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Google Launches Service To Replace Web Ads With Subscriptions
An anonymous reader writes: Everyone understands by now that ads fund most of the sites on the web. Other sites have put up paywalls or started subscription bonuses, with varying success. Google, one of the web's biggest ad providers, saw a problem with that: it's a huge pain for readers to manage subscriptions for all the sites they visit — often more trouble than it's worth. And, since so few people sign up, the subscription fees have to be pretty high. Now, Google has launched a service called Contributor to try to fix this situation.
The way Contributor works is this: websites and readers can opt in to the service (and sites like Imgur, The Onion, and ScienceDaily already have). Readers then pay a fee of $1-3 per month (they get to choose how much) to gain ad-free access to all participating sites. When the user visits one of the sites, instead of showing a Google ad, Google will just send a small chunk of that subscription money to the website instead.
The way Contributor works is this: websites and readers can opt in to the service (and sites like Imgur, The Onion, and ScienceDaily already have). Readers then pay a fee of $1-3 per month (they get to choose how much) to gain ad-free access to all participating sites. When the user visits one of the sites, instead of showing a Google ad, Google will just send a small chunk of that subscription money to the website instead.
Haven't seen ads since I installed adblock plus and no script. Cost me nothing.
Translation: I'm a worthless freeloader.
Apples and Oranges freeloader.
Sharing music doesn't degrade the performance of the artist's servers, and how often you share it doesn't cost them anything directly (indirectly there's a perceived loss of profits, but since when did freeloaders pay for anything so it's a red herring). Besides, the real money for artists is in concerts, not records.
Stripping a site of its ads denies the site owner of the revenue of those ads while still costing him the bandwidth to send you the content. So there is a direct cost. Insignificant in terms of a single freeloader, but if everyone on the net used adblock, the net would collapse because there'd be no revenue to pay for the servers.
So yes, if you use adblock you're a freeloader, and worse, a thief.