Right now, per your metaphor, all the chickens are being eaten. It's a clusterfuck out there with some of these ads. But I also don't want to go the opposite way and (to extend the metaphor) have a fox so vicious, it keeps _myself_ away from the chickens (a la AdBlock extensions), such that my favorite websites go away because I'm not supporting their revenue stream.

Google does not have an interest in showing you shitty ads. They have an interest in providing their clients with ads that are acted upon and that web users appreciate, and they have an interest in having a browser that does that with as little friction as possible.

I'd say their incentives are perfectly aligned with ours.

>I'd say their incentives are perfectly aligned with ours

Speak for yourself. I hate advertising and would rather see that whole revenue method burn to the ground and pay the $2/mo or whatever to use my favorite services.

Ads have ruined everything they have touched (radio, satellite radio, TV, cable TV, satellite TV, magazines, highway scenery, etc) and they are well into the process of ruining the internet.

In addition to bloating every site and exposing you to higher malware risk, they encourage companies to violate your privacy as much as possible and exploit psychological weaknesses to get you to buy stuff you didn't want or need to begin with.

Google's incentives are to spread this poison so they are not aligned with mine at all.

Be careful what you wish for, your favorite services might not exist without advertising. Sure, you might be willing to pay for the service, but would enough people be willing to pay to keep the service afloat? Probably not in a large number of cases. Advertising is the necessary evil that keeps the internet afloat.

If my favorite services are not sustainable in a subscription model then I would rather they die off until someone more innovative finds a way to make it work without advertising.

I mean, you're always free to not browse them in that case. People that would prefer those services not to die off, can then keep using them with advertising.

>Advertising is the necessary evil that keeps the internet afloat.

Disclaimer: they work for Google

I don't and I agree with them.

Right now, all of the chickens are being eaten. If we get a fox that only occasionally eats a chicken, but keeps the other more vicious foxes away, that's a net win.

They have an interest in showing you non-shitty ads. They sell non-shitty ads. Therefore they have an interest in showing you their ads.

They also own the most popular way those ads are shown: through their web browser. This browser has the ability (at Google's sole discretion) to block shitty ads, of which all of them are run by their direct competitors.

So what's happening is, Google is giving themselves the right to block parts of the Internet they don't like, with the implied statement of "if you want your ads to be seen by Chrome users, buy them from us or else we might block them".

That is a classic protection racket. "Want your ads to be seen? Better buy them from us, or... bad things will happen."

Another user posted that the criteria for shittiness is defined here: https://www.betterads.org/standards/

Seems pretty reasonable.