want to block 'ads', and some people only want to block 'harassing ads'. An ad being a clean, non-blinking, PG etc. experience is mostly objective.

Personally I want to try an ad blocker that only blocks video ads, that works in tandem with click-to-play flash, but I haven't found one.

webwanderings2• 13 years ago

Just uncheck the Allow non-intrusive option and this becomes a non-issue.

With recent onslaught of attack on Ghostery and Ad-block, I wonder if these two tools are doing exactly what they're supposed to do: help people.

tr46562• 13 years ago

What were the attacks on Ghostery? I seem to have missed them.

webwanderings2• 13 years ago

Ghostery was in news recently, there was also a big thread here on HN. Sorry, don't have links handy right now.

Kylekramer• 13 years ago

I imagine it has something to do with the fact Ghostery is owned by an advertising company. Not sure if that is this particular "attack", but a lot of people use it without understanding why it is made and it periodically gets widely reported to some backlash.

pessimizer• 13 years ago

That they were/are being paid for sending analytics to ad companies. I actually don't mind, but it should be in red blinking 20 point script on the page where you download it.

I can't find the news.ycombinator threads, though.

jotaass• 13 years ago

Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5897682

natch• 13 years ago

This: http://i.imgur.com/cocSwhF.png

jasonlotito• 13 years ago

What attack on AdBlock? I've heard of issues with Adblock Plus, but not Adblock.

fintler• 13 years ago

Since it seems to be a common misconception, I'd just like to point out that "Adblock" and "Adblock Plus" are two different extensions made by different people.

enraged_camel3• 13 years ago

Yeah, for the longest time I thought the latter was an enhanced (paid?) version of the former. I can't believe naming browser extensions in a similar manner like this is allowed. It causes nothing but confusion.

B-Con• 13 years ago

I feel really old now, but Adblock Plus was actually forked from the original Adblock. The "plus" part implied it was supposed to improve on the original project.

SomeRandomUser• 13 years ago

Although the ethics of paying as the method for being whitelisted can be subject to debate, IIRC Adblock states that whitelisted ads could be those that aren't animated, block access to content or distract the normal flow of browsing.

Adwords are just blocks of text. Ugly blocks of text, but they don't distract too much. And promoted search results are a fair tradeoff imo.

Anyway, disabling the display of whitelisted ads is not a complex task.

znowi• 13 years ago

I think it was immoral and dishonest to sneak in a whitelist feature into AdBlock, which is in direct opposition to the core product value. Imagine a firewall that whitelists certain networks. And background updates add more networks that bought their way into your machine. Not a product I'd be willing to use.

Karunamon5• 13 years ago

Agreed completely.

For what it's worth, on Firefox anyways, there's a fork of Adblock Plus called Adblock Edge that has no such ethical issues, and as far as I can tell, works with all the addon plugins that worked with ABP like the element hider and popup blocker.

wallunit8• 13 years ago

Why does somebody fork ABP, just to strip out a featere which can already be disabled in the options?

chc3• 13 years ago

It's not immoral and dishonest to have a different idea of the core product value than you do. Personally, I run AdBlock not because I break out in hives in the presence of advertising, but because a lot of advertising on the web is just awful, makes sites harder to use and wears down my battery. Whitelisting advertising that is actually consumer-friendly is not at all against the core value I derive from the product. (Though I don't think my AdBlock extension does this, honestly, but I wouldn't mind if it did.)

kcbanner• 13 years ago

This is AdBlock Plus, not AdBlock. They are not the same.

mst• 13 years ago

I installed AdBlock Plus because of the addition of the whitelist.

I want to encourage sites providing me with free content to show me adverts that don't annoy me.

And it was announced well enough that I, a non-user, heard of it, so I think 'sneak in' is frankly disingenuous.

tommi• 13 years ago

The problem here is that the definition of annoyance is the amount of cash paid to AdBlock Plus, not the actual annoyance from user's perspective.

Hacktivist• 13 years ago

The whitelist feature isn't the issue here. You have always been able to whitelist sites in the "Custom Filter > Exceptions." The issue here is the addition of a built in whitelist subscription to a list controlled by the developers.

programminggeek2• 13 years ago

You aren't helping them unless you actually plan on clicking on the ads. Seriously, if you want to help out sites you like, pay them money.

Dylan168072• 13 years ago

Sneak? I don't know was for upgrading, as I've been a user on and off, but I can tell you that as of a few days ago it asks you upon installing if you want to turn this option on. It does so in clear language, and on a page that is not full of confusing options.

shmerl• 13 years ago

Exactly. It prompted about it, and users had a clear option to disable or enable this feature.

Ellipsis753• 13 years ago

Actually I don't mind the feature existing. Small clearly labeled text ads don't add much to the page loading time and can be clearly seen as ads.

However I still normally disable the ads as I really enjoy the increased screen space gained by removing the ads.

Asking for money to whitelist ads it rather poor policy however. If an ad is small and clearly an ad then whitelist it. If it's not then blacklist it. Having to pay to have your non-intrusive ads whitelisted is shitty. I hope they didn't have to pay very much.

wallunit8• 13 years ago

1. There was a user survey in 2009, whether users would like to have every ad blocked or would accept some ads to a certain degree. And the result was that around half of the users are fine with getting some ads: http://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-plus-user-survey-results...

2. Adblock Plus has announced on their website that they have introduced "Acceptable Ads", and that it will be enabled by default: http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads

3. It isn't even a secret that they get paid from larger companies, for putting them on the whitelist (they though have to conform to the guidelines for "Acceptable Ads"): http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads-agreements

4. Plus the source code is open source, that everybody can read it: https://hg.adblockplus.org/adblockplus/

So Adblock Plus couldn't possibly be more honest and fair about its "Acceptable Ads" feature. If you don't like it, it's just 3 clicks to disable it. I don't get why lately, everybody is so surprised about thatfeature and feels betrayed.

The German media went completely insane over the past two weeks, and made a scandal out of that feature in Adblock Plus, which exists for quite a while now and was clearly announced and documented from the beginning by the AdBlock Plus Team, and can easily be disabled.

nitrogen2• 13 years ago

It's #3 that is evil. Unless there's a large print disclaimer sayong "notice: ad networks pay for whitelisting" in the extension description and next to thethe acceptable ads checkbox, Adblock Plus is being deceptive. The ad networks themselves should never be paying an ad blocker for special treatment. It's either bribery by the networks, or extortion by ABP.

kintpuash• 13 years ago

Your comment sounds like astroturfing as it uses company talking points whether you intended to or not. An astroturf account was unconvered on reddit recently using nearly the same language.

http://www.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/comments/1h3xdm/accoun...

kryptiskt• 13 years ago

The German media went completely insane over the past two weeks, and made a scandal out of that feature in Adblock Plus, which exists for quite a while now and was clearly announced and documented from the beginning by the AdBlock Plus Team, and can easily be disabled.

If you refer to the blatantly immoral and possibly illegal Amaxon referral substitution, that invalidates your entire comment. But I see that even the shills can't even bring themselves to actually describe the indefensible thing they are trying to defend.

"Easily be disabled" they say, safe in the knowledge that most don't know how.

smsm424• 13 years ago

I have been using AdBlock for years, and I have no problem with this feature, provided that they select their whitelist carefully and enforce the rules aggressively. I wouldn't have any problem with ads if they weren't such a disaster. If there are providers that can do ads responsibly - no animations, no sound, no taking valuable space where content should have been, then I have no problem with giving them the edge. I'm not opposed to the idea of advertisement in principle, I use AdBlock because otherwise bad ads (which are on 99% of sites) make using the web extremely tiresome and annoying.

If the Google leads the fight in making ads good citizens on the web and profits from it - fine, all power to them. If they would start abusing it - I'll turn off the whitelist and all their money would be spent for nothing.

oneeyedpigeon2• 13 years ago

"Imagine a firewall that whitelists certain networks." er, you mean like a firewall? or is there some amazing new type of firewall that blocks ALL traffic, that I'm missing out on?

leeoniya• 13 years ago

time to dig around in the Adblock Plus source and see what's behind that "Allow some non-intrusive advertising" checkbox.

pathy• 13 years ago

Right next to it, there is a link to whitelist. You won't have to do that much digging :)

https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/exceptionrules.tx...

Narretz• 13 years ago

There's no need to dig around in the source. AdBlock Plus is setting certain ad providers on its whitelist. In theory, the decision of who is whitelisted should be made by the community. But as a German blogger recently found out, Adblock plus owners and investors have connections to some AdProviders, and those are favored, while others are still blocked. The article in question: http://www.mobilegeeks.de/adblock-plus-undercover-einblicke-...

brendoncrawford• 13 years ago

The whitelist also allows ads for Reddit and Amazon.

mknits• 13 years ago

Use AdBlock Edge instead of the normal ABP, you'll have no further worries.

mratzloff• 13 years ago

I defined an exception for AdWords when I first installed an ad blocker. I just want to block the annoying ads, but I understand that many sites have to advertise to stay online. I can live with text ads, but not auto-start videos with sound, animated banner ads, pop-ups, etc.

calbear812• 13 years ago

It doesn't help a site if you show text blocks from AdSense since they get paid only when there's a qualified click.

amalter• 13 years ago

The first step in getting a click is gettin an impression.

On the other extreme, I've actually found myself right clicking into an organic search because I feel bad for charging UPS for my laziness.

(Yes I do realize how ridiculous this is on so many levels. However, do not assume that well plassed text ads do not get click thrus)

guelo2• 13 years ago

Here is the "non-intrusive" filter https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/exceptionrules.tx...

It does seem to have a lot of google.

Recoil42• 13 years ago

  It does seem to have a lot of google.

Google's a rather large advertiser, and put a good deal of work into ensuring their ads behave better than most.

s3r3nity2• 13 years ago

"...[P]ut a good deal of work into ensuring their ads behave better than most."

It's more like they have a lot more data and scale to target better ads at individuals. And when you have many many ads competing for X amount of spots, the average ad quality increases. Google doesn't really need to do anything other than create the platform that gathers lots of data on individuals and allow for appropriate targeting.

tenpoundhammer• 13 years ago

This whitelist was highly publicized, I even listened to a segment on NPR that interviewed an Ad Block Plus employee about it(Link below). For all you outraged individuals this was a very openly communicated addition and comes by default, but it can be easily turned off. Oh the outrage...

http://www.onthemedia.org/2013/may/10/adblock-plus-internets...

calbear812• 13 years ago

I understand the apprehension in this community about ads in general but when it comes to search engine ads, it does add value (and relevance improvement) to many "commerce" oriented queries.

Google also already knows categories that generally don't get high ad engagement and doesn't show them for those. An example would be "chuck norris biography" - the intent is clear that you're looking for information primarily and even though I'm sure Amazon or others buy tons of ads against "chuck norris movies", etc. Google is smart enough to know not show you those irrelevant ads.

opinali2• 13 years ago

[chuck norris] won't show any ads either -- and Google will show you Chuck's knowledge graph entry, including a random Chuck Norris Fact :)

ruswick• 13 years ago

I don't believe that I've ever clicked on a text ad. (That is to say, I had never clicked on one prior to starting using an ad blocker two years ago.)

If I'm attempting to research a product or product category, I'll go to an aggregator like Gdgt or an editorial site like The Wirecutter.

I can't comprehend why one would ever click on ads when intending to spend money. The last source I would ever trust to recommend how I spend my money is an advertising platform.

atirip• 13 years ago

Yeah, money talks, bullshit (you, the product) walks.

Apocryphon• 13 years ago

Mozilla's main source of revenue is from Google, as well. Are many of these non-profit entities dependent upon Google funding?

dendory3• 13 years ago

Except Mozilla doesn't try to hide that fact, and it can be argued to be in users interest by providing a search bar, instead of no search function at all. Here, someone who uses Adblock Plus decided to block ads. Adding them behind their backs is dishonest.

6cxs2hd6• 13 years ago

As others noted, AdBlock and Adblock Plus are two different companies.

I donated to AdBlock a couple years ago. Should have earlier. And should do again. Not claiming to be a saint. But I gave them some actual money. I'd like to think that enough people doing this, makes it possible for AdBlock to avoid doing what AdBlock Plus did.

I think this is a variation on the theme, "If you're not the customer, you're the product." Usually we talk about this WRT free web services. In this case it applies to what, back in the day, some of us would refer to as "shareware".

dropdownmenu• 13 years ago

I can understand google trying to protect their revenue source, but actions like this undermine the openness of the platforms that they are trying to promote.

Open and free platforms need to allow people to say no.

cupcake-unicorn• 13 years ago

I did notice this recently and have been having to uncheck the box on all the new PCs I install it on. While the ads are "unintrusive" I have a media PC where I've turned the font up to huge to be able to read from the couch. Some search terms will cause maybe up to 4 different text ads to show up and that will effectively block out the actual search results when your font is large.

I'm glad I found out about this though. I always felt vaguely guilty unchecking it, because I thought it was maybe AdBlock trying to support the "Good Guys" of online advertising, but if Google themselves are paying for it, I no longer care.

kmfrk• 13 years ago

Saw the same thing with AdMuncher, I believe, and was wondering whether they had entered the same sort of agreement.

jfoster• 13 years ago

I know the founder of AdMuncher. Pretty sure they don't whitelist.

vnchr• 13 years ago

Many people love AdBlock being free (incl. myself) and many people would admit Google's Ads are comparatively less intrusive and comparatively more relevant.

I assumed this was the case when I installed it, similar to the situation with Firefox using Google search by default while being compensated to the tune of $1B[1]. Why is this surprising or upsetting?

[1] http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2398046,00.asp

driverdan2• 13 years ago

Solution: Use AdBlock instead of AdBlock Plus. You can add your own whitelists if you want but it doesn't have any itself.

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock/gighmmpiob...

Source: https://code.google.com/p/adblockforchrome/

justplay• 13 years ago

for some reason I am thinking that how smart peoples are making money with his hack-ish idea.

darkstalker• 13 years ago

Ad blocking should be a core feature of web browsers.

aw3c2• 13 years ago

It is in Opera (or was, rather, until version 12).

pbhjpbhj3• 13 years ago

Web browsers developed by advertising networks or funded mainly through advertising networks aren't likely to consider it a wise addition to the core features however.

psbp• 13 years ago

Most sites would go down this way. Very few sites could survive purely on donations or tiered pricing.

downandout2• 13 years ago

I was always curious as to how they made money. He used to ask for donations. Asking for money in exchange for not taking actions that will harm another person's business (i.e. blocking their ads) seeing seems awfully close to extortion. Yelp was sued for extortion, and their conduct was far less egregious than this. Google probably couldn't handle the PR hit after the NSA stuff, but I'll bet their first inclination was to sue rather than write a check.

jmharvey• 13 years ago

Adblock and Adblock Plus are different.

downandout2• 13 years ago

I changed it to "they". It doesn't change the fact that someone managed to extort money from Google.

RyanZAG2• 13 years ago

I was thinking about this further, and while it comes off as fairly irrelevant to start with, it's actually an extremely bad thing.

In essence, this has set up two tiers of advertising: those we have paid for white list privileges, and those who haven't. This is heavily in Google's interests as they are the only advertiser powerful enough to get by with only text adverts - nobody else has a platform like Google search where text only adverts are enough to overcome costs and provide viability.

By using Adblock Plus as a weapon against non-Google adverts, Google is removing the ability for other players to compete on level footing. It's very similar to the idea of paying AT&T for prioritization for Google traffic, and it destroys a lot of the foundations that the web is built on. It definitely crosses into 'evil' territory for me, in the same way as paying AT&T to slow down access to Bing would be.

While it's just an add on, it's a bad precedent to set.

md2245• 13 years ago

It's interesting that people are upset about Google being able to pay to get their content around certain barriers, when this is essentially what Google AdWords is: a system for advertisers to pay to get their content displayed in prominent locations rather than relying on position in organic search. And yet nobody really takes it seriously as a Real Problem.

Not trivializing your complaint, btw... just pointing out that using money to get your message to the forefront is kind of the point of advertising itself, so the fact that Google is paying to get their advertising displayed is kind of... meta?

I'd love to have a discussion on HN about the necessity of advertising in the Information Age. I think we would all like to live in a world where purchasing decisions are based on reviews from people that have actually used a good or service, and I would think that the ubiquity of the web has made this kind of crowdsourced intelligence quite feasible.

Does advertising provide a valuable service beyond subsidizing information flow? If not, are there alternate viable strategies for subsidizing information flow, such as Wikipedia's donation model? Is a post-advertising world possible, or even desirable?

sandossu• 13 years ago

"I think we would all like to live in a world where purchasing decisions are based on reviews from people that have actually used a good or service, and I would think that the ubiquity of the web has made this kind of crowdsourced intelligence quite feasible."

Would you really like all advertising to move in that direction? You should realize it's impossible to know if a person really owns and likes a product or it's just a sponsorship. Nobody would be trusted anymore.

bpatrianakos3• 13 years ago

I don't want to live in an ad-free, review-only world myself. Advertising and reviews serve two different purposes. The one gets the word out about a product or service and lets the creator point out why their audience would like it. A review's purpose is to let others know if the product or service lives up to the advertising and lets you gauge how good a fit a given product is in relation to competitors or on its own.

We need both. Advertising can be unethical at times but its no reason to do away with it all together. Reviews cAn be flawed too.

As far as AdBlock goes, I'm still uncertain of why people dislike advertising so much to begin with. Okay, they collect information about you. I understand the desire to not want to be tracked like that. But lets imagine for a moment that advertisers are collecting your information but they're not doing anything unethical with it. They're just trying to show you add that are relevant. In that situation I really don't care if I see advertisements online at all. I also think the definition of unethical comes into play here too though. For me, advertisers sharing my data with each other is something I don't see as unethical. Others I suspect do. Living the lifestyle I live, I can't think of anything advertisers could know about me that would be at all harmful. I suppose everyone's mileage may vary.

My question is, in the end, what part of online advertising is so distasteful to everyone? Is it the data collection or is it seeing the ads?

belorn• 13 years ago

Advertising is fine so long its an opt-in model. Advertising that goes in the physical mailbox has for quite a while become an opt-in model (Sweden), and that system is working fine. Companies with "membership" cards has been also using a opt-in model... for as long as I has lived. There people accept advertising in trade for special offers.

Sending advertising to people who actually want advertising is perfectly fine way. Sending advertising to people who do not want advertising, has ended in intrusive, tracking, bandwidth wasting, and CPU hogging mess that people want to escape. If I see advertisement being thrown in my face against my will, I instantly gets a dislike for what ever company/product being displayed. I would never, EVER, click or buy it.

ippisl• 13 years ago

Does advertising provide a valuable service beyond monetizing other things? My guess is mostly, no.

In a world with search engines that know everything about you and can recommended great products and services for you, there's no need for wrong incentives in the form of money to be part of this recommendation process.

And regarding brand advertising : some marketing people say that advertising do offer people some psychological value that gets implanted in the product., which makes them enjoy the product more. For example the axe deodorant ads causes some people to wonder whether using axe did helps with attraction, which changed their internal experience.

The problem again with such claims is the perverse incentives that money play here, which we see in the effects of advertising on female body image.

Really the only case I think ads are usefull are in cases they are used by non profits or the states to achieve public goals, like anti smoking ads.

kbenson8• 13 years ago

You really equate paying a third party to reduce their negative impact on your business to paying a third party to start negatively impacting a competitor?

One takes advantage of market conditions their benefit, the other changes market conditions to the detriment of the competitor.

hnnnnng• 13 years ago

Well by funding, they are helping adblock. And, assuming its true that their(Google's) own ads are NOT blocked, it means adblock(and by extension Google) is negatively impacting only the competitors. So in this case, the comparison is very valid.

Obviously they(Google) can't outright put out an adblocker of their own, but if someone else puts it out and they support it, and it just so happens to whitelist their ads, you must admit its definitely worth at least questioning. Plus Google is not the stellar company it pretends to be, with the recent news about its tax evasion in Europe and PRISM participation.

RyanZAG2• 13 years ago

You can just twist the words a bit then - instead of Google paying for Bing's traffic to be reduced, they could simply pay for their traffic to always be sent first. Not affecting anybody but Google then, right?

Also, sponsoring Adblock is changing the market conditions. Adblock can use the money provided by Google to make sure any non-Google ad is blocked more efficiently. They can also advertise their addon better, provide better support, etc. Google sponsoring Adblock directly affects Adblock's ability to block the adverts of other companies around the world.

To me, this is changing market conditions in the same way as my AT&T example. Google paying AT&T enough money for priority could allow AT&T to build new 'Google only' cables that Bing couldn't use. Google paying Adblock enough money to whitelist their ads could allow Adblock to grow enough to block Bing ads on a large percentage of user's browsers. Very, very similar.

jervisfm• 13 years ago

The parent comment I think captures my own initial thoughts on the matter. If anything, it seems to me that the root cause of the issue is that AdBlock has the option for some websites to be whitelisted and allowed to show ads provided AdBlock deems them to be "acceptable" based on their own criteria. Even worse, this criteria includes whether or not a said website is paying them for the whitelisting privilege.

If AdBlock didn't accept payments in part of considering whether a site's ads are to be whitelisted, then Google or any website for that matter couldn't use their monetary assets to give them themselves an apparently immoral advantage over their competitors.

BrainInAJar2• 13 years ago

The bad precedent was when Adblock introduced the concept of "acceptable ads" in the first place.

kbenson8• 13 years ago

I think the bad precedent is that AdBlock didn't make this distinction in the very beginning. I believe that requiring ads to be interspersed in the presentation of the information is a right of the entity presenting the information as part of an implicit contract through your request for that information.

I believe requiring authentication, or requiring performing some prior action (such as watching/seeing an ad for some time period) are also examples of this.

I do not believe pop-under ads are subject to this. They try to force behavior (viewing of an ad) after the implicit contract is concluded (you are done consuming the media presented) through altering the state of items outside the presentation experience.

I think with the proliferation of ad blocking software, we've only allowed bad behavior to go unpunished more often by continuing to use resources that behave in irritating ways because a large portion of people get to skip the irritating behavior entirely. I think this has the dual negative consequences of not causing feedback for the behavior to reach the originator, as well as causing them to increase the behavior to capitalize more on those that are not immune to it.

cLeEOGPw2• 13 years ago

In the long run, acceptable adds will make advertising more "user friendly", while removing adds altogether makes them more aggressive and deceptive, because user does not expect for them to be shown. Control better than ban.

gordaco• 13 years ago

And made it opt-out instead of opt-in, making a sizable amount of its users unkonwingly accept it.

Of course, some of us still consider "acceptable ads" to be a big, big oxymoron.

enraged_camel3• 13 years ago

I think the damage this causes is far greater than setting up two tiers of advertising.

This is a shining example of how those with money are able to influence the system by corrupting the very mechanisms that were implemented to protect the "regular people" in that system.

If Google had paid a politician to exempt itself from certain laws, we would call it bribery. For the exact same reason, we should take issue with them paying Adblock Plus to whitelist their ads.

kbenson8• 13 years ago

I think this is exactly reversed. Adblock Plus is helping people to be exempt from certain "laws", and Google is paying Adblock's extortion fee.

Remember, people have no inherent right to the content they are consuming it, they are getting it because Google is presenting it to them with some expectation that it will benefit Google. That benefit is usually revenue through advertising, in the cases where it's present.

cynoclast• 13 years ago

As long as their ads are not so obnoxious that I want to block them, I am personally ok with this.

Adblock was created because advertisers got greedy and took it too far, not because advertising is bad.

anigbrowl• 13 years ago

nobody else has a platform like Google search where text only adverts are enough to overcome costs and provide viability

Without endorsing the 'payola', something to bear in mind that Google chose to go with text-only ads instead of allowing advertisers to control the format. At the time people thought they were crazy and that text-only ads would not last very long for them. Turns out google was correct and its critics were wrong. Any of the other major search providers could have done this, but they didn't try it - and as a result their brands became hopelessly diluted by the garish advertising content, instead of the ads being part of the branding.

I manually enable adwords and google tracking on things like Ghostery and other software because adwords is the only platform that I don't find obnoxious and ugly.

MXcommenter• 13 years ago

I see the point you are trying to make, but Google has no special privileges here. They had to submit their ads to Adblock Plus' public forum for review to determine that their ads conform to the 'Acceptable Ads' guidelines -- just like everybody else. What is encouraging to see happening is that the success of Adblock Plus is actually reforming the entire (online) advertising industry: just make your ads non-intrusive and informative and you can ask for your ads to be whitelisted. I don't quite agree that Google is the only platform where such non-intrusive ads can work. Take for example the Reddit community, where ads are also non-intrusive and therefore whitelisted by Adblock Plus. I guess you can say that Adblock Plus has effectively created a marketplace bias the favors acceptable ads. But isn't that the whole point? The economic model of the Internet is allowed to work, but you and I are not accosted by truly intrusive and annoying and unethical ads. It's a perfect balance.

noir_lord• 13 years ago

While I kind of agree with your point it's worth noting that Adblock Plus can still disable the non-intrusive adverts (in fact the second that you can't do that a new Adblock Plus will appear).

The ethics of disabling advertising and non-intrusive advertising are another thing entirely.

nemoniac• 13 years ago

Disabled AdBlock Plus. Added Adblock Edge.

dotmanish• 13 years ago

It's not just advertising that Google stands to benefit from.

The Google Ads also help them keep a track of where the person has been around the web and also acts as a proxy site stats data for Google (irrespective of whether you use Google Analytics or not).

tlrobinson• 13 years ago

I don't run an ad blocker right now, but I'd totally run one that only blocks advertisers who have paid AdBlock Plus.

nivla• 13 years ago

Although I can understand the need to whitelist non-intrusive or "acceptable" ads, it seems shady to base the list on who pays the most. If adblock plus is a community plugin, the list of acceptable ads should be voted on. I have switched to Ghostery (after reports of adblock plus injecting referral tags), so can someone clarify if whitelisting is enabled by default?

Despite ads being the main source of revenue for Google, it is really cool of them to allow ad-blockers on the Chrome extension store (although Andriod is another story). However, paying to be whitelisted puts the rest of the advertisers at a disadvantage. It is a very well known fact that there isn't a good alternative to Adsense and things like this will only puts a dent into the remaining competition.

dendory3• 13 years ago

I suspected something like that when I realized Google Ads were now showing up on my screen a few weeks ago. I went to the Adblock Plus forum and all it said was that those ads had been added to the list, no reason why. I personally find it appealing and hope everyone switches away to an Adblock fork, if only by principle. Sure it's the extension' maintainer's right to take bribes, but the consequence should be that no one trusts the extension again.

osth• 13 years ago

I would have thought Adblock's userbase too small to be of concern to Google.

suyash• 13 years ago

So what is the alternative, in the comments two of them have stood out: http://www.ghostery.com/ & AdBlock. Any prefrences or any other good ones, I'm going to get rid of AdBlock Plus right now so looking for a solution.

hcarvalhoalves2• 13 years ago

The other day I was thinking about how Google keeps printing "download button" traps [1], despite it being in clear conflict with their TOS [2], for obvious reasons (abnormal high revenue from clicks).

Now, they "bribe" the author of AdBlock to keep a flawed model alive.

Advertising is a shitty industry, but boy, is Google taking it to the next level. And the nerds are too distracted with their shinny things and job offers to notice.

[1] http://www.ghacks.net/2012/06/17/how-deceiving-ads-trick-you...

[2] https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/topic/1308149

cbr2• 13 years ago

Looking at your [1] link I don't see any "download traps" there being served by Google. (No "ad choices" triangle in the upper right.)

pjbrunet• 13 years ago

Paying was easier than obfuscating the js.

lifeguard• 13 years ago

The Evil just keeps on coming from the googleplex lately, doesn't it?

jojolebobo2• 13 years ago

Funny that people would focus on google in this case. It seems to me adblock plus is the culprit here. First it gained a much significant footprint, then added the whole "acceptable ads" concept, then got paid by advertisers to be whitelisted.

Seems like adblock plus is abusing its position of power to extort money and doesn't care about the user.

GoldfishCRM• 13 years ago

Adblocking it self is evil. The current ecosystem where users get contents for publishers for "free", advertisers pays publisher for producing content and viewing it to users and last users pay advertisers (buying there product). If users dont see advertising, advertising has no interest in paying publishers and then publishers gets no money. Not many people understand the ecosystem and I have seen developers living of advertising and still blocks ads online. That is crasy if you think about it.

alokyadav15• 13 years ago

if they are doing so , well we have to lookup for another adblock option

pvdm• 13 years ago

The question to ask is does google allow you to make informed and rational decisions.

straight_talk• 13 years ago

I personally use a commercial ad blocker - AdMuncher. Blocks more ads than ABP and I know I'm the customer, not Google. Only supports Windows unfortunately, but on Linux I run an XP VM and proxy through it.

1giangpnda• 13 years ago

Replace google with any other major company.. let the real unbiased discussion begin.

transitionality• 13 years ago

All it takes is one click on a checkbox.

Anyone is free to fork AdBlock Plus' codebase and prepare a version that doesn't require that checkbox.

I, for one, am happy that AdBlock Plus is being funded (and will continue to provide a great, reliable product) at the expense of users too stupid or ignorant to click on a single checkbox.

Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted

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