I don’t think it’s too important. What’s important is enforceable regulations. There’re many industries that aren’t public utilities but are heavily regulated for safety reasons, e.g. food production and air transportation.
> This is personal preference (and possibly subject to experiments)
http://const.me/tmp/web-search/g1.png Just two “Ad” letters with no other visual cues.
http://const.me/tmp/web-search/g2.png The first fair search result, note the scroll bar position on the right, there’re 2 pages of garbage above. No URLs anywhere. Right click / copy link is broken as well, copies “google.com/url?” something.
http://const.me/tmp/web-search/ddg.png “AD” is uppercase, outlined, also note the “Report Ad” text. The combination of these 3 things makes ads clearly marked as such, unlike google’s result page. Note the initial portion of the result URL is visible, not just the domain. Right click / copy link works. The fair search results start at the top of the page, immediately after a paid one.
There’s no motivation for google to be friendlier towards users or web site owners. Quite the opposite, they have strong financial incentive to mix ads into fair results. The only way to fix that is legal pressure with laws and/or antimonopoly prosecution.
It worked with Microsoft in 1998-2001. In 2000 a court ordered breakup of MS. They won the appeal so it didn’t happen, but they were really scared apparently. They were also forced to change a lot of things in their products, which benefit both end users, and third-party developers. I don’t see how de-facto monopoly in web search is different from de-facto monopoly in PC OSes.
What? "www.techradar.com" is a URL.
> Right click / copy link is broken as well, copies “google.com/url?” something.
No it doesn't, unless you try to copy the link to an advertisement, in which case it uses a link tracker, in the same way that DDG does (try it!).
> Just two “Ad” letters with no other visual cues.
But, unlike DDG, those are the first things you see, which means I can visually filter away ads if I don't want them, while on DDG I have to read the entire result name before I can see whether or not something is an ad.
> Note the initial portion of the result URL is visible, not just the domain.
No actually I have no clue what you're talking about. The URLs look the same to me, unless you mean "https://" being visible which doesn't matter unless you're expecting a result accessible via gopher.
I'm honestly confused now. Your statements disagree with your own screenshots.
The result URL is much longer than www.techradar.com. Here’s more information on the syntax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Identifier#Ge...
> No it doesn't, unless you try to copy the link to an advertisement, in which case it uses a link tracker
Yes, it does. The only difference, URLs from ads start with google.com/aclk as opposed to google.com/url for fair search results.
> unlike DDG, those are the first things you see
That just 2 letters, not even uppercase. And these 2 letters are the only thing to distinguish ads from fair search.
I understand their business is more profitable this way, but as a user I don’t like their design and I’d like them to fix that, despite they gonna lose money doing so. Essentially, they only implemented absolute minimum to comply with the regulations: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/nat... Nothing inherently bad with the approach, most businesses all over the world do that all the time. The right way to fix that is not public shaming, but adjusting the regulations. Classifying them as a public utility might be a big step in the right direction.
> And these 2 letters are the only thing to distinguish ads from fair search.
Like I said, "This is personal preference". You can have a different preference, but you aren't correct. Much like your definition of "fairness" isn't objective. A bold prefix marking something as an ad is pretty clear. For me it was easier to distinguish ads on Google than on DDG. You may have a different subjective experience. That's okay, but we shouldn't base legislation on your subjective experience.
> Here’s more information on the syntax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Identifier#Ge....
I'm going to leave it at that and disengage.
> Google’s “Ad” is barely noticeable, DDG’s “Ad” has very noticeable outline. Google doesn’t show URL, DDG does.
This is personal preference (and possibly subject to experiments), but when I searched "android phone", I found it easier to differentiate ads on Google (which shows "Ad" at the beginning of the line) than DDG (which shows "Ad" at the end, or on a second line if the title overflows). Both show URLs.