Here’s some truly childish outrage against Google
If you can’t accept that Google needs to advertise, then please go use something else and leave the rest of us alone.
Chris Smith wrote a ridiculous piece for BGR — “Google quietly ruined Chrome, and we almost missed it”. In it, he tries to foment outrage at Google’s recent decision to block ad-blockers on Chrome.
Those of us with a functioning brain all know Google’s business model is based on advertising. They provide a huge assortment of services. Typically, one purchases services. You pay for the stuff you want with money. That’s the nature of our economies. But Google gives you their services for free. How is that fair? Why should anyone be expected to give away their work when everyone else gets paid?
Enter advertising. Companies pay Google for advertising space, instead of users having to pay for Google’s services. To make that happen, users have to “put up” with advertisements appearing within the services they use. And to make their “ad spaces” attractive to companies (and thus compete against other service providers), Google must “target” ads to the most likely users.
People, however, seem to dislike ads because… well, I’m not sure. Some people complain that web pages load slowly because of ads. While this is true (I’ve experienced it myself), it certainly isn’t annoying. Indeed, the whole issue of ads slowing page loads is, quite frankly, nothing more than a First World Problem.
Still, in an environment where ads are “bad”, the rise of ad-blockers is a perfectly natural result.
Think of it this way: it’s like a Funeral home placing an ad in the Obituaries section of a physical newspaper. Browser ad-blockers are like having the ability to magically remove advertisements you don’t want from a newspaper.
Oddly, no one complains about newspaper ads that can’t be removed; but it seems there’s nothing but moral outrage against Google for blocking ad-blockers.
Double standard much?
And people seem to dislike targeted ads even more, though I don’t really understand why. I much prefer seeing ads for products in which I have at least a passing interest, than ads that are utterly useless to me. Sometimes, Google’s algorithms get it wrong; but so what? Nothing’s perfect.
Targeted ads require user information to be collected and analyzed, which means Google must collect information about how I use the web. Fair enough.
But, but, but PRIVACY!!! AAAAAAHHHH!!!
Yeah, well, I’ve got news for you. “Privacy” is just a dark shadow that let’s unscrupulous people safely go about their business. The real problem with privacy is that it’s an all or nothing thing: it’s only beneficial when either everyone or no one has it. And our societies aren’t set up for either alternative.
This notwithstanding, there’s really nothing about the privacy aspects of information collection that can’t be reasonably regulated. If the regulations are ridiculous, too strict, too lax, too byzantine, or too archaic, then that’s a legislative/regulatory problem; it’s not a problem for corporations that have to exist in such a ridiculous, byzantine, and archaic system.
So if you want to rage about poor morality, rage at the right target: your governments and your regulatory agencies.
And someone please tell Chris Smith at BGR to get an education.
