(December 3, 2015 at 10:50 am)Tiberius Wrote: I wasn't aware that all of the products featured in their shopping search were paid for, but thinking about it it does make sense. Online stores are going to be difficult to properly crawl for products, as each one uses a different method of displaying them.
I'll still use the Google product search, because it works.
Two things: 1. from 2002-2012 Google DID have a non-premium product search feature. They're a search engine first and foremost, that became an advertising giant later on. But the product search function was implemented and worked fine. 2. You can't use Google product search since it doesn't exist anymore, what you are using is "Google shopping" which is a different services in that the old one was an internet search function, and the new one isn't.
(December 3, 2015 at 10:50 am)Tiberius Wrote: I still disagree with you that these are ads that need to be blocked. Ad blockers are useful for blocking intrusive adverts. Blocking links to places where adverts are displayed is silly; there's nothing intrusive about a link, and if you don't use the product search, you aren't going to click the link in the first place. Besides, do you similarly block all links to eBay, because eBay charges you to list products, and each product listing is an advert. My point being, the entire purpose of the "Shopping" site is to display links to products that you might want to buy, just like regular retailers.
What's your definition of "intrusive"? Ads that mask themselves as page content are the very definition of intrusive. How many other websites that are comprised purely of premium links to we routinely avoid? Do you find yourself going to milliondollarhomepage.com to intentionally browse the ads? Do you find yourself ever going to pages that are all ads just to find products?
EBay is different, they list merchant products. Google does not. When we say "ad" we typically mean to a 3rd party service, not to another service provided by the same website. It's perfectly true that eBay merchants often sell their products through their own website as well as eBay, but eBay doesn't allow them a platform to advertise their website where they sell their products, they must sell them through the eBay site when using it.
You may not feel that the Google Search disadvantages "smaller" companies, but let me just say that the Product Search feature (now removed) allowed me to find many tiny stores in the past too. To claim they "need" a paid platform to provide that is pure nonsense: they had a working product search feature, it worked very well, and it was removed to be replaced wholesale by advertising (even though it did have ads of course, like the rest of Google).
How would it make you feel if Google Search was replaced with a paid platform, with no websites listed for free?
For Religion & Health see:[/b][/size] Williams & Sternthal. (2007). Spirituality, religion and health: Evidence and research directions. Med. J. Aust., 186(10), S47-S50. -LINK
The WIN/Gallup End of Year Survey 2013 found the US was perceived to be the greatest threat to world peace by a huge margin, with 24% of respondents fearful of the US followed by: 8% for Pakistan, and 6% for China. This was followed by 5% each for: Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, North Korea. -LINK
"That's disgusting. There were clean athletes out there that have had their whole careers ruined by people like Lance Armstrong who just bended thoughts to fit their circumstances. He didn't look up cheating because he wanted to stop, he wanted to justify what he was doing and to keep that continuing on." - Nicole Cooke
The WIN/Gallup End of Year Survey 2013 found the US was perceived to be the greatest threat to world peace by a huge margin, with 24% of respondents fearful of the US followed by: 8% for Pakistan, and 6% for China. This was followed by 5% each for: Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, North Korea. -LINK
"That's disgusting. There were clean athletes out there that have had their whole careers ruined by people like Lance Armstrong who just bended thoughts to fit their circumstances. He didn't look up cheating because he wanted to stop, he wanted to justify what he was doing and to keep that continuing on." - Nicole Cooke
