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Google Upgrades AdSense
An anonymous reader writes "According to a story in the New York Times, Google will now "give advertisers more control over where their ads are shown, how they pay for them and what they look like." Author John Battelle claims "The core philosophy of Google's advertising business is that these ads are actually valuable and useful to users: look for Chevy trucks and get Chevy truck ads. Now we are in another place. It's more about branding and more about advertising other things than what you are looking for, and, cynically, it may be about being a public company that needs revenue growth."" The other thing that other submitters noted was that AdSense would also be accepting graphical advertising as well; but for display on partner sites.
...just one calorie, not evil enough.
Power to the Peaceful
Extreme Adblocking is cool. Uninstalling Flash works well too. Often I have enough of all images and fire up lynx or elinks. The Internet is a hypertext medium, I want text, not flashy graphics or cola ads.
My little Linux and tech blog
What about ads that most will find offensive?
Search for negroes on Google.com and see what ads show up on the right hand side.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Image ads have been opt-in since they were introduced. I hope they stay opt-in. For what it's worth, there's also an option to block specific ads although that won't do a lot if all image ads turn into YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY WON seizure beasts.
Firefox becomes Lynx!
R.
than a sneaky pervert.
Whether it's natural to want to look at pornography is not the point. The point is that pornography is degrading and turns good kids into creeps. Believe me, I know. I grew up with a lot of guys whose parents let them watch porn (mainly because they were never around -- even they wouldn't have allowed it if they had known). Every single one grew up to be a creepy weirdo.
I will never, ever tell my son that it is okay for him to watch pornography. It promotes a disgusting view of sex and women that I don't want my son to be exposed to. He will grow up with proper guidance where sex is concerned and that is more than enough. I only wish my mother were as engaged with my as I am with my son.
Finally, I resent the implication that you know how to raise my children better than I do. If I want advice, I'll write Dr. Laura.
-- Molly Lipton, Born Again Technologist.
I can see it now:
Me: Hi Mom, its me. I'm calling because I need you to set up your email to allow me to send you encrypted messages.
Mom: Ooookay. Er, what?
Me: Well, GMail snoops on all our messages to put targeted ads next to our email.
Mom: And?
Me: That's bad. All I need is for you to install this Firefox extension that will rot-13s anything we send.
Mom: So GMail is bad? I didn't know. I think I should just go back to my hotmail account.
Me: No, Mom, hotmail is really bad.
Mom: Well, I'll just stop using email then.
Me: No, Mom, wait...It is just a Firefox extension.
Mom: Right, no more email. Goodbye.
!hoD