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from the two-googles-is-enough-for-anybody dept.
Two stories about Google graced The Register in recent days.
The First was about Google (allegedly) stripping SSL from British Telephone (BT) mobile users search requests, even when the users had started from https pages, and were using BT WiFi subscribers piggy-backing off wireless connections, (I have no idea what exactly is meant by piggy-backing in this context). Personally, I would suspect BT of having a hand in that.
The open secret here is that for some VIP customers, search requests coming from their networks have SSL stripped as a service. This was mostly developed for schools where Google supplies their mail , web, and search services. Some of these places are statutorily obligated to filter their networks. BT may have been setting this bit themselves, but is difficult to tell.
A google engineer Adam Langly posted in a public forum that you can bypass any institutional ssl stripping by always accessing Google Searches via a different URL:
"However, if you want an encrypted search option, 'https://encrypted.google.com' is always encrypted and isn't affected by these methods."
You might want to set that as your Google landing page on mobile devices if you use wifi on some business or school campuses.
The second story concerns a trial balloon that Google is floating in a few markets called "Contributor" where, for a small(ish) fee, Google will strip ads out of pages, and share that fee with the web site in lieu of advertising revenue. The monthly fee, ranging between $1 and $3 per site, will be paid to the site operator after Google takes its cut.
El Reg speculates:
Perhaps Google and websites heavily reliant on ads are tired of netizens using ad-blocking browser plugins. Perhaps Google just wants to prove that the vast majority of people are OK with ads, and few want to spend even $1 a month on a web subscription.
So the question is, Soylentils: Are there any sites you would be willing to pay a dollar a month to visit without ads?
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday November 24 2014, @09:43AM
Then I don't know what devices you are using. With the devices I've had access to in a transient fashion they've had no ad blocking mechanisms enabled. I get full 30 second unblockable ads that blare at full volume. There is actual sound involved which I don't think is appropriate for a hand held device in any situation (social contexts--noise disturbance). Just like the BS in Congress over the loudness of commercial advertisements on TV, somebody apparently needs to address hand held devices too.
My great dislike stems from the fact that the entire presentation of the information is, at best, a farce in multiple ways. The general idea of an advertisement is not the problem. This is solely derived from the implementation. In many ways, advertisements can occur without even being considered as traditional effective advertising.
Would I like to know about a new root beer? Uhhh, sure. Tell me about it. If I was treated like an adult, it would not be so bad. However, the truth is that advertisements are like trying to extract information out of a bunch of playing 3 year olds. They're telling you in sweeping generalizations, flawed logic, and bad terms about their plans. Then sometimes the little shits are lying to me to get away with something, and hoping their cuteness will save them.
I'm spending a lot more time with relatives (Thanksgiving rocks) and I'm quite unfortunately exposed to far more advertising. The TV is left on, and like a horror movie to me, the commercials get to seep into my reality.
It's so stupid now. I thought reality TV was stupid, I thought the tabloids were stupid, I was not prepared for how stupid advertisements have got. Any commercial targeted to the 18-35 demographic is as if the advertisers themselves felt their prospective customers were mentally challenged rednecks with poor attention spans.
It's not the sound. It's my, perhaps irrational, fear that I will live Idiocracy in my life time. Perhaps before Thursday. So maybe I'm biased against such methods of communicating information that are childish, ineffective, and only funny to five year olds.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.