Is Google’s Chrome All about Advertising?

Matt: if you want to determine the dna of the company — follow the money is the best strategy. I don’t see Google making much of its money selling technology? But from the inside I guess it is not the best place to assess this.

I have to say, I consider Google a technology company, not an advertising company, and that’s what Eric Schmidt has said in the past: http://battellemedia.com/archives/002641.php . Why does everyone push Google to be an advertising company? Our #2 core value is “Technology innovation is our lifeblood.” And it’s true. Chrome is about pushing the technology of the web forward, in my opinion.

Google is a service provider and the service they provide is technology not advertising. If they don’t provide the latest and the best technology, they can no longer earn money. Google does actually sell technology, and you buy it not by money but by spending your time seeing ads.

@Nikolay, german authorities suggest against it because of the old EULA, plus, it’s not friggin final yet!

@Kerem Ozkan: You seem to forget the fact that you happen to see ads by Google everywhere, not only on the sites produced by Google itself - so you pay to Google for all the sites by seeing their ads everywhere, is this your point? Again, Google produces technology products but they all build a better position for Google as an advertising company.

@Nikolay Kolev: Thanks for the link, have not seen it myself yet. If it is true, it’s an interesting warning - even though suspicious since we don’t see such warning for MSFT but still quite reasonable given the volume of information we willingly give to Google.

@Matt Cutts: It would have been strange to expect a different comment from you True, Google is a technology company but in the post I wanted to focus on the fact that ads is how Google actually makes money - and thus all the technology that can be implemented to earn more in advertising will be applied. BTW, I don’t think it is evil, it is just normal for a company to earn as much as it can and do everything possible for that.

@Brian: That’s exactly what I’m trying to say, Google produces excellent technology products but to monetize them it uses advertising power it also has. So technology is something of a platform to sell ads better, in my understanding.

i don’t own a television because of advertising. i doubt i will ever give up the internet because of it, but will do anything possible to eliminate people’s efforts to steal my attention. for their own gain, not for mine.

ads have to become a service for those who are now forced to consume them, then they won’t have such a negative reputation.

that will only happen by publishers demanding high standards from advertising companies for the sake of giving their readers the best possible experience. rather than trying to use them for money.

getting a sponsor with a single ad is much more elegant than having ten or twenty badly designed ads cluttering up a website.
it is an abuse of the customer, and chases them away, unless your content is really compelling.

most books are written for love. most blogs should be too.

gregory lent

to lazy to read thsis but yeah i mean it is about advertising. if we were to remove advertisment from the world specially from tv there will be many jobs that would be lost.

I’m a web publisher myself, and yet I still use an ad-blocker. I don’t mind Google Adwords, and other non-obtrusive ads. But I hate those Flash ads that take over your whole page, possibly install malware, and make unwanted noise. Since I realize sites need money to keep running I disable my ad blocker on sites I trust and like that don’t have an ad in every nook and cranny.

Kind of ironic, since your article takes shares half its screen-space with advertizements.

Are you crazy? You would make it impossible to block ads? If you really want that, render your content and your ads together as a single image and display that. Then people can’t copy your content either without manually typing it in.

There are solutions to your problem. People like you simply don’t understand the important freedoms that make the internet what it is. You’d have to close source every web browser! We’d be back to the only MS days!

Anyway, I’m glad you are right about one thing which is that what you are asking for is impossible.

Also, I think you might be speaking too soon regarding chrome’s inability to block ads. Chrome is a beta (really should be an alpha). They say addons are coming and I believe them. When that happens adblock will come to chrome also. Google is an advertising company but they also have a very good track record of not abusing their position and giving people a lot of freedom (IMAP and POP in gmail for example which ruins their ability to serve ads on those emails).

So, your article only has any merit because we don’t yet know what google will do. I think time will prove that you are completely wrong. Consider the fact that Chrome is from the open source project Chromium. You simply cannot keep features that everybody wants out of open source browsers especially when, as you point out, eveyone is already used to the web without millions of ads.

Anyway, why would google be interested in forcing you to watch “all” ads? The smartest thing for them to do would be to install a really nice ad blocker themselves that just doesn’t block google ads which are discreet and unobtrusive anyway.

“I myself don’t get this type of mentality at all as a publisher since my own revenue is heavily damaged by availability of these plugins. In fact, I think it could be a good idea to create a group of bloggers to fight with ad blockers to have them completely forbidden by each and every web browser”

It would be far more productive to create a group of Bloggers who promise never to host ads that flash, shudder, move, glide in front of the actual content or are in any way more attention-grabbing than the content itself. These Bloggers could agree on a logo to put at the top of their blogs that would indicate to users that it was safe to turn their ad-blockers off for that page, and the trust relationship between author and consumer can resume.

Google’s greatest achievement is their context-sensitive, text-only ads. They’re not irritating and I’ve never felt a need to block them. Very occasionally I even follow the links, and that’s about all you can ask from an ad.

With more and more online companies looking into capping internet traffic, I better be able to block ads. You may make money off them, but it shouldn’t be on my dime.

I think the article here misses one point - most folks don’t object to ads, we object to ads that get in the way of the browsing experience. I have no problem with ads on a page I view, but pop-ups and ads that either start with audio enabled as a default or require so many cycles that they impact the computer’s performance overall are problematic. I have experienced some pages where the bandwidth required of my computer’s systems to download and run the ad (often with video) impacts the ability to use the page itself, sometimes even to scroll around to view it! This is not and never will be acceptable, and I think the user community will see through attempts to make ads the focus of the browsing experience to the extent that this article suggests Google intends. Thanks for saying what no one else is at the moment.

No wonder German authorities advise not to use Chrome for surfing the web.

You have no idea how cookies work, do you? Cookies are stored entirely locally, and deleting them client-side in no way affects server-side logging of visits. Proper coders who handle ad displays take care of all the frequency analysis and so on themselves, cookies don’t enter into it.

From your article:

‘I myself don’t get this type of mentality at all as a publisher since my own revenue is heavily damaged by availability of these plugins. In fact, I think it could be a good idea to create a group of bloggers to fight with ad blockers to have them completely forbidden by each and every web browser - even if I know it is a goal impossible to achieve.”

A handful of us have caps on precisely how much we can download and transfer data from the internet, with more and more providers discussing caps every day. My question is, Are the advertisers going to pay my broadband bill so I can see their frivolous, unwanted content? Flashblock, Adblock and Noscript, ftw.

Very funny article indeed.

No substance whatsoever, but “editor” asked “reporter” to write a quicky about Google Chrome since everybody has them in dozens these days; in the hope of increasing clickthrough rate on (huge) ad panel for the day of course!

I find that the real annoyances on the Internet these days are not the ads per se, but the proliferation of all these garbage sites (like this exact one) that are vehicles for these ads…

You click on a title, thinking you would maybe read something of interest, but you reach the same cheap, unresearched, badly written prose…

Unfortunately, they do make money this way; however I find this a shameful way of making money; selling cheap nothing to the ignorants… The way of the world.

Complain all you want about google, about realise this;

I found this article via google news.
People will search it via google

i tryed crome, was disappointed went back to my regular google which i love.

I use a lot of free information and software services, and I don’t mind the advertising so long as it is unobtrusive. I have a pop-up blocker only, because those are obtrusive, but no one should be expected to provide value services for free, so I have no problem with the advertising. It is a win / win for everybody.

I find the internet adds a lot less aggravating than TV adds, where on a 2 hour movie it starts out with 15-20 minutes of program intervals and 5 minutes of add intervals, and ends up with 5 minute program intervals, and 10 minute add intervals. With the internet the adds can be controlled by the user, but there is no need to do this if the adds do not interfere with browsing activities.

To web publishers: If you want me to read your stuff, please don’t force it down my throat. You guys want to understand something: If I click on a link, I’m interested in the contents I’m clicking for, not the distraction.
Chrome has an interesting presentation (I liked the cartoon) and a great UI, but no ad blocker (and now I wonder, the cartoon made me think Chrome was open, but I am still forced to have these things in my face). It was nice to try it, but I can’t stand all of these shockwave flash movies flashing for my attention. You see, I want to read my web page.
So for now I’ll stay with Firefox - and will not install Chrome on my others computers until a good ad blocker is available.

i see how you can come up with such an idea.

i too dont think google will help in distributing add blocker plus (or equi) but since chrome is open source it will be very easy for coders to make such a plug in and once they are available on the net they will spread very fast.

but when you say chrome is in constant communication with the google server communicating everything you type i think you go too far that my friend is called malware and since chrome is open source it will be discovered very quickly.

i think your on MS pay roll trying to convince ppl not to switch from IE to Chrome

Interesting article. I never thought about Chrome that way. Clearly, a browser made by an advertising company will never have the same depth of ad-blocking as other browsers.

That being said, I believe a pop-up blocker on Chrome will go a long way to show advertisers that the consumers can fight back and that certain types of advertising (text) are superior to other types (pop-ups, sound advertisements, ads that cover the text your trying to read).

After years and years of having ads appear on my screen, I don’t even see them anymore. I can not tell you anything about the ones that appear. If firms think they are getting my attention and are willing to pay to keep the net going, then that is just fine. I will continue to be blind and deaf to them, all the while enjoying a free net. Someone has to pay!!!

one needs to sell things to be a business. google has always been about enabling others to sell things and have even sold some of their own things. without advertising i do not know how one would even fathom purchasing goods or services. unless you know what a product does i am not sure you would know that you needed it.
anyways, google : “to do no evil”. well ronald regan was supposedly anti-evil himself. should we blame google for making money selling things to you, in this case advertising. they sell only a small bit of your attention to large mega-corporations, much like they themselves are. google loves brownies because there are brownie sellers out there willing to pay google to tell you about them. google needs to sell advertising because they are to big to survive on their own. google sucks on big brothers teet just like every other company does. go ogle at the beach, ogle everywhere.

I don’t mind ads that don’t move, or make noise, or take unnecessary amounts of bandwidth to load. I’ve removed adblock plus from my Firefox and use NoScript instead. I’m completely happy to have web content paid for by ads instead of y’know, having to pay for it with my cash. Just so long as the ads don’t get in my way.

“In fact, I think it could be a good idea to create a group of bloggers to fight with ad blockers to have them completely forbidden by each and every web browser - even if I know it is a goal impossible to achieve.”

Highly disagree. I’ll continue to block everything non-content related as long as I possibly can. Last time I let advertisments through, I had all sorts of animated, sound-producing advertisments literally flying across the screen in front of the content. I’d like to see bloggers instead charge to view their content–perhaps a subscription of sorts. I’d happily pay it for those blogs I deem worth reading. A charge would also likely also result in a lot of junk disappearing from the internet.

After reading this article the new IE 8 anonymity feature start to make a sense

I really don’t mind ads at all, I have to agree with the author here. If you publish content and provide it free of charge to the user, you should get a couple of cents out of it.

It does get a little bit annoying when big companies start putting ads on their sites, even though you know they can easily pay out of their own pockets, but even in that case it’s common practice enough to simply ignore it.

It seems to me that those who get annoyed at ads are either very lazy or constantly irritated, even the intrusive ones (Like pop up ads) would take only a couple of seconds to click on whatever is used to close it, and if you can’t ignore flashy ads, you haven’t been on the internet long enough.

Anyway, yeah, Google Chrome. I use it, it’s nice, it’s fast, it’s flashy, and there’s no reason to be concerned about privacy so much (Oh my god, the evil corporations know you’re going to bali!)

@Svetlana: You see Google ads everywhere because; Google provides a reliable and easy to use technology to present ads and earn revenue for all these sites. That is also true for ad-givers.Google provides the best distribution technology for them. As a result, they get a commission because of the technology they provide to both parties. Companies are classified by the services they provide. If Google stop providing technology, they can’t earn money as an advertising company.

@Kerem: Do you suggest we name companies like ValueClick or Commission Junction technology companies because they provide technology to serve ads? Google is a multi-purpose company but it is advertising company when it comes to revenue - this is why I name it an advertising company.

I wish every single IT knowledgable person would read this. I can’t believe all of the comments about Chrome which ignore the obvious as well stated in this article. Thanks for it!!

I’m sorry, Google IS an advertising company. That’s where they make their money and they use technology they create to promote that business model. This browser makes me appreciate IE (yikes) and FireFox’s non-advertising based models. I won’t be using Chrome anytime soon.

Also, all this hype about the desktop declining? Give me a break… when browsers can deliver programs like my desktop can without the security problems then I may buy into that (and not that crap like online Photoshop, it sucks). Plus, I’m not saving my life in “the cloud”. 1.) We’re all going to have caps on Internet in the future if stuff like this Comcast thing plays out and 2.) I don’t want _all_ of my personal files on some corporations servers.

@gregory: Reasonable as always but still kind of difficult to achieve for now. Believe me, if there was a way to have a single sponsor for Profy and avoid 3 banners from ad networks completely, I would have gladly done just that. But unfortunately I have not seen any such opportunity for us yet. I am sure that online advertising industry will develop new forms and approaches to advertising so that it could become non-obtrusive and in some cases actually useful to web users but until we see this actually happen I’m afraid we’ll have to stick to traditional CPM banner ads as – no matter how much we would have preferred to avoid that – we have expenses to cover and I have some basic needs to fulfill as well.

@Josh: Reasonable approach, true. But there’s one problem for publishers that many of us are not even aware of – geographical targeting makes it difficult to control exactly what each and every one of your reader will get in every country of the world. For example, I am in Russia and thus I can only see ads targeted at Russia – and normally those are cheap stupid ads hardly offering any value to me. And I am sometimes asked by my friends to make screenshots of their blogs so that they could know what the “worldwide” targeting really serves to their international readers – and they are often disappointed with what the find out. Unfortunately, I have not seen an ad network that provides decent rates and full control of advertising at the same time – and AdSense pays too little (unless you insert the ads right in the text of your posts – and that’s what I believe is too intrusive) to be considered a serious income source for any professional blogger.

@Tim Elliot: What do you think is ironic here? Where have I told I am against advertising or against Google intending to use Chrome to make its advertising platform stronger? I have mentioned that I am a web publisher and I know that ads are necessary for the industry. It would have been strange if Google did not use its advanced technologies to earn more revenue.

@Foo: That’s a very pathetic comment, I guess next thing you will tell is that violating copyright by downloading music for free is absolutely not illegal and it is one of the basic internet freedoms.

I have never mentioned there would be no add-ons to block ads for Chrome, I am quite sure some solution will arrive pretty soon. What I told is that I can hardly hope Google would allow such an add-on to be easily available to users through an official repository of add-ons when one is here. I could be mistaken and time will tell, of course, but I just don’t see this coming.

You could be right about Google making available an add-on to block all ads but Google’s but I can hardly believe you really think they are unobtrusive. Text ads can be but images and videos from Google is in the majority of cases much more obtrusive than anything served by other ad networks. I know you don’t care about any monopoly Google is building here in advertising and will only strengthen if such an add-on is available but I feel it is just completely wrong to use software that only allows certain publishers and ad networks make money. Have you seen any such thing in MS Internet Explorer? Do you think it would be fair if Microsoft added a functionality to allow blocking of all ads but those from Microsoft publishers?

@Peet McKimmie: What a generous proposal to bloggers, maybe you will be the one to find an ad network that will pay something substantial and not obtrusive at the same time? If so, I will be just happy to work with them myself but unfortunately my research has shown there is no such network. And please, how many bloggers do you know that earn anything over $100 per month on AdSense? It is the worst-paying network of all – no matter how non-intrusive their text link ads are.

@Slave to Comcrap: I’m sorry but I don’t get your logic. Do you actually pay for watching a few ads now and then? I thought that you either pay for the service or agree to watch ads – rarely both. You don’t pay your dime, you just pay some of your precious attention to reward the publishers that produce content you enjoy.

I understand the web publisher’s dilemma of ad blocking software preventing ad;s from being served, however the concept of an open browser should allow it’s users to put what ever they want on it. You probably watch television, should you be barred from changing the channel or leaving the room when it’s time for the commercials?

@Les Kooyman: I’m afraid that you also miss the point about web publishers here. We fully realize that people don’t want obtrusive ads to be pushed at them and we dutifully choose our ad networks not to show pop-ups, pop-unders and such. This is true for all the bloggers (not sploggers) that I know but lots of websites belonging to mainstream media publications like Washington Post will be sure to push a pop-up at you upon arrival. But unfortunately people that choose to block ads, usually block everything completely without any exceptions – and I don’t think there’s an ad blocker that could block some obtrusive ads and still serve some unobtrusive ones. You really sound idealistic here and while I’d just love to believe you people don’t mind when we serve them ads, I’ve seen too many complaints about obtrusive ads when all people got were simple graphics banners. And if Google chooses to make any exceptions to what ads to be served to a user in Chrome, that could be a reasonable idea that could both improve user’s experience and educate publishers but I’m not quite sure Google will do that as well simply because many of their own graphics/flash/video ads are too obtrusive to be true already.

@Vinic: That part of the post was inspired by what I read in New York Times blog last week at http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/will-googles-chrome-help-or-hurt-advertisers/. And as far as I understand how capping works for ad networks, they actually track cookies stored locally on a user’s computer and when cookies are deleted, they just can’t recognize it’s the same user. So where do I contradict your comment?

@AJ: I believe you in the US are just too spoiled with unlimited internet plans to want to give some share of your broadband consumption to compensate content creators. Just imagine that only half a year ago I had to pay over $100 per Gb here in Russia (right now I am on an unlimited plan with a capping somewhere around 20 Gb) and I always thought it was unfair to save broadband on watching some ads from fellow bloggers.

@michael_334: Where have I complained about Google in the post? I fully realize the value Google brings to Profy and to me personally and I think it will be just unreasonable if it did not use all the technology products it develops to further enhance its advertising revenue. This post was to state the real purpose of the latest browser, not to complain about this purpose.

@bigpicture: Thank you for the reasonable approach. I think pop-up blocking is a necessary measure myself simply to ensure your safety in addition to blocking unwanted content – but all the other types of ads are not supposed to irritate users as much as they do now and I am glad there are web users that don’t mind them.

@Yves Parent: Very typical position and quite an offensive comment. I am not forcing my staff down your throat, you are free not to consume it if you don’t want. But if you want to consume it and find that it adds value to your life, why do you protest against compensating for it with not blocking my ads?

@take it easy: Check the link I used as a source about Omnibox talking to Google servers, I have not invented it, I used CNET (quite a reliable source, yes?) to support my opinion.

@energize: Thank you, glad I could provide something useful in the article to you. You know, I believe the majority of web publishers already realize pop-up ads are far from wanted by web users and avoid using them so I either see pop-ups either on very low-quality sites or on websites of the largest mainstream media outlets like Washington Post – medium-size publishers already care about user experience enough not to push pop-ups at our visitors.

@ywdwarner: I actually never mentioned Google was evil because of selling ads. Instead, I think it is a very healthy business many of us should admire and it is absolutely reasonable that they use the technology they develop to increase their revenue, it looks like absolutely logical to me.

@Ogremindes: Very reasonable position and approach to advertising and content consumption, thank you for that on behalf of many web publishers that are just happy such web users exist

@Dan: Fee-based blogging is only possible for a select group of the largest blogs while those only struggling to reach their potential audience it is absolutely impossible. Besides, fee-based consumption of content can only be possible for RSS feeds but I can hardly imagine it working on the site itself.

@Riomerc: Quite a healthy approach, I am sure that many web users that have been online long enough will agree that ads are quite easy to ignore without even blocking them – you just get used to them and stop noticing them. But publisher is still paid since the ads are still served.

Quite reasonable on the evil part as well – Google has known everything about us for ages anyway and giving them some more information will hardly change your life a lot. I am not a supporter of any conspiracy theories myself but I think it is fair to outline what we can expect from the browser anyway.

@GHalley: Thanks a lot, really glad to have a supportive voice here in the comments.

@John: Why are you sorry about stating the obvious fact that Google is an advertising company? Of course it is and of course it is understandable that as an advertising company it focuses on technology to drive its ad revenue further. And yes, once you come to realize that you really appreciate that IE or FF are not supported by advertising.

And I can agree with you 100% - moving from desktop to online apps completely is definitely only for a certain part of early adopters (those that don’t really care about their privacy and safety – I can’t imagine myself relying with all my digital life on some third party, really), for the rest of the world it is still too early to even try to educate people they can do similar actions on the web without having to install things on the desktop. Understanding will no doubt come but it is not yet here now.

@Chad: True, you can switch the channel on TV to avoid ads but can you block them completely for the program to go uninterrupted? There will be options to make ads serve a better purpose for internet users instead of interrupting their browsing experience and irritating them but until they appear I think it is only fair that web publishers will still have to charge users for their content by serving them some ads.

@Hrundi Backshi: I am actually both the editor in chief and reporter here myself and it is my choice of what to publish here. And if you believe this particular site is garbage, I’d really prefer you not to bother visiting it or commenting here in the future. Thank you.

@Svetlana,

“maybe you will be the one to find an ad network that will pay something substantial and not obtrusive at the same time? … my research has shown there is no such network”

Perhaps if the advertisers see that the blogs carrying the “no crap” logo get the most hits they will produce advertising to suit? If (as from your comments it seems) you want to earn a full-time salary through Blogging, as opposed to just supplementing another income, then you should be prepared to work on it full-time. Maybe even consider starting up your own non-intrusive advertising network and spreading the word a little…?

@Svetlana, re: your comment:

“@Slave to Comcrap: I’m sorry but I don’t get your logic. Do you actually pay for watching a few ads now and then? I thought that you either pay for the service or agree to watch ads – rarely both.”

Many people on “pay as you go” contracts, as opposed to “unlimited” broadband contracts, pay *much more* for receiving the huge images and flash ads that accompany a page of blog comment than they do for the comment itself unless they employ an ad-blocker that stops that stuff from being requested from the server. This affects both people forced to use dial-up and people using the web on the move through a mobile ‘phone, laptop on 3G or other such device.

When someone follows a link to a comment they’re not “agreeing” to watch ads - they don’t know that they are there, and might choose not to bother reading the comment if they did know. That brings me back to my original suggestion of a small logo, similar in size to the RSS feed logo, that could be attached to links saying they were safe to follow and that you would not be subjected to bandwidth (and attention) hogging ads.

@Peet: Thank you for the new comments. You know, it often sounds to me like bloggers are just too idealistic often when it comes to advertising. I have seen at least 4 blogs suggesting to organize some type of a blog network with a single purpose of selling ads together in the last few months – and unfortunately I have not seen any successes at all. The problem is that to sell ads you need relevant sales and marketing experience – and it is very different from simply focusing on producing content from your blog.

I for one actually work full-time on Profy (and full-time means at least 14 hours per day here, often longer) and I still have not managed to learn how to sell sponsorship spots here so that we could avoid serving ads from ad networks (that we have virtually no control over) completely. The only ad network that seems to understand what exactly advertising on blogs mean and how it differs from advertising on regular sites in my experience is Technorati Media but we already work with that network – but I guess even their brand ads will be considered as intrusive by many web users that protest any ads. And speaking about the blog network serving unobtrusive ads only, I am 100% sure that any bloggers that knows how to sell ads directly to advertisers is already doing just that for his or her blog and will hardly want to do it for a wider community. I’d love this world to be ideal myself but I don’t see it happening any time soon.

@Peet: I do understand that to some people data plans may determine the value of watching the ads and I admit that I myself often disable images and ads completely when I’m on my cell phone or PDA. But I have to argue that I used to pay huge bandwidth bills myself (about $100/Gb of traffic) until my ISP introduced an unlimited plan some 6 months ago. And while this meant that I had to pay more money by not applying ad blockers, I still did not want to hurt publishers that work long hours producing content I enjoy.

Again, your “ad safe” logo sounds like an interesting idea but I don’t think bloggers will be able to implement it successfully on our own – it can be implemented by one of the ad networks that wants to involve more blogs as publishers. But as of now the competition is among bloggers trying to get to work with any ad network that will pay anything over $1 CPM – and the last thing they consider is quality of ads, especially when they actually devote full time to blogging.

@Svetlana,

Thanks for the swift replies.

I’ve seen blogs where 3kB of content is accompanied by over 200kB of ads. In that case, a proportion of users will actually be paying their ISP more for the dubious privilege of viewing the ads than the blogger will be receiving for showing them.

So, here’s another idea… How about if a large number of blogs got together and sold a subscription ad-blocking service, where the user could pay a monthly fee that would equate to the same amount the blogs would make from their advertising revenue? Non-subscribers would still see the ads, but for people on a restricted data plan it would still be a cheaper option (the people using mobile ‘phones etc. are the ones who don’t usually have the option of an ad-blocker) and the bloggers would be no worse off. Viable?

@Svetlana: You name companies by defining their “primary” services regardless of how they earn money. ValueClick offers a technology service but their primary service is to solve marketing needs of their clients. And their primary focus is not developing “ad serving technologies”. I agree Google is a multi-purpose company but its primary service is to provide and develop technology.

@Peet: I try my comments to be swift unless they happen to arrive when the majority of my readers are awake and I’m asleep (since I’m in Russia)

Thank you for the idea about blogs grouping for a subscription plan, I’ll be sure to think it over and hopefully come up with a dedicated post about this and maybe some other bloggers will find it interesting and together we could develop a technical and financial solution for that.

Please all of you , Advertising is as inexact science as there is , and one thing i know as a consumer is that no matter how many adds I see If i don’t need something i wont buy it
I also believe that if you put all your revenue eggs in adds and click troughs you wont last very long
There is new technology , that will put these stupid little adds on web site out of business ( Permission based Marketing and it’s coming to a PDA near you ) \
Google is nowhere on the horizon of this at all

@Svetlana Gladkova

i hadn’t seen that link thx for pointing it out.

i still have my trusty FF with add block plus.

perhaps when adds become non intrusive such add on will not be needed until then good luck with ur revenue.

@William Lopez: As a marketer myself let me tell you that the best ad is one that explains you that you do need something, even if you had no idea about the products minutes before that And while those are rare and can be found in any format, we will continue seeing more and more of them as companies continue to innovate.

@take it easy: Glad I could send you to a reliable source of information. And let’s all cross our fingers and wait for that ideal time of unobtrusive ads to come - and I will cross my fingers I will have enough visitors without adblockplus installed to cover my expenses

@Kerem: Ok, let’s stick to it since we will obviously not come to a compromise here. It’s just everyone should realize that without money earned on advertising, Google would not have pioneered numerous technologies now.

I highly recommend this blog post by Vanessa Williams over at Fridgebuzz http://www.fridgebuzz.com/2007/01/02/the-long-tail-of-web-services/

@leigh: You highly recommend it for what? How is it related to this particular discussion?

It’s relevance is debating Google as a tech company or as a advertising company…….(in fairness it’s slightly tangential and more in response to @Matts comment about considering Google a technology company)

Ok, thanks for making that clear, I’ll be sure to read the recommended post now.