Google’s Ad Blast and Criminality (and Apple too)

Thanks for putting up with this crap. I haven’t had the time to really look into this until recently. Basically what happened is that Google one day decided to change stuff (spam the shit out of ads) around without telling the publishers. Evidently, an auto ad feature was turned on with every single fricking place turned into a potential ad-space. I think Google is getting desperate. Sundar Pichai sucks balls and has run out of ideas, hence this shit.

I think the mobile ads should be fixed now. There is still the top ad that pops up for members when it shouldn’t. Will take care of this soon. Please post any ad weirdness here.

I’m at the point where I may just drop the remaining Google ads spots. F these guys and their monopoly. Google should have never been allowed to buy DoubleClick. The lack of change control, forcing publishers into a new ad system is criminal. It should have been auto opt-out instead of auto opt-in.

It is my sincere hope that Google search and ads die from better competition. And don’t get me started on how their search engine is sooo shitty now in 2023.

 

I've been increasingly using https://duckduckgo.com/ as an alternative. Bing too.

 

Seems legit. They leverage Google's search engine, but I actually like the slightly results better sometimes although still have to deal with ads at the top for some searches.

 

After logging into mobile, are you guys seeing an ad at the top? I see this top ad on Chrome in Android, but on Safari it's not there. There is no code placing an ad up there (at least not for any users signed-in*). I swear, it's a Google conspiracy.

*I even completely eliminated the code, and it's still showing!

 

It was Google Adsense auto / “responsive ad”creep. At first it was nice because it rescaled stuff according. The intent for registered members was always to only have a single side ad at the very bottom and only a top and bottom banner for unregistered users. At least that’s how it’s coded on the forum pages. Google browser scripts have the ability to basically redraw 90% of everything in the browser. Hey, they own the most popular browser and this sets the standards.

I will show you guys the updated interface that just came about overnight for their unasked for ad assault. It’s disgusting. Every single space, nook, and cranny on the site was marked as open game for ad space by default. Google even turned on mobile sliding ads when I had previously turned them off.

It’s so sad compared to what Google was twenty wars ago and their motto was don’t be evil. Google is like pathologically evil and has been for sometime. If Google were a person, they would be a cross of Binance guy and Amazon guy.

 

I woke up one morning to discover that Auto Ads looked like this. Note that the excluded parts in red were with me playing with it because everything was TURNED ON by default. Google just decided to go apeshit and put ads everywhere possible. I've since turned all this shit off and am relying on manual code to display appropriate sizes on mobile or desktop.