Google now showing ads in Chrome; will users jump ship?

[ShyWriter]

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Google now showing ads in Chrome; will users jump ship?

Owen Williams 20 hours ago:

Google, who are well known for their search engine are also well known for doing ads. Today, it appears the company is giving in-browser advertisements a go, according to gHacks. The company is showing ads to users that try to sell them Chromebooks, but it appears they only show on the "New Tab" page.

The image was found over on Google+, and users are giving mixed reactions to the news already, with one side of the argument saying "You guys are a bunch of spoiled brats. It's a free browser for goodness sake!" and the other simply responding "Firefox 8 doesn't have ads." Perhaps Google has finally realized they could cash in on some of that large new market share?

It's not clear what platform the browser was on (it almost looks like it's on a Chromebook itself) and we weren't able to reproduce the behavior ourselves. Despite this, multiple users on the Google+ post reported that they were seeing the ads in their browsers too. We've also heard it's happening on Windows 7 based machines too.

If the company pushes ahead with this, it could be bad news for their market share -- or -- people might just accept that advertisements in browsers were always going to surface at some point. If users are really annoyed by them, there are other options that don't have them, so it'll be interesting to see how people react, as well as if Google moves to let other companies utilize the ad space. Stay tuned.

Source: http://www.neowin.ne...users-jump-ship

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Shy

[Comprev]

Why didn't I see this coming?

[AdvancedSetup]

Nothing to jump ship over - never got on the boat

[exile360]

SRWare Iron is always a viable alternative (no ads/tracking). This is a move I always expected Google to make as it fits with the business model of their search engine and email service perfectly.

[AdvancedSetup]

Neither does Firefox or Opera

[exile360]

Neither does Firefox or Opera

Yep, I know, I simply indicated SRWare Iron because it's based on the same source code as Chrome and is compatible with all of its plugins so it would be an easier transition to switch to it for users accustomed to Chrome.

[GT500]

Back before Opera 8, Opera's free version included ads to help support the browser. Outside of die-hard Opera fans, the ads were extremely unpopular, and supposedly made a lot of people dislike Opera. After Opera 8 released and the ads were removed, we found that those same people refused to use Opera simply because it wasn't exactly like Firefox...

[ShyWriter]

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Speaking of browsers, there is a 64-bit browser based on the Firefox 8.01 engine called Waterfox. (And no ads )

Please see http://forums.malwarebytes.org/index.php?showtopic=100100&view=findpost&p=496869 in General Software Updates .

Cheers,

Steve

[GT500]

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Speaking of browsers, there is a 64-bit browser based on the Firefox 8.01 engine called Waterfox. (And no ads )

There have been 64-bit browsers on Linux for a long time.

There have also been 64-bit builds of Firefox for Windows for a long time. They were compiled by a third party. Didn't have any plugin support, if I remember correctly.

[ShyWriter]

There have been 64-bit browsers on Linux for a long time.

There have also been 64-bit builds of Firefox for Windows for a long time. They were compiled by a third party. Didn't have any plugin support, if I remember correctly.

Actually Arthur, Firefox itself, has official nightly builds of the 64-bit Firefox browser - but as you said a lot of the extensions for 32-bit Firefox don't work on the 64-bit Firefox.. And as near as I can tell, there are many browsers compiled by 3rd parties that have a firefox engine.

Steve

[GT500]

There didn't used to be official 64-bit builds of Firefox, and the only ones were third-party builds compiled by a guy who's name I forget...