Comment Re:it would be pretty to think so (Score 1) 70
I suspect the primary reason for this is to maintain high ad prices by not charging advertisers for useless click. For instance, if I were to post this response on a mobile platform, I would first have to close the ad tab at the bottom so I could click the submit button. Sometimes instead of closing the ad, I click it. If the advertiser is getting charged per click, and google were the provider, this would generate revenue for Google while providing negative value for the advertiser, as it would tend to make me dislike the advertiser. This would tend to push ad rates down, which still would not compensate for the negative end user impression.
Ding ding ding ding! We have a winner.
Of course Google is trying to reduce accidental ad clicks - because accidentals reduce ad rates if advertisers feel most people are not viewing the ad because they want to.
And you can bet more than a few advertisers probably pulled their campaigns after seeing most of their money went to Google over people who never intended to follow through with the ad.
Anytime Google does something beneficial to the users, it's probably because the advertisers got pissed off. Here, it would be advertisers getting pissed off paying for accidental taps.
Google rarely, if ever, allows real malware to slip through. Yes, there is adware and exploitive free to play games, but you can uninstall them and they're gone. What makes malware malware is you need to ffr to get rid of it.
Sorry, not true. Maybe if you stick on the straight and narrow "Google" ads, but Google owns most of the ad networks out there, including your favorites like DoubleClick (famous pop ups and pop unders, and more than a few times sent infected ads), AdMob (who does most of the mobile advertising - Google themselves don't do it), as well as several others. Google owns the online advertising business - the only ones they don't are the scummy ones who advertise on bittorrent sites and the like