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Google Foresees Ads On Your Refrigerator, Thermostat, and Glasses
New submitter waspleg sends news of a letter Google sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission in which the tech giant laid out its vision of an ad-filled future. They wrote, "We expect the definition of “mobile” to continue to evolve as more and more “smart” devices gain traction in the market. For example, a few years from now, we and other companies could be serving ads and other content on refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, and watches, to name just a few possibilities. Our expectation is that users will be using our services and viewing our ads on an increasingly wide diversity of devices in the future, and thus our advertising systems are becoming increasingly device-agnostic."
First thing I'd do is disable networking on these devices.
I have Adblock on my refrigerator.
I foresee a future in which black tape or other opaque adhesive objects will be used to blot out the ads. Maybe I should get a patent..
"a device which obscures the user from seeing mind-numbing and intrusive advertising on products which have already purchased"
Google can shove their ad-laden future straight up their collective asses.
My dad bought a 60-inch Panasonic TV not all that long ago. It automatically connects to the internet, and serves ads at several points during routine operation - one during power-on, one whenever the volume is changed, and one during the "change input" screen.
I've told him I can turn the ads off (you just disable Viera Connect and they go away) but he won't have any part of it.
Publicly-traded technical advertising company announces expectation of profit in advertising on tech devices. Stop the presses.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
No. Thank. You. Why is this now the default instead of delivering a device that just works without the internet?
If adverts get that pervasive, the value of each one is going to decline substantially. If I see 40 adverts before breakfast, I can't possibly buy each and every one of the products. There's only so much disposable income. If this gets pushed out, it's going to be self defeating.
The ads! I can't get them out of my head! Even when I close my eyes they're there! Why did I buy Google Contact Lenses?!?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Here we go, here's the real reason for the internet of things, not to benefit consumers in any way, but to pollute their visual environment with ads.
Would you like me to order some cigarettes and a pregnancy test for you?
'Nuff said!
It's going to take a very compelling 'smart' feature to make applying the protocol currently used for the blinding-eyeburner-superbright blue LEDs that manufacturers insist on sticking everywhere to the hypothetical screens that will be displaying ads everywhere.
Between electrical tape, spraypaint, and maybe a bit of glass etching (when more polite flavors of disconnecting or firmware modification don't suffice) I see no reason for anything that doesn't need a screen to remain equipped with one.
...would you be willing to receive a brand new $2000 frig/freezer for free IF it showed ads on it?
that's the real issue...i think alot of people would...hell I probably would.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
Do no evil? FUCK GOOGLE
As far as the automotive portion of this, they've overlooked a pretty critical detail: With the exception of navigation and car-control, the driver cannot be in a position to view moving video or flashy graphics--it's explicitly illegal to design a car in such a way that such garish distraction could catch the driver's eye at a critical moment.
As for the rest: I know of few people that would do anything other than smash the screen out of a refrigerator that was blaring ads at them every time they walked past (since what's the point of showing ads when the door is opened and, presumably, the "screen" is facing away from the person you're trying to show an ad to?) so I imagine that's going to cut-down on their response-rate on those ads.
In short, I'm fucking laughing thinking about how disappointed they're likely to be. Humans are already on advertising overload--it was 5,000 impressions per day per person TWENTY YEARS AGO, before the Internet even existed. I can't even guesstimate how much ad-crap we see now... Probably a fair-bit more than 5,000 impressions per day, though.
Who did what now?
What is Glass with networking disabled? Just a device to trick people into punching you for no reason?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The software is opensource, then I have no problem with the ads. Shit, they could probably GIVE AWAY refrigerators and still make tons of money through the ads.
Yes, I see where they would want that.
Yes, I see how looking at facebook et al. makes people think that privacy is dead.
I also realize that we are still in the infancy of the internet revolution and you can't project current uses forward, but instead must realize that the tide will turn against them.
We are currently in the pre-OSHA stage of the Internet Revolution.
Just as people had to fight for safety and work limits during the industrial revolution, we will end up stopping people from abusing our privacy. It just takes a little bit of time for the regulations to catch up.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Me: *digging in fridge looking for a midnight snack*
MS Clippy: Uh oh! It looks like you're about to go off your diet again! Would you like help with that?
"If my fridge is smart enough to know what's in it ... Might help with the "What do you want for dinner tonight? I dunno, what do you want?" conversation that happens on a nightly basis."
Remember, it's 'smart'.
"Open the door, Fridge!"
"I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that. It's 2 o'clock in the morning, fatso, no ice-creme and Vodka for you!"
n/t
Have gnu, will travel.
New! Google Watch!
It can't tell you the time, but it monitors everything you do.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Just watch Idiocracy
If they give the appliances and car for free then I can see myself allowing advertising to some point.
I have script and ad blocks and bogus host file entries to speed up browsing but can honestly say I don't pay attention to ads when they get through, When looking for something to buy I do the search and find it hard to believe unsolicited ads bring in any customers.
Are there really people who click through and buy something because an ad says they need it?
I think advertisers are shooting themselves in the foot with this, I have recently noticed just don't believe a word any of them say anymore, Its like I am building up an immunity to them, and they need to create bigger and bigger lies, ops I mean deceptions.
Before I saw a sale advertised as "Demolition", I went in and it was 10% off, well I could negotiate that any time, hardly a demolition sale, now I just don't even bother going in. If I need something I go in sure, but I don't go in because of a sale or stated discount, because they are so likely to be lying that it is not even worth the effort step inside the shop to find out.
My daughter asked me how much I believed the advertisements on TV, and I said not at all, I then started paying attention to the ads and rating if I believed them, and if i thought they where using hiding some important fact from me. The answer was unless it was a public service ad where they where not trying to sell me something, like don't speed, I didn't believe them at all. And even public service advertisements I think they are fudging the truth in order for them to get me to do what they think is best for me.
What we need to do is start charging to be advertised to, I think this specifically applies to junk mail, which goes directly in the bin, since I have to pay to dispose of it.
In the grim future of Google, there are only ads...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
There's no way I'm going to accept advertising on my souvenir Iron Man 3 soda cup!
In my opinion, Google seems to be degrading rapidly, along with the other social collapse happening in the U.S., documented in the book, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America.
.... the username 'Escort Wagon' painted a picture in my head that had nothing to do with cars. I'm still smiling about it. Thanks for that.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
Surprising relevant
From Wikipedia:
Feed (2002) is a young adult science fiction novel written by M. T. (Matthew Tobin) Anderson. The novel focuses on issues such as corporate power, consumerism, information technology, data mining, and environmental decay, occasionally from a sardonic perspective. The novel depicts American society's descent into a culture that revolves entirely around advertising and corporate gain from the perspective of an American teenager and his friends.
http://www.amazon.com/Feed-M-T...
Reminds me of Idiocracy, Robocop, and a number of other films featuring dystopian futures.
I usually just put a piece of paper over the screen for the duration of the flight. Sometimes I even leave it for the next customer . . .
Might as well face it I'm addicted to data.
Who said you couldn't make money from a thermostat that sets I you kitchen. Google is changing our way of thinking. Soon we will have direct on-demand postman in every local city.
tumentadivine
I find the entire issue more disheartening then that granted the most recent revelations about Pro-Corporate and Government data sharing. They used to have to do stake outs for weeks or even months to really know a person. Where they are at 7:00AM on a Saturday, how often they go to the gym, where they eat out with their secret lover every-other-Tuesday. Now we feed it to them directly all without giving a second though to it. Twitter and Facebook made it an socially acceptable action and even reward you for doing it often. I couldn't be more pessimistic about it even knowing that it has many advantages. Those that control it will always abuse it.
I purchased my Nest thermostat before the Google buyout, and I've been quite happy with it to this point. I would like to make it clear though, that this device is MY property and not Google's.
DO NOT ATTEMPT to spam me through my thermostat. The first time this happens, I will demand to return my thermostat for a full refund, and if that refund is not forthcoming, I will be the named plaintiff in a class action to compel Google to either cease and desist all advertising on devices I own, or remit a full refund of my original purchase price.
I do NOT consent to spamming, ever.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Think about what their thought process might mean for some Android devices:
Before we establish your call, you must watch a 30 second Ad. Only after the first 10 seconds will you be able to skip. You can skip every 20 Ads.
Just look what happened to YouTube.
I really think consumers should own their own behavioral data / preferences. I'll agree to put smart devices in my house if I control the data, I control who I give that data to, and I would only give that data out if it benefited me.
Think about it. Maybe a national grocery store chain or two and GE want to get together and offer a subsidised smart fridge. I agree to let them monetize my spending habits and food preferences in exchange for the fridge being subsidised somewhat and targeted discounts for what I like to buy.
Vodka milkshake? That never occurred to me before, I'll have to try that tonight. Thanks!
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Might help with the "What do you want for dinner tonight? I dunno, what do you want?" conversation that happens on a nightly basis.
In my experience, so does maturity, which does not come at a price premium.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
then Google can start collecting information on how often I open my fridge and then cross reference that with information from the supermarket (captured on those "loyalty" cards) that tells them the types of food I buy. From that they will determine that my diet is too high in trans fats and immediately notify every insurance company on earth to NOT sell me an insurance policy because of my poor dietary habits.
Do no evil my ass. I don't trust any of those Google pricks with my information. Same goes for Facebook.
Are you sure they have overlooked this? I think the words "google" and "car" and "driver" have been used in a lot of sentences over the last few years, especially with the word "driver" modified.
Make no mistake, there really is a vision here, and it's pretty damn clever (even if it's also insideous and horrible). Outside of dense areas with usable public transportation, a lot of "eye hours" are being "wasted" every day. Google is able to fund work on self-driving-car development, precisely because claiming this resource will be so much like finding the holy grail.
Human: "Take me to Joe's Brewpub."
Car: "Ok, here we go. By the way, Fred's Brewpub is also nearby and they have a new Imperial Red Ale that has received 14 positive reviews in the last 4 days. Would you like to g--"
Human: "Take me to Fred's."
Google: "Dear Fred, one conversion. That'll be a dollar, please."
Joe: "Dear Google, I would like to place an ad."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You know, it depresses me enough what we have to hack our phones to remove crappy "features" (disabled OS functions, bloatware) we don't want.
I for one simply cannot wait to do the same to my new car/refrigerator/thermostat. In the meantime, one alternate plan that's worked very well so far is to not buy any new cars or refrigerators or $200 learning thermostats.
Vodka milkshake? That never occurred to me before, I'll have to try that tonight. Thanks!
If you think that's good, try adding a shot of espresso, chocolate syrup and a Xanax.
I am not a crackpot.
"advertising" used to be about "advertising" the existence of a product or service. After all, how would I know that something's for sale without it being advertised?
But really, I think we've fallen far far away from that. I know that laundry detergent exists. I know where to find laundry detergent too. If you want to advertise your detergent in the aisle at the store, that'd be great. But I really don't need you to yell your detergent brand at me when I'm at home. I'm not going to suddenly get up and go buy even more detergent.
I'm not going to have ads on my fridge. Aside from buying commercial-grade fridges that don't even have water dispensers, let alone lcd screens, I do buy my fair share of duct tape -- for which I've never seen an ad. Actually, I buy Gorilla tape -- for which I've also never seen an ad. Both tapes do a great job of covering up LCD screens.
But more than anything, this is what confuses me. I'm not going to spend any more money. I simply don't have any more money to spend. It's not like more ads will convince me to buy more of anything. So aside from shifting my brand loyalty from one brand of printer paper to another, I really just don't see the point.
There is always way to glue a carton over the advert screen and cut loudspeaker out.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
And I envision a time when it will be necessary to have a 'Do Not Advertise' registry with the government to protect us from assholes like you Google. I'm with the rest of them go ahead Google put your freaking ads all over our house -- I freaking dare you to. I'll abandon everything about your company, as a matter of fact since that comment to the SEC pissed me off so much I'm going to delete Chrome right after I finish this tirade. I encourage everybody else to do the same as a show of solidarity. Screw Chrome
I have a "new" business for the future, sell things without advertising at a higher price.
"Oh, you don't the Google refrigerator, it doesn't let you open the door for beer until you have watched 30 seconds of beer commercials. You want this model, sure it's a bit more expensive but there's no eye tracking and you'll avoid all the malware associated with the Google model."
"Buy this thermostat, it lets you change the temperature without having to listen to beer commercials."
To me, when I read things like this, I think about what this really says about our society and the current state of our civilization.
Sure, I guess you could find some advertising going back to the stone age, but really, advertising didn't become the monstrosity it is until the last 60 years or so. And in the last 15, via the internet, it has just exploded.
Ads, ads everywhere and not a thought to think
The pedaling of goods and services, the saturation of commerce and advertising, however you want to analyze this, it is wrong, and it's not what the intelligence and creativity of the human race was meant for.
Looking back on this time, historians and others will cringe...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
A mocha made with Kahlua is delightful. We occasionally make hot chocolate for breakfast (real chocolate, not cocoa or syrup), and the leftovers make mochas in the afternoon.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I'll bet appliances with advertising won't pass muster with the European Union, but for some reason known only to Allah our government won't see anything wrong with it. I guess that's because our legislators are all so freaking corrupt and figure it will be another way to line their pockets.
More AD's? What's that? Active Directories?
If you want ice cream and vodka, open the freezer door, not the fridge.
Google did the entire world a HUGELY nice thing with Google Search. For the first time, humans were able to find the world's information.
Remember the abusive Hotmail? Gmail is far better than any other email service, in my opinion.
In the beginning, Google was not so adversarial to customers. In the beginning, Google was the best at what it did.
I've thought about and studied the phenomenon of companies slowly degrading for decades. Hewlett-Packard was already going downhill in the 1970s; the company was making data acquisition hardware that had an obviously unfinished design.
Fairchild Semiconductor was, at one time, the best manufacturer of transistors. The company began selling power transistors with epoxy casing. The epoxy degraded the transistors. It seemed that Fairchild never recovered.
Tektronix was a great company at one time; everybody in the tech world was impressed with Tektronix oscilloscopes. I suppose the good managers decided to move to other efforts. One problem was that Tektronix was not prepared for lower-cost competitors.
More recently, Adobe seems to me to be on a long downhill slide; the PDF file formats were a gift to the world. Now Adobe seems to me to be becoming more and more aggressive toward its customers.
Jamie Dimon of Chase Bank seems to me to be becoming tired of being CEO and making huge management mistakes for which there have been multi-billion dollar fines.
Not just no: fuck no.
"In a hierarchy every employee will rise to his level of incompetence". The Peter Principle
Any 'visual display unit' that is visible from the drivers seat must be turned off unless it displays only vehicle/navigation information or the car is parked.
Otherwise it's illegal.
Might depend where in the world you are, but it's illegal in New Zealand.
Section 2.5 of http://nzta.thomsonreuters.co....
While I hate the idea of ads on my refrigerator too, don't we already have that? My fridge and stove have "LG" stamped on them, my car has chrome logos all over it, pretty much everything I own basically carries an ad on it already! It just isn't animated yet.
How is AdBlock going to return value to its shareholders? By selling advertising or charging for the software?
Google isn't responsible for delivering you any ads on the internet, except when you use their services. It's the websites you visit that include the ads. You should be asking them for subsidies, not Google. Although, they'll probably return the favour, asking you to pay to view their websites they pay to run.
How about instead of ripping out the screen, you don't buy the product that has functionality you don't want.
"Buy 2 Truman Show DVD's, and get one freeee!"
Table-ized A.I.
I foresee Google executives being burned at the stake by a mob of people driven mad by having no escape from the constant advertising.
Let's hope both I and Google are wrong about what we foresee.
Oh, great. Next thing you know, you'll be paying extra for absolutely worthless components added to appliances, just so it can sell you more junk. You'll end up buying a refrigerator with built-in temperature and humidity sensors. Why? Just so your fridge can tell you you need to buy a humidifier every winter, and try to get you to buy a central air conditioner every summer day you walk into the kitchen. Temp sensor go bad? Oh, don't worry--if you don't fix it, it'll just bug you that you need to get a new furnace every winter day until you get it fixed.
Google, fuck you. And no thanks, you keep your ads away from my fucking appliances.
...NOT!
Not in my house.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
Right. A good example is that in the Android "ice cream sandwich" release, Google deliberately broke on-phone voice dialing. Now, to get hands-free dialing, you have to use Google's voice search service, which logs everything you do for ad purposes. It also won't work if you have poor data connectivity but good voice connectivity, which is common when driving. Google's voice search service assumes the user is looking at the screen, which defeats the whole point of Bluetooth headsets.
So there's Google, pulling an LG.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Ads spread disease, ruin shit
In a manner of speaking.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Want to give me a free refrigerator, subsidized by ads? Sure! Other than that, you won't be getting my business if you want to put ads on your refrigerator. Take it or leave it.
If you have ads on your fridge.. and it runs android... You'd have apps, right? But an app on a fridge - wouldn't it keep freezing? :O
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
Would you like me to order some cigarettes and a pregnancy test for you?
Perhaps I'm unworldly, but WTF have cigarettes got to do with sex? Am I missing something? Unless it is what a turn-off they are, so they act as a contraceptive.
Would anyone buy these devices that have no real need for network access anyway?
Have people gotten so stupid and lazy they can't open the fridge and look to see if they need milk or eggs?
Do you fuss over the settings on your thermostat so often that you'd ever actually see any ads that appear there?
Why would you want glasses that obscure your vision with "ads"?
Most people are sick to death of ads and hate advertisers.
Die already. If your home is wired for internet access, you already have the means to research new products without needing ads forced at you from every direction.