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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.
This could turn into a real micropayment system.
About 7 years ago I (incorrectly) predicted that ISPs could bootstrap micropayment systems by allowing users to put money into an account with their ISP. When the user visits a site with ads, the site could "bill" the customer via the ISP anonymously, transparently to the user, and cheaply. The payment system would essentially live in the ISP's HTTP proxy server.
The Google model sounds like a variation of that, with Google collecting the money and distributing the micropayments to the web site via the ad network.
A similar ad-free subscription-oriented option will be available for YouTube soon. I am surprised to see this announcement without it connecting to that one.
My first question is what needs to be allowed in order for this to work? Do I have to whitelist sites in adblock? NoScript? Do I have to abandon those addons?
What about any of the anti-tracking stuff I use?
And, lastly, the main reason I use all of that is because I got very tired of clicking on a site and WAITING FOR ALL THE SHIT TO LOAD AND RELOAD AND RERELOAD.
I might use this. I might not. But there isn't enough information available right now to tell whether it will be better or worse for me than what I'm doing today.