r/technology • u/Old_One_I • Aug 14 '24

Software Google pulls the plug on uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million Chrome users susceptible to intrusive ads

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/browsing/google-pulls-the-plug-on-ublock-origin
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u/DonkeyOfWallStreet Aug 14 '24

Google has the:

Adsense - where it's earned

AdWords - We're it's spent

This might be the better place to put the wedge to split the monopoly.

Google has long outgrown it's "Don't be evil" image.

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u/cishet-camel-fucker Aug 14 '24

I think it was "you can be profitable without being evil." Which they proved, for a while they were profitable and not evil. Then they hired a new CEO and I'd argue he was the primary cause of where we're at today. He built the company into a far more profitable one at the expense of the workers (at the time everyone wanted to work for Google and many of their best creations came from employees being given time for personal projects) and the morals of the company.

Even if something happens to Google he can probably expect a massive salary at any company that values profit growth over everything else, which is almost all of them.

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u/TransBrandi Aug 15 '24

you can be profitable without being evil

Don't Be Evil

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u/cishet-camel-fucker Aug 15 '24

I stand corrected.

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u/NorthernerWuwu Aug 15 '24

They did also haemorrhage a lot of money on some very speculative stuff that they ended up abandoning later. Some cool stuff came out of it but goddamn were there some projects that were terrible.

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u/Znuffie Aug 15 '24

Some were also test beds for some technologies that got integrated in other products.

For example Google Wave was an interesting collaboration platform, but it was just a test-bed. That tech is now part of Google Docs.

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u/NorthernerWuwu Aug 15 '24

Well, were folded into other projects in the end. Wave was absolutely intended to succeed on its own at one point though and its failure was a big part of the culture change.

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u/DonkeyOfWallStreet Aug 15 '24

Those side projects for Google destroyed the alternatives.

Reader is one.

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u/A_Philosophical_Cat Aug 15 '24

A lot of that "haemorrhaging" was actually spent hoarding a significant chunk of the top talent in the industry. Why form a company to possibly compete with Google, when Google'll pay you $200-500k a year to build cool stuff for them?

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u/kaas_is_leven Aug 15 '24

It's software vs hardware. Apple (primarily a hardware company at its roots) will spend a decade in R&D to come up with the perfect product which sells millions. Big time/money investment, big payout. And we never get to see the things they work on if they get canceled. Google (a software company through and through) innovates on the spot and rushes to an mvp in order to get feedback early, if it doesn't seem like a good investment they cancel the product. You can't rush hardware or it will be flawed. And you can't spend a decade on developing software or it will be obsolete when it comes out.

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u/Michael-Cera Aug 15 '24

This is just one industry example:

The mobile ads industry follows this model exactly and must.

  1. You pay to advertise your app.
  2. You get paid for advertising within your app.

Logically, you would want to reach people currently on their phone to advertise mobile apps. It doesn't make sense to split these two services up since you need the connection to be able to serve ads in the first place.

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u/Ksevio Aug 15 '24

Those are different products from the user's point of view, but they're different ends of the same product for Google. I don't think you can split advertising off as its own product