This doesn't seem especially civil.
> If you search for "cheapest gasoline" it's not unreasonable that an ad for an electric car might be interesting.
Interesting to whom? The parent comment doesn't want to see ads. So no it's not likely to be interesting in this context.
> Or if you search for "Orlando hotels", an ad for generally less expensive hotels in Kissimmee (the next town over) is more valuable than a perfectly literal result.
For me, personally, no I would find that to be an annoyance.
> And if you search for "k8s cluster deployment tools" then you probably want as many ads as possible, so your evaluation doesn't fail to include a comprehensive set of options.
Again no, I would want 0 ads in that case. Have you read about k8s cluster deployment tools? It's hard to find any useful information because even the results that aren't literally ads are fluff blog posts with little content. I don't want the fluff posts, but I can comb through them. I certainly don't want the ads.
> Perhaps you're saying I already know about electric cars and Kissimmee and kubernetes, to which I'd respond, yes, probably via ads.
There are ways to learn about things without someone paying for the right to say them at you when you don't want them to.
Discerning the intent of a search is completely orthogonal to whether to serve advertisements.
Search engines are generally not great at discerning the intent of a search. For example they frequently return irrelevant results that don't match key words even when you ask for a literal search. This has been discussed a lot.
But that's an unrelated issue to whether the search should return advertisements in addition to search results.
But, hey, he's absolutely entitled to live his life ignorant about viable options.
* Company creates thing people like you want to buy.
* Company knows if you know about the thing, you will want to buy it.
* Company knows you don't know whether a thing like their thing even exists, so you have no reason to search hard for it.
* Company upfronts the money to defray your search costs, knowing it will be paid back when you buy the thing. This is called advertising.
I am constantly learning about things I would have enjoyed if I had known about them. It is damn hard to make people aware even that you are giving away free lunch. Advertising breaks down that needless ignorance.
GoDaddy and NordVPN, for examples, are garbage products with highly effective advertising. Seeing ads for these products actively harms people, because it prevents them from finding better products like Gandi or PIA.
Might be fine for your use case, I donno.
However, when browsing the web in 20+ years I have never seen a useful paid for online add. That’s an inherent product of the medium where the only point of an add is to be less useful than the content I am looking at.
Supose your GPS added advertising. so it’s priority is not the best for you but what’s best for 3rd parties. That’s what online adds are, they take something useful and inherently degrade the experience.
I know this is picking on your example rather than your general concept, but this is a great example of how advertising is harmful. McDonald's has done incalculable damage to the health of Americans, and even if you don't go there, seeing the arches sometimes will get your kids yelling in the back seat, "I want to go to McDonald's!" This isn't helpful to us: it's helpful to McDonald's.
No, I still don't want to see an ad. It's not unreasonable that a search result for electric cars might be interesting, but I want results from an independent third party that serves me, not from the advertiser that serves themselves.
> Or if you search for "Orlando hotels", an ad for generally less expensive hotels in Kissimmee (the next town over) is more valuable than a perfectly literal result.
No, I still don't want to see an ad. A search result for a cheaper hotel in Kissimmee might be valuable, but I want results from an independent third party that serves me, not from the hotel that serves themselves.
> And if you search for "k8s cluster deployment tools" then you probably want as many ads as possible, so your evaluation doesn't fail to include a comprehensive set of options.
No, I still don't want to see an ad. I want to see search results of a comprehensive set of options, but I want those results from an independent third party that serves me, not from the hotel that serves themselves.
> Perhaps you're saying I already know about electric cars and Kissimmee and kubernetes, to which I'd respond, yes, probably via ads. Maybe a commercial or sign or web ad, but also maybe through a TV news spot (pr campaign) or magazine review (expenses paid) or web article (with affiliate link).
No, I'm saying that I want to discover products that are the best for my needs, not products with the best ad placement. I want tools that serve me, instead of serving the best-funded advertisers.
Literally none of the cases you describe are what I want. Ads inherently give inaccurate information.
Perhaps you're saying I already know about electric cars and Kissimmee and kubernetes, to which I'd respond, yes, probably via ads. Maybe a commercial or sign or web ad, but also maybe through a TV news spot (pr campaign) or magazine review (expenses paid) or web article (with affiliate link).