I’m always curious why do people complain so much about ads on search engines? There are thousands of ad blockers available, how come people are still seeing ads in there search results? I had ublock origin installed, and without any customization it removes almost every ad.
I generally don’t understand this…people want an amazingly fast web service (search engine in this case) to be available 100%, be reliable, provide great results, be available across all devices, for free?? How is a company supposed to remain in business. Plus no company is forcing people to be on their platform, they could use yandex.com or bing . Yet they have to complain about ads on google
It’s not just the ads you see, but the way that search results are populated according to the payments the companies have made. That seems fundamentally wrong to me.
I would say it’s not exactly that you see ads depending on how much the companies paid (well, that’s advertising after all), it’s the dark pattern of making the paid results appear exactly as the same search results.
I don’t talk about ads; I obliterate them. Multiple ad blocker extensions in my browser. If on my first visit to a site they tell me to turn off my blockers I add them to my blocklist.
Search engines allow you to compete with company’s own trademark or brand name. For example, searching for Linux, and you find Windows or macOS as the top results, because they pay ads for the “linux” keyword. This in my opinion the main problem and fundamentally wrong.
I pay for Kagi, I don’t want search for free.
Well, it is not always the ads themselves. It is the entire online infrastructure that supports the ads. Companies like Google are looking to track you across every website that you ever visit if they can, putting all of that data into a user profile, and then using that to serve you targeted ads.
There is also the fact that the way some companies sell ads – like Google - mean that they extract a large portion of the value out of transactions, and can contribute to higher overall prices. Seth Godin has written about this numerous times; here’s an example - The sad compromise of “sponsored results” | Seth's Blog
The desire to extract maximum revenue from every search ad leads to more of the intrusive tracking.
That said, ad blockers are not a solution to the problem, because the problem isn’t, “how do I get everything for free”. That’s untenable. Ad blockers are a ratchet that escalates the “arms race” of creating ads that are more difficult to block. There is an entire industry around both making the ads and the blockers.
The real problem to be solved is, “how do I get the service I need for a reasonable cost – whether that cost be time, attention, or money”. And both parties – the advertisers and the users – need to reach some sort of a compromise.
No. @Glimfeather is referring to his local machine and his connection to his ISP, neither of which have anything to do with the backend systems Amazon provides for iCloud or Apple Intelligence.
I’m confused. I was having a little fun when I mentioned iCloud and Apple Intelligence, but how does Google steal resources from me if I’m not using any google services?
I think the confusion is that this thread is discussing both search engine ads and website ads.
I recall seeing before and after tests of website loading times with and without ad blockers. And the difference, for some sites, was non-trivial. And this is where the resource abuse argument is relevant. Not so much for search engine ads.
In theory I have little issue with ad supported sites. In practice I use ad blockers due to popovers, distractions, and Interruptions (I loathe YouTube ads which seem to be inserted at random breaking the flow of video). There was a time when I would whitelist sites, but in truth I rarely do so anymore.
I agree the solution isn’t ad blockers as content providers need to earn a living. But the lack of respect for the audience needs to be addressed. I do not have the solution. I do know I cannot afford to subscribe to every site I find of value, so paywalling everything is not a solution.
I have actually gone down that path with some client sites, and what I’ve found with Google ads in particular is that it slows the loading time, but not at the expense of significant system resources or bandwidth. It seems that loading the stuff from the Google CDNs has higher lag time, for some goofy reason.
I agree 100%. There are whole classes of ads that are borderline malware. I don’t have any problem with blocking those, and they’re usually for scams anyway. But at some point if a recipe site wants to serve me ads for Campbell’s Soup, and that’s done through a Google Ad Choices or whatever it’s called, I think that’s a fair exchange of value - and I don’t agree with blocking it.
Marco on ATP talked about the possibility of offering “ad skip” on Overcast several years ago, and the fact that it would be pretty easy to implement a smart feature that could detect where the ads were and skip over them. And I agree with his rationale that doing so would be detrimental to the podcast ecosystem. Ads are the price I pay for free podcasts. I do get pretty cranky though when I pay for podcasts and they still have ads!
I actually do not mind ads in podcasts because they are usually presented as ads, “and now a word from our sponsor “, and are often inserted at natural break points.
. Yet they have to complain about ads on google 
