To make this more clear, imagine you signup for a new cable television channel, and you watching it, suddenly your image shows up with a product in your hands, smiling, and saying: "This is the best product i ever used", and you realize that its being broadcasted to everybody watching it.. would you fell comfortable about that?

Once we settle down for this kind of things, and think its normal, we are contributing to a world where we are constantly sold as a product; and that my friend completely diminish the human nature.. its a slow and erosive dead of humanity (in the confucian sense of it)..

All values we give importance today as freedom, truth.. will lose more and more value, and the only thing valuable in society will be money..

I know it may look like a exacerbation, but this is a systemic process, going on from several front lines.. and that one is one of them..

This is not much about privacy implications (despite it has some too), but more in a ethical degree.. and the failure to detect it properly can have severe consequences to us all in the long term

I have no problem with quoting a review that you wrote with your name and face associated and putting your name and face next to it for your friends to see. For context, see the ads that appear at the top of yelp search results. They usually quote someone's review and have their profile picture next to it, which is fine, because all they're saying is "here's a good review someone gave of this place", and using a review that was intended for people to see publicly. The person didn't "become an ad", their review was just quoted in an ad with their public profile picture next to it.

I have more of a problem with the +1 thing, but it's theoretical right now, and will come down to how they actually execute it. It's the same problem as the ambiguity of the "like" endorsements on Facebook. A +1 on a restaurant is probably fine to show (in the same way as with reviews), as long as they say something like "magicalist +1-ed this restaurant!". If, however, I +1 a cool photo that Red Bull posted about Felix Baumgartner's skydive, for instance, and my friends start getting ads saying "magicalist +1-ed Red Bull!", then we're in false statement territory, since that is not at all what I meant.

+1s (and "likes") are inherently ambiguous (which aspect of the thing I'm +1-ing am I approving of? It's often not all aspects), so they really should tread carefully. The rest I don't really have a problem with.

I don't mind appearing in search results, as that's just useful to others. But ads, by definition, are less relevant to a search result than the search results themselves. I don't want my recommendation appearing where a sponsor dictates. That said, I personally wouldn't mind as much if Google was paying me and shared the stats on when my face showed up ;-) (Wouldn't that change the nature of Google+ though...)

Theres nothing wrong with the model in itself, it works, it make some things free for us..

The review model you have pointed out, is a ok model i think.. because there's social benefit for all users involved.. this is much more a "facebook like model".. and that can be done because its up to you and your own choices to sponsor some idea, a place or a product if you wish..

But the proposed model will not depend on you, or your will.. and thats what's bad about it.. its just disrespectful.. and we are talking about the possible customers of the sponsored services and products..

But if they really need to do that, at least they should share the profits with the people being exposed to do that..

That way people would consciently participate of this process(by choosing to opt-in and not to opt-out)..

The other thing that is pretty disrespectful and make people anger about, is the fact that people would automatically get into this advert model thing and to choose to opt out of it.. so people that dont even know wahts happening will have their faces and privacy exposed, and maybe look to their friends that they wish to do it...

The correct way to do that would be create this, and invite people to opt in.. if they wish.. this show that the company, whoever they are respect the user of its service..

Otherwise the message looks like: "You use our free services therefore we own you"

I dont care if its google, facebook, microsoft or apple.. i know that things dont used to be like this.. things are getting scary with time.. in a way we wonder what sort of transformation are happening to them? they used to have such a cool services.. and they were profitable in the same way..

Somewhere over the rainbow, they lose their track.. its time to get back to its own roots, before its too late

Lots of people are harmed by a "real names" policy: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Rea...

    > What if you publish a negative review of a restaurant? Now it's
    > super easy for them to find you and possibly harass you.

Like Afterlife I really don't see what the big deal is. They're taking data that's already public and presenting it slightly differently.

If they show me an ad for something that my friends have negatively reviewed, I damn well want to see those negative reviews right along-side the ad.

Disclaimer: Googler

If a recommendation service prioritizes a recommendation because it was paid more to do so, isn't that akin to bribery? Why have we normalized the morality of this kind of business practice?

To put it another way: increasing bid price, all other things being equal, will increase ad ranking. I would posit that this relationship has zero benefit for the ad consumer, and may even serve as a detrimental force, essentially degrading the relationship between ad ranking and ad quality by introducing a completely arbitrary factor.

(I believe some economists have postulated that the amount a company spends on advertising actually serves as an informational signal about the quality of the underlying product. I'm doubtful, but I'll admit it's a potential weakness in my argument.)

As far as I can tell, the only reason AdWords uses a bid auction system is to make more money; I would be interested to hear how factoring money into ad ranking could possibly add value to AdWords for the end-user.

Ultimately, ads need to make more money for a company than they cost to run. And my main issue is I'm being sold twice here -- first by being shown ads, and second by being featured in ads. This "double dipping" seems a bit much to me, so I opted out.

I've always thought that ads that were reviewed, and could be reviewed very negatively, would be an interesting check on scams and bad products. You gladly take the advertisers money, but if people rate the ad poorly it's a waste and possibly negative value. This might encourage good ads and ads for good products.

...

>Disclaimer: Googler

I actually think this is both a strength and a weakness of google. They've gotten their (often very smart) employees to believe the company line.

I mean, don't get me wrong; I think that google ads (at least, before the doubleclick thing) are less bad than most ads online. They are less annoying.

And yes, consumers benefit from some of the things paid for by advertising, so I can understand the argument that google is overall good for consumers, because they use ads that are less annoying than usual for services that are actually worth paying for. In a real sense, google has lowered the "price" consumers pay for services and content that is paid for by advertising.

However, this isn't what you are saying. You are saying that ads in and of themselves are good for consumers. that it's /better/ to find a product through paid advertising than through 'organic' search results, as if an advertiser has an interest in giving the customer the lowest possible price, or the best possible service for a given price.

Most people outside the advertising industry find that position laughable.

Now, on the surface, this looks good for google. Employees buy the company line. And really, it seems like it's probably a useful way for an Engineer who is building an advertising platform to look at the problem. You want your ads to harm the consumer as little as possible, and your employees will feel better about building something to help people instead of building something to trick people. But, I think, if you dig deeper, there are problems. Because the company line is false (and it is in nearly all companies; I'm not singling google out on that part. The difference is that at most companies, nobody buys the company line.) you have employees with a false worldview, which can lead to incorrect decisions.

Because Google employees seem to feel that google has the best interests of the customer at heart, it becomes quite difficult for google employees, then, to predict when the rest of us (who assume that google does not have our best interests at heart) will feel that they've crossed the 'creepy' line.

At a more systemic level, within the space of running a search engine people use to find products and running advertising in the same space you will always have a conflict of interest. The better your organic search results are, the less likely the user is going to click on an ad. Google employees believing that the ad really is the best result will accelerate that process.

(of course, for now, google has such a good reputation that this doesn't matter until someone becomes better than them at search by a noticeable margin. I think it's a long-term problem, while the "don't be creepy" issue is more immediately urgent, but is easier for google to ameliorate that issue in the long term. )

Nope, I said no such thing. Of course some strawman statement, that you hypothesize that I support, would be seen as laughable by a hypothetical population outside the advertising industry. But let's stick to what real people have actually said.

Considering that, and looking at my original statement, perhaps I should have said "can be useful for user and advertisers", like I said "a good ad can benefit everyone". That's a little more clear that there's the potential for this, and hopefully less Kool-Aidy.

I'm pretty sure this has been stated by actually official company representatives at some point, and I think it stands as relatively obvious, depending on what your definition of "good ad" is. If you're optimizing for the short term, and you're an ad marketplace, then a good ad is one that sells for a high commission - that is, one that has relative high CTR and bid price for a large total earn. But if those ads are scammy, then users will eventually either not click those ads, not click any ads, stop using the marketplace or the sites that display the ads, etc. So if you optimize for the long term you want users to be glad that they clicked on an ad, so that they'll continue to do that over the the long term, and that means making them good for the user. This means that a "good ad" has some usefulness to the user: if highlights a product or service they were looking for, it educates, it offers a good price, etc.

Yes, it's idealistic, but not overly so. The premise is just that built right, an ad system can produce good results for everyone. Good free content; relatively useful ads; revenue for content producers, ad marketplace, and advertisers; etc. I think this ends up being the case at least some of the time, and it's important to realize that it's not just by accident, it's by design. And it's not strictly capitalistic or benevolent, but a case where the two can coexist if done right.

Again, no where did I ever say that an ad is better than an organic result. Please don't claim that I did. It's simply not true.

Hm. I'm sorry. That is the impression I've gotten from multiple google employees... that is the impression I got from your post, too. However, you are correct. that's not what you said, that's my interpretation of what you said, which yeah. Is a very different thing. (I mean, I could say I was using "saying" to mean 'meaning' but... yeah, I was incorrect, and rudely so. I'm sorry.)

>So if you optimize for the long term you want users to be glad that they clicked on an ad, so that they'll continue to do that over the the long term, and that means making them good for the user. This means that a "good ad" has some usefulness to the user: if highlights a product or service they were looking for, it educates, it offers a good price, etc.

I agree that making ads "less bad" is a good long-term goal for an advertising company (and I think google has actually done a pretty good job of that) I think my disagreement comes when you start calling ads 'good' rather than 'less bad' (outside of the content or services those ads pay for.)

The essential point of disagreement, I think, is that all other things being equal, both the merchant and the customer are better off if they make the exchange without paying a middleman. Sort of how many people feel that groupon is bad. Thus, when you say "a good ad can benefit everyone involved." I hear, perhaps incorrectly, "an ad can be better than an organic search result"

>Yes, it's idealistic, but not overly so. The premise is just that built right, an ad system can produce good results for everyone. Good free content; relatively useful ads; revenue for content producers, ad marketplace, and advertisers; etc. I think this ends up being the case at least some of the time, and it's important to realize that it's not just by accident, it's by design. And it's not strictly capitalistic or benevolent, but a case where the two can coexist if done right.

You still have the long-term problem that your organic search results are competing with your ads, creating a long-term conflict of interest within google. Nobody is going to click on your ads if your organic results are better than your ads.

Competition is generally considered good, and I see competition all around here. In search Google is not simply going to slow down, that would be a recipe for obsolescence. If Google can make search results 10x better, I'm sure they can figure out how to monetize it. If Google lets Bing catch up, that's trouble. In ads, if the ads compete with search results, then make the ads better. Showing endorsements from friends is an example of this, just like such endorsements can show up in search results (I think, not sure). Ad networks also compete against each other, so another search engine that does ads in a way that's better for users will hopefully get rewarded for that, making others respond.

That's certainly a healthy way to look at it, but google is still competing with itself internally, which I think is rather different from competing with an external company.

>Competition is generally considered good,

There are two ways of competing; making your product [appear] better, and making the other guy's product [appear] worse. The difference between external and internal competition is that with external competition, you have the option of trying to make your competitor's product appear to be worse, but it's pretty difficult to actually make it worse. With competition within a company? It's much easier to actually make the competing product worse. (Note, I'm not saying that google is doing that... just that competition between departments within a company is often not as beneficial as competition between companies with different ownership.)

>I see competition all around here.

Well, first, I am glad that you (as a googler) see competition, but my view, as an outsider? you don't have serious competition. I mean, as a business owner (and someone who buys ads) your competition is... meat-space ads, mostly. And relationships with sites your customers care about. (Sponsorship and the like, which is higher labor, but I think often gives higher value to the advertiser than display ads. I'm not sure it's an approach that scales.)

As a consumer, I don't see serious competition for low-cost email. I don't see serious competition for search. You have a big lead, in most of your consumer products.

Obviously, Google doesn't have a lead at all in social networking, and, I think, google shifting so much of their emphasis to that market is a symptom of not having serious competition in other markets. (I believe, well... I hope that the social networking market is not as big or as important as the market right now thinks it is.)

>If Google can make search results 10x better, I'm sure they can figure out how to monetize it.

There's a difference between "oh, that would be nice" and "we must do this or we will no longer exist as a company (or lose significant market share.)"

I can tell you this from recent personal experience. Two years ago, increasing ram and disk allocations for my customers "would be nice" - and I started moving on it. some customers got upgraded, but not many.

Today? it's an existential problem. I've lost 15% of my customers in just a few months. If I don't get users upgraded (and open new signups) with dramatically more resources per dollar soon...

So yeah; Consider me motivated. Between my previous post and this post, I caused nearly a terabyte in ram (and servers to put said ram in) to appear in my van.

(I know that the motivations of public companies are... different. But generally, this is the narrative that is used to explain why competition is good, even if this narrative does not always fit the data.)

Or hide the content way down, or make the content slightly worse than ads, or make ads look like content. I mentioned the scams that Google, your employer does. This http://i.imgur.com/mhJhc5W.png is good for everyone, long term, right ?

Confirmation bias tells us that negative reviews will always be more numerous than positive reviews, however those people writing negative reviews will feel a stronger cohesion with each-other. As such, negative reviews will be more valuable to how people form first impressions.

Keep in mind these are paid ads, Google is trying to further promote/endorse the advertiser.

That actually happened to a friend of mine, and he enjoyed it. Made the restaurant look even worse when he posted their infantile response.

Who wouldn't ?

The fact that they do a lot of very questionable things does not mean everything they do should be immediately condemned. Judging a single action as neutral or useful does not preclude disapproving of the actor in general, and general disapproval should not preclude viewing specific actions neutrally and in context.

Of course not. However, there is no denying that HN as a community is really biased in favor of Google.

Just for comparison: when the news came that you'd be searchable by name in Facebook, half the discussion focused on "delete your account!" and "they are trying to kill privacy!". Google puts your name and picture on ads online, something that in the "real" world requires a ton of paperwork and usually money exchanging hands (including yours)? Nah, dude, that's fine.

I know they are only slightly comparable, but my point is: the bias in favor of Google is there. May not be everyone, may not be an organized PR campaign, but it is definitely there.

if you don't want people to see what you write, maybe you should consider using a diary rather than a publishing service.

See it where? On every billboard on earth? CNN, BBC, Superbowl commercial? (without any compensation for you)

Right, that's my problem. Here's something that's been bugging me for some time, and that applies to all services that turn in features by default: do they do it because they believe most people will want this feature, or do they do it because that's important for their business and they hope that most people won't bother to turn it off / won't know the thing is turned on. Note that I'm not being cynical here, I'm honestly wondering which it is.

So to go back to our specific case: why is that thing not turned off by default? When google created gmail, they didn't say: "look if you want to use google now, you will have to use gmail too, that's how it is". Gmail was simply great, so people adopted it. If this new feature is so great, people will see it and turn it on, why force it down on the user?

Because they're trying to expand the way they monetize their user base and they suspect that most people won't give a shit either way. So if you're looking to roll out this new thing that you think will be more useful to your customers (advertisers), you want maximum value from your product (users).

So, on by default. A few people will complain and threaten to leave Google services, nothing will come of it, and Google expands the sophistication of it's core money generation platform.