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Google Unveils Flash Ads
Gailin writes "Google has announced and given some examples of their new Flash based ads. They seem to vary from average size to full screen-width Flash advertisements, with some interactive abilities. 'Gadget ads can incorporate real-time data feeds, images, video and much more in a single creative unit and can be developed using Flash, HTML or a combination of both. Designed to act more like content than a typical ad, they run on the Google(TM) content network, competing alongside text, image and video ads for placement. They support both cost-per-click and cost-per-impression pricing models, and offer a variety of contextual, site, geographic and demographic targeting options to ensure the ads reach relevant users with precision and scale.'"
And all that's apparently missing is ensuring the surfer has Flash installed.
Personally I detest Flash ads and for this reason keep renaming the NPSWF32.dll file as NPSWF32.dllfsdfsd (while I don't have an instance of Firefox open, lest it track the bastid) when I have no intention of viewing Flash content. Too many pages are so whizzy with Flash I position the browser so the Flash bit is offscreen or simply don't visit the sites at all. I don't see many company/commercial sites since they apparently all now believe their best way to reach the customer is with some bloated object 500K or bigger (i'm still on dial-up) and all whizzy. So all this means is I'll see some more puzzle pieces, unless they detect no-flash and throw animated (ugh) gifs at me.
I'll just have to wrassle with The Morality of Web Advertisement Blocking for a while.
Lucky for Google, I'm the exception and shouldn't make much of a dent in their stock value.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Does this mean I get to keep "Punching the Monkey?" I just can't find enough ways to win free ringtones.
Get Flashblock here
didn't certain someone say "do no evil"?
So tell me, when I'm trying to use MySpace to reply to a distant friend & my browser slows to a crawl because there's five flash video advertisements of a lonely girl on a webcam waiting to talk to me--that's the kind of experience you want to proliferate through to every site using Google Ads?
How will this affect people on slow connections like out in the boonies operating on a 56k phone line connection? I'm kind of afraid those users are just going to be squished & that Google will leave it to the sites themselves to figure that out while the sites themselves will expect Google to take care of it.
Wait, did you hear that? I believe that was the sound of every single router and switch crying out in anguish.
Ads that are designed to appeal to my eye & take up obnoxious amounts of bandwidth? It must be
In all seriousness, this is all very bad news to me. A bloated delivery system (by definition it must be since it provides 'content rich' functionality) being forced to a large percent of the internet in the name of delivery unsolicited advertisement. And it's all legal and--get this--is unveiled like it's a new great feature.
The simple concept of character based content delivery system is dead.
My work here is dung.
Google's /clearly/ given up on "Don't Be Evil".
Adblock+ & NoScript for the win.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
now all i need is a version of flash that works consistantly on 64 bit hardware.
then again, maybe not
... or in this case, annoying.
One thing I've always liked about AdWords is that it's always relevant (well, the vast majority of the time), and it's non-obtrusive. Now I get to stare a million punch-the-monkey ads, or if Google is halfway competent in knowing my patterns, a million flashing "you won X tech gadget!" ads.
Compared to text-only ads , Flash ads makes it easier for Adblock to detect and block them :)
Browse with noscript, adblock and flashblock. So much faster & easier.
This may not fall under "Do No Evil" as many will probably liken it to, but it certainly fucking sucks and shows that even with stock prices insanely high and revenue pouring in like mad, that they need to continue to do even more to support those corporate assholes running the show.
While I'm not a diehard Firefox fan I still do use it and suggest that everyone (if you haven't already) install AdBlock Plus. While it isn't going to make much of a difference in Google's bottom line, I really hope that someone comes up with another extension that sends an automated e-mail to Google for every single Flash ad the add-on blocked.
Bastards are getting worse and worse every day.
These are the same busy, annoying ads that other sites have plastered all over...putting them next to a paragraph where the ad's designers justify their use of "artistic" flashing/blinking colors makes them no better than the aforementioned "Punch the monkey, win a ringtone" ads found elsewhere.
My hope is that Google bigshots will see what an ugly, terrible effect these have on what their former, critically-acclaimed, clean, simple interface, and will do an about-face.
I do realize how slim the odds of that happening actually are...I guess when one's pupils/irises turn into dollar signs like in the cartoons, one's vision tends to become a bit impaired.
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
As far as I know, all information Google stores is associated with a cookie on your machine. So deleting the relevant cookie(s) /should/ cause a new one to be generated which has no association with the old profile Google has stored.
That's good (ok, if you find it bad, use your flashblock/content blocker) because the widgets (aka Google Gadgets) are interactive, and they add some 'colours' to pages and make them cooler. Those are like the widgets one uses in wordpress for e.g, just in advert form.
Plus, it's optional - one can still go for the usual word tag based adverts
What's really interesting - Google went for Flash ads. MS. which had been touting its Silverlight since long, has not yet started giving the silverlight adverts. I don't want to flame anyone but it's really a slap right in MS. face, metaphorically speaking. An increase in SWF on the web is not that good for MS. That's the tough competitive world. Oh well, geeks don't click ads (unless it's for generating money lol. We block'em :P
Do I require the c-sig package to have a signature?
I don't know about the rest of you, but I think this goes against Google's unofficial "Do no evil" mission statement.
Thank god for Adblock...
...and blocked.
Google, you probably have, sorry, had, one of the only set of ad servers I never blocked. Until now.
Sorry, but anything that moves without my propmpting it is a distraction and will be blocked.
I don't know what they're thinking. They're going to sell the same number of ads, minus all of the people (like me) who don't accept Flash ads. Truly a bone-headed move by Google.
I don't respond to AC's.
And thank you google, now your ads are even easier to block.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
At the same time Google has the highest barrier for entry (employee-wise), they buy DoubleCrap (stupid) and take everybody (or, at least, most) inside (DoubleStupid).
And then people at DoubleCrap start having funny ideas, management at G accepts it and now we have DoubleCrap ads as GAds.
Remember, people at Google, what GAds was all about and why it was so successful.
how long until
Flashblock caught all of them, so we're OK for now.
A large, clear, well-defined target is always appreciated.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
C'mon, I want to see you all trip over yourselves to apologize for Google. Because I'm sure that somehow, this is okay. There has to be some small technicality that redeems this company because the halo effect is not something that just goes away.
Anyway, life is good with Adblock and Filterset-G. They can use full-screen Flash ads for all I care.
The guy who came up with the idea of Adblock deserves a nobel prize for allowing us to block all of this 'stuff'. Henrik Aasted Sorensen according to http://adblockplus.org/en/history.
I don't like Flash ads at all, but they're relatively non-obtrusive (c.f. the many sites that load video and audio without permission, spank the monkey and win an iPod, etc.) I'd rather have seen them stay out of Flash media altogether, but this is certainly better than what it could be.
How does this violate the do no evil credo? Google is in the advertising business. They have an obligation to offer a product that is competitive to other company's offerings. Otherwise they will lose marketshare. There is a big flash ad for splunk at the top of this page. I guess Slashdot is evil too.
just set gmodules.com to not load in Adblock....
I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts...
unlike other filter suggestions here, this one blocks them all.
This space available.
If the internet gets so bad that I can't even use it anymore, maybe I will make some time to use that PS3 I bought. This reminds of when I was a kid and didn't want to go to heaven because I couldn't have sex. I thought that there couldn't possibly be anything better. I don't think anyone is going to destroy the internet, and if they do their will always be someone lined up to offer you something better. There's always a demand for better.
How often did I wake up at night, my pillow soaked in bitter tears, cursing google for not offering flash ads. Finally, we shall be rid of the boring text ads we've been shackled with for so long, finally, we will experience web 3.0, an infinite land of beautiful colored, animated flash ads that shall bring us happiness and hope for a new bolder, brighter, blinkier future. On behalf of slashdotters everywhere, I want to thank you google! Thank you! Let the flash goodness begin!
For those using Safari, SafariPlus is a brilliant way to block Flash (and control unwanted cookies). It shows the rectangle for the Flash content, but you must click inside it to actually start up that Flash dropping. So you can use Flash when you want to, but nobody can make you use it. In these days of those damned embedded YouTube videos stopping Flash is a godsend. Good luck with your new X10-type annoying ads, Google.
Yeah! Now every site can look like /.
What is it that allowed Google to completely take over the Internet advertising market? As I recall, it was non-intrusive advertising...
I think that someone over there at Google has forgotten what earned them their place in the market, and are looking to be undone.
Is there a way to prevent Flash adverts being shown on my site if I use AdSense? I don't want to subject people to that crap when they read my poorly-written overly-technical site.
Google has turned me into a thief and leech and I'm going to be locked out of websites.
No flash here, what am I going to doooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I can deal with animated, as long as they don't make any sound until clicked on.
And they must stay in their little box unless I click on them; no expanding on just a mouseover.
A wave of full screen ads will certainly increase the Firefox browser market share really quickly and will basically mean the end of Flash as an internet medium since everybody and their dog will block it completely.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I make good use of the FlashSwitch application. FlashSwitch is a utility to instantly turn MacromediaFlash playback on and off.
http://www.flashswitch.com//
Sites heavily dependent on flash are faster with it off, and of course flash only sites will not work when you have flash turned off.
The viewing public, myself included, is jaded by the predecessors and is likely now consciously or subconsiously trained to ignore the flash ads in favor of focusing on the text of the article (or whatever) in question. Anything that moves on my browser, bereft of my decision, gets ignored. And that will include Google's new ads.
For the record, I actually DO click on the google text-based advertisements. They're tasteful, obviously advertisements, non-intrusive, and they've (admittedly) done a good job of targeting my interests.
Am I the only one to misread the title?
That's the very definition of "evil".
sic transit gloria mundi
It was kind of hard to tell from the article, but I think that these are gadgets for your customized search page, not ads to be placed on other websites.
This space reserved for administrative use.
My problem is I have a 26.4k connection (less than HALF 56k dial-up). And, no, I'm not cheap, I live where no broadband exists (not even satellite). So I have to move in order to do a web search? Great. The internet has gone from providing the people not in cities with the same library access they have, back to where you have to live in a city to get any info.
We're just bounding forward, aren't we?
I believe that it would have shown a level of greater software based intelligence, and licensing costs if Google have walked the path using SVG.
What does the base url these bastards are served from look like? I want to add it to Adblock.
-hamr
Google: Do no evil.
is now changed to, "We want to be like the U.S. government."
Google: Do evil if it pays more.
In my opinion, this is the beginning of the end for Google, as the founders lose touch with reality and fly around in their huge corporate jets. If you want responsibility, don't depend on a billionaire to do the work.
Eventually, there will be a new search engine with no Flash ads, and everyone will use that. Eventually, people will say, "Google? What's that?"
The new profit-making Mozilla will probably try to get the U.S. government to ban NoScript and AdBlock Plus and FlashBlock.
The problem with ads is not that I don't like advertising. The problem with ads is that they are nearly always stupid in some way. Some of the ads IBM ran on Slashdot were more than stupid, they were embarassing.
Mostly, ads are written by people with absolutely NO interest in the product they are selling. I'm guessing that more than 50% of ads include at least some dishonesty. It is the ad makers that have given advertising a bad name.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, your usefulness to the world is coming to an end. Please find someone to carry on your original vision, and retire.
www.dictionary.com
...Is that these aren't bad ads. How many of you have actually looked at their ad gallery yourselves? The ads are silent until you tell them not to be, don't animate unnecessarily, and provide content without having to actually go to the site. Now, I'm not saying that all of the developers of these ads are going to be as good at developing unobtrusive advertisements, but, from what I've seen so far, these ads are not bad.
Yea! More people to use Firefox!
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
...will load plugins on demand anyway (if you select that option). It can also block plugins for certain domains.
Palm trees and 8
I must be missing something... all I see is a bunch of stylized "F"s in boxes.
Thomas Galvin
I'm enthusiastically in favor of advertising, because something to has to pay the bills, and if a bit of screen real estate (within reason) that doesn't cost me anything buys the cornacopia of free content that's out there, then I like it.
I actually prefer Flash ads, because they seem to be smaller and faster loading than gifs or jpgs.
I only really get annoyed when some ad starts blasting sound at me. Those people should definitely be brought out in the public square and beaten.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Basically adverts for bees.
Deleted
I don't think the ads are that bad, personally. It's to the point that you will have to accept them just like TV commercials, so save the nerd rage for other things, IMO.
I installed Noscript on my new computer, and it seems to do everything FlashBlock did for me on my old computer. That is, replace any flash-animation with a button to start it.
Google's served me very well over the years and I've preferred it because of the non-intrusive ads (that can be blocked with AdBlock and CustomizeGoogle). If, for some reason, I cannot block or opt-out of these Flash ads, then that will mark my permanent departure from Google.
I didn't know that. I will try disabling FlashBlock.
However, there are times when you allow JavaScript with NoScript, and you still want to block Flash.
If they were really smart they would use static, silent, and small ( in file-size terms ) adds. SVG would be ideal. What point is there in adds if they annoy people so much they block them or get negative associations towards your company because of them ? Heck, if I were making these adds I'd make it EASY for users to avoid them should they want to. The last thing you want to do is to prompt users to install tools that nuke your adds on the assumption that will be highly detrimental to their browsing experience. If you are really good at what you make your users WANT to watch the adds, maybe by making them artistic, entertaining or otherwise worthwhile watching. There is more to advertising than being as noticeable as possible...
Why would any sensible person install the fucking cancer (aka flash plugin) in the first place?
Homestarrunner.net! It's dot com!
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Looks like Google Ads are now getting blocked as well. I've never really understood marketers or the logic behind annoying and intrusive ads. Common sense would dictate that pissing people off is not very likely to sell products and in fact may do the exact opposite.
...and that's why I will continue to use lynx for my web browsing.
Great! Another reason not to install Gnash! I've been Flash free for a long time, because Adobe/Macromedia will not support FreeBSD (and at one time even had a license forbidding the use of Flash on FreeBSD). I end up with a lot of sparse and blank webpages, but that just saves me on bandwidth.
More Flash ads means less ads I have to see!
p.s. It used to be that the Linux community derided Flash and sites that used Flash for navigation or content. Then they got their very own proprietary Flash plugin, and most opposition vanished. The Linux community embraced the closed proprietary standard enthusiastically. Shameful.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
The problem is that there is a disconnection between the marketing department of most companies and the people who make the products. The marketing department makes the decisions about marketing, and those who do the work feel uncomfortable telling the marketing department that they don't like the ads.
I thought it was supposed to give you the best of all worlds - is google more accurate and targeted?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I just read over the guidelines that an above poster linked ( http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=66136 ), and I don't think this will be as bad as everyone is saying...
First off, it looks like these will be ads on other peoples' sites, not on your search results. It can be used in addition to that "AdWords" thing, or "AdSense", whichever one it is... You decide to advertise on YOUR site, and you get banners from Google, the same way you would get embedded keyword links.
In addition, they're making some nice, strict rules. Here are some of their restrictions:
* No more than 50k in size unless the user interacts with it (Then it can load more)
* No more than 15 seconds of animation
* No popups or javascript alerts
* No cookie usage (Not even Flash's version of local storage)
* Must clearly show the company/product being advertised, not just some random crap
* No sound or fancy cursors unless the user interacts with it
(Hopefully that entails clicking on it, and not just accidentally moving your cursor over it on the way to the link you want)
I would hope they're enforcing these rules by requiring the source file instead of just the compiled SWF, or at least have some kind of checks for stuff like this... But I don't see how this is any worse than the banners we have now. Granted, I'd prefer less banners and more text ads, but if the market has determined that animated banners are necessary, then at least Google is keeping a close eye on theirs.
"The amount of intelligence on this planet is a constant. The population is growing." -Cole's Axiom
In the options for NoScript, under the Plugins tab, check "Apply these restrictions to trusted sites too" and make sure the checkbox for flash is checked too. If you do this, then you can allow javascript for a site, but Flash content will be blocked and replaced with a box with the NoScript logo in it. You can click on the box with the NoScript logo to allow the Flash if you want to.
It can do that.
It will let the javascript run, but still show the NoScript logo on a flash, or other plugin. You must click it and click ok to run it.
I can't be the only one who thought that Konfabulator (now something Yahoo) widgets and their ilk were a terrible waste of system resources, and I certainly can't be the only one who rolls their eyes when a Facebook acquaintance turns out to be a vampire, zombie, ninja or viral marketer who wants to bite/fuck/sell you something so that you can bite/fuck/sell things to all of your other friends. This is just taking shit to an all new, cynical level of manipulation.
While I'm here, what the fuck is this: 'Truly useful applications incorporating data feeds, maps, images, audio, video, Flash, HTML or JavaScript in a single creative.' A single creative. A single creative what?
"Dreamcast^H^H^H^H Google, NOOOOOOO!"
persistent data in flash is only available to the domain that stored it. In other words, if a flash app that you downloaded from www.yousuck.com saves data, it cannot be read by a flash app you download from www.noseriouslyyousuck.com. So the truth is, flash is better for you in terms of privacy than are standard browser cookies.
But wait (you're probably thinking) if google is serving every ad, then the domain is always google and google can then track where you're going!!
That's true, and also irrelevant. If google is serving every ad then guess what, google can just look in their webserver logs for your IP address. So flash does nothing for them. The privacy issue with cookies was **interdomain** cookies. Flash has nothing like that. I wish it did actually. It's a pain in some cases. I do some coding in flex and, by default, flash wont even so much as hit a webservice from another domain. Adobe really locked it down.
So anyway, the bottom line is that google isn't going to get any more information about you from flash than what they get anyway from their webserver logs. So chill out.
I'm just using the Google founder's definition of evil. They used that insight to make their search engine by far the most popular.
I can't remember the name of the search engine I used before Google, but it was terrible with ad abuse.
I don't see the problem here. How is this something that makes google evil? You keep coming back to slashdot even with their flash ads they serve to you. Is slashdot evil?
There is so much incorrectness in the comments with this story. More than usual. Google is not putting these ads on their search result pages, they are not forcing adsense users to display these ads. It is up to web site owners to decide what types of ads they want to show. Just like the image ads. Google is offering an additional service to the people who pay them money/generate them money, not creating a disservice to its users.
There would not be half the sites you like to visit if it were not for the advertising abilities on the internet today. Read up on it.
insight through the mind
Well, this seals the deal. We knew someday small text ads would not allow them to get the growth that they wanted, and they too would push annoying ads like Yahoo once needed to move to. How long until we pull up the Google main page and there's a Chevy ad that covers the text box until we hunt around for the "close" button?
Thankfully, there's no end in sight to the number of companies VCs are willing to fund, so we'll probably end up with a better search engine eventually from some upstart. They won't advertise until they get market share. Rinse... repeat. I love the internet business.
Sites will often do a Javascript test to see if your browser is claimed
to be Flash-capable. If so, your browser is sent Flash code for the
advertising. If not, it's sent animated-GIF equivalent advertising.
Installing the FlashBlock extension causes Firefox to (1) claim to be
Flash-capable [...]
http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk-balug.org/2006-June/003771.html
I have no flash on my Debian box, and I hardly ever had any problems. I hardly ever notice its absense.
One more reason to not install Flash, or uninstall it if you have it.
My feeling on ads is nicely summed up by banksy: Any advertisement in public space that give you no choice
whether you see it or not is yours. It belongs to you.
It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use.
Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. (emphasis mine)
My grandmother used anecdotal evidence all the time, and she lived to be 120 years old.
was suddenly spiking for those getting those animated flash ads that drive users crazy.
Thanks for helping us kill IE, Google!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I take it you're not a YouTube fan.
The nice thing about the popular Firefox extensions of Adblock and NoScript is that they can be told to permit certain sites or subsites or redirects by pattern and not others.
Sites that abuse flash get it turned off by me. Sites that don't I usually let alone.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
So in retrospect, how are Google Ads better than other ads. We have now images, animated GIF-s, videos, and Flash banners.
Looks like Google reintroduced the same old type of banners we all hated, while riding on the inertia by their initial introduction of text ads.
Tell me this: why they still only show text ads on their own site? Is it possible they perfectly realize how much worse the other types of banners are, but keep pushing them for revenue to 3rd parties? Hypocrisy.
It was a trojan horse, to take over the advertising market. This gained them enough cash to buy out other big banner networks (DoubleClick) and now they're bigger than ever.
Enjoy, the wolf in sheep's clothes.
Flash now supports H.264 which is a power hog codec. Imagine that kind of video endlessly playing on your screen while you're just reading a text. Your processor and power being wasted for nothing.
"Sorry, but anything that moves without my prompting it is a distraction and will be blocked."
Well there goes your sex life.
This was back in the Mozilla 0.9.x era, roughly. I installed the Flash plugin, because a friend recommended it and claimed that it was useful. Then I did some regular browsing, and I think it was maybe twenty minutes later, maybe an hour at the outside, when I uninstalled Flash.
When the Flashblock plugin became available for Firefox, I thought maybe I'd give Flash another try, but IIRC the port (or one of its dependencies maybe) was broken with a note from the FreeBSD security team, something to the effect that there was a known unpatched security-relevant bug, and I kind of shrugged and didn't pursue the matter further, because I can think of a LOT of things I'd rather spend time on than getting Flash installed.
Consequently, Flash-based advertisements will not soon be making an appearance on my screen.
OTOH, I'm pretty much an edge case, in that my eyeballs are probably not that valuable to advertisers anyway.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Just curious what made you think any of this is going on googles search page. This wont change google interface a bit.
These are the ads they sell for other people's pages. Many pages already have flash ads, at least these will be context sensitive flash ads.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Flash simply sucks. I mean ALL flash and flashing and falsh things anywhere.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
They're just another way of paying off running costs for web pages. They just happen to require more patience from you, which would offset potentially higher running costs. You don't have to visit the site and view them. There are plenty of alternative web sites out there that have no flash ads (or even no ads), but they may not be quite the same quality or have the same upkeep than the sites with richer sources of ad revenue. When there's so much consumer choice possibility out there, how can you imply that flash ads are evil?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
welcome Flash, Silverlight and whatever f*cktard newfangled proprietary tech is spreading in the web to make ads money...
I don't feel like it...
Any online advertisers reading need to understand WE DON'T SURF THE WEB TO INTERACT WITH YOUR AD.
We surf to access content online... stuff that we actually want to read and pay attention to.
We're very good at spotting enticing items in our peripheral vision.. we've been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years (or 6000 if you like that version..). We don't need you to make it bounce, shake and jiggle, make funny (read: annoying) noises or play games with us. If we don't want the product, we won't go to the site, or buy it however entertaining your ad may be. If you continually try to act as a roadblock to us enjoying the content we're accessing, we'll continue blocking your ads and regarding you as a nuisance, because that is the experience you are providing to us. If persist with this jackassery, the more creative and malicious among us may start to find you a juicy target. You asstunnels are doing your clients a massive disservice by continuing down this path - you threaten their online business and the entire ad-based revenue model by serving ads so fucking irritating that we'd rather block them. Stop it!
xoxoxox
Love, Terry.
I agree that Flash ads are, in themselves, not evil. However, few people have even the skills necessary to do good stationary graphics. Almost no one has the ability to do moving pictures that tell a good advertising story, apparently.
So the biggest effect of almost all Flash ads is annoyance. Pay money to annoy prospective customers? That is a business method for those who want to sink their companies.
Want an example? Look at the Nike web site. That site is so bad it puts an upper limit on the intelligence of Nike top management. Or, maybe it puts an upper limit on their age, which can't be more than 14, and emotionally damaged from having a bad childhood.
With JavaScript turned off, there is nothing on the Nike web site, just a blank screen. When you turn on JavaScript, you see... something loading. It's Flash. A short video with loud sound begins playing. I don't know the point of the video, but it is embarassingly without humanistic sensibility. I suppose it tries to appeal to angry women by being anti-male.
That's Flash. Somewhat evil because it abandons web standards. More evil because it is used stupidly to irritate prospective customers.
As long as I can block them, I really don't care.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
"Half bad" is not the same as "not bad". Stop pretending it is.
Maybe what google are trying to do is replace the annoying flash ads that are currently on the web with these versions. I would certainly find them less annoying. If they want to make their ads less annoying so people stop wanting to use adblockers, that's fine with me. I can still block them if I want, but if I'm surfing on a PC where I can't install any software, I'd much rather be browsing a site with google-spec'd flash ads rather than normal annoying ones.
Twinstiq, game news
Flashblock is very good for this. I just avoid the flash bit and read the rest. If they haven't *got* any other form of content - I leave.
7. desiring sharks with lasers on their heads.
Is it just me or has anyone even witnessed these flash ads? I use Google regularly and I have honestly never seen an advert. Perhaps I am just immune and have learned to completely ignore anything that doesn't pertain to my relevant search.
I even tried a a few searches even after I read this article and I do NOT see the advertisements. Like many web jockeys I think that we have been conditioned to simply ignore ads. Is this really a problem? If so I have not, in the least, been affected.
Sure I want Google to "Do no harm," but they are a "for profit" company. Is it any surprise they are trying to subsidize their search engine? If you equate diminutive advertisements with "doing harm," then you have forgotten that we live in a capitalist country and that things are not soon likely to change. Get used to it. I may not like it---but I have learned to adapt.