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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.
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.
Publicly-traded technical advertising company announces expectation of profit in advertising on tech devices. Stop the presses.
Much of Slashdot (and others) still seems to have a problem recognizing that Google is an advertising company. All their cool stuff is to support this core business.
Would you like me to order some cigarettes and a pregnancy test for you?
...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.
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
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
"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!"
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.
Last night I was on a United flight with the fancy new DirectTV in-seat entertainment system. The one that costs $8 for any flight over 2 hours. The one that has absolutely NO free entertainment options, not even the "From the Cockpit" audio that United hypes. The one that couldn't be turned off until after takeoff, and then turned itself back on at apparently random times.
All it had, for those who didn't pay, was endless ads trying to get people to pay, and some ads trying to sell ads on the system.
And some people spent the entire four hour flight in a darkened cabin with this glowing LCD playing advertising a foot away from their faces. Simply incomprehensible.
Just watch Idiocracy
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.
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.
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."
And it is still working. As for the car, what about the car navigation voice telling you that you are nearing a burger drive-thru because it knows its time for you to be hungry again (it also know that you likely are hungover from activities day before and your Google searches...) and that you love your burgers..
For now, because there are so many of us old-fogeys from a time before advertisement skipping was possible/easily accessible to the masses.
Once we die off the advertisers are in for a world of shock: Young people do not tolerate advertisements. Without exception, NONE of the people I know under the age of 25 listen to the radio (and thus radio commercials) in their car, despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of older people still do. Among that group, also, most won't watch TV without having the show recorded on DVR either entirely, or at least enough of it recorded to time-shift the start long-enough so they can zap the commercials.
They've been raised to be advertising-averse by the sheer volume of crap that's been shoved in their faces their entire lives. It's funny, but kids are actually smarter than us in a lot of ways.
Who did what now?
My wife and I occasionally like suggesting alternative dialog for the ads. I doubt the advertisers would enjoy my alternative slogans and dialog.
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.
They have a vision, all right: About annoying human beings with advertisements at every waking moment. The part I suggested they were overlooking was the part where it is, at present, illegal to do what they're talking about doing. Yes, of course, they're google and they have scads of money to buy whatever laws they want, but I mean today.
Who did what now?
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.
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.
Really? When I was a kid commercials were time to run to the bathroom, get something to eat, let the dog out, etc. I even remember when they were far enough apart that you'd sometimes be waiting for one because you really had to go. And short enough that you'd have to go fast.