You may soon need to install a thermostat or fridge adblocker
Ads, they are everywhere on the Internet, on television, radio, on the street and in magazines. One safe haven remains, and that is your home, provided that you are not browsing the Internet, watching TV, listening to radio or reading magazines.
That's about to change though if Google gets its way. In a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, sent in December but disclosed yesterday, it confirmed that it had plans to bring advertisement to "refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, watches" and other devices and locations a few years from now.
Google believes that its advertising systems will become more and more device-agnostic and the company plans to aid advertisers with new enhanced campaigns that make things as easy as possible for them to deliver ads to all supported devices.
Diversifying the company's advertisement portfolio, from being almost exclusively web and mobile based, is the next logical step in making sure that revenue growth continues.
While ads on the Internet, TV and radio are a normality for most users, it is likely that ads on household items will face stronger resistance than the company expects.
Google devices are already used in many homes, from Chromebooks or the Chromecast to mobile devices and Nest thermostats. There is also Google Glass which gets some traction right now, Android watches which will come out eventually, and the company's cooperation with car manufacturers to bring Android powered dashboards to transportation devices.
New locations to display advertisement may provide Google with additional insight, something which is not available to the company right now.
As far as the refrigerator goes, you may see cookbook ads, ads for grocery stores in your vicinity, or mouthwatering dishes that make you head out to the restaurant serving them immediately. The thermostat may display ads for warm clothing for example. Google may also use the information to display ads to you on the web or on your devices.
So what can you do about that?
The most obvious option is to avoid products that ship with these features directly or with capabilities to deliver these features to those devices through updates.
It is not clear how Google plans to deliver ads to those devices. The most plausible option would be via a device's wireless connectivity functionality.
If you can turn those off, or block the device from using those, then you may also be able to block ads running on the household item.
What is your take on this? Would you install a thermostat or fridge in your home that may display advertisement to you?
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Martin, I would appreciate that you do not censor this post, as it’s informative writing.
Onur, there is a misleading statement “[…] GIFs are animated images …”. No, obviously you don’t seem to have take much notice of what you were told back in March regarding; Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).
For example, https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/31/whats-gif-explanation-and-how-to-use-it/#comment-4562919 (if you had read my replies within that thread, you might have learnt something useful). I even mentioned, “GIF intrinsically supports animated images (GIF89a)”.
You linked to said article, [Related: …] within this article, but have somehow failed to take onboard what support you were given by several more knowledgeable people.
If you used AI to help write this article, it has failed miserably.
EMRE ÇITAK posts are useless because they are fraught with inaccuracies and are irrelevant.
AI is stupid, and it will not get any better if we really know how this all works. Prove me wrong.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IYl1sTIOHI
Martin, [#comment-4569908] is only meant to be in: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/09/how-to-send-gifs-on-iphone-two-different-ways/]. Whereas it appears duplicated in several recent random low-quality non relevant articles.
Obviously it [#comment-4569908] was posted: 9 July 2023. Long before this thread even existed… your database is falling over. Those comments are supposed to have unique ID values. It shouldn’t be possible to duplicate the post ID, if the database had referential integrity.
Don’t tell me!
Ghacks wants the state to step in for STATE-MANDATED associations to save jobs!!!
Bring in the dictatorship!!!
And screw Rreedom of Association – too radical for Ghacks maybe
GateKeeper ?
That’s called “appointing” businesses to do the state’s dirty work!!!!!
But the article says itself that those appointed were not happy – implying they had not choice!!!!!!
@The Dark Lady,
@KeZa,
@Database failure,
@Howard Pearce,
@Howard Allan Pearce,
Note: I replaced the quoted URI scheme: https:// with “>>” and posted.
The current ghacks.net is owned by “Softonic International S.A.” (sold by Martin in October 2019), and due to the fate of M&A, ghacks.net has changed in quality.
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/02/microsoft-is-removing-wordpad-from-windows/#comment-4573130
Many Authors of bloggers and advertisers certified by Softonic have joined the site, and the site is full of articles aimed at advertising and clickbait.
>> ghacks.net/2023/08/31/in-windows-11-the-line-between-legitimate-and-adware-becomes-increasingly-blurred/#comment-4573117
As it stands, except for articles by Martin Brinkmann, Mike Turcotte, and Ashwin, they are low quality, unhelpful, and even vicious. It is better not to read those articles.
How to display only articles by a specific author:
Added line to My filters in uBlock Origin: ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts,.home-category-post:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/01/windows-11-development-overview-of-the-august-2023-changes/#comment-4573033
By the way, if you use an RSS reader, you can track exactly where your comments are (I’m an iPad user, so I use “Feedly Classic”, but for Windows I prefer the desktop app “RSS Guard”).
RSS Guard: Feed reader which supports RSS/ATOM/JSON and many web-based feed services.
>> github.com/martinrotter/rssguard#readme
We all live in digital surveillance glass houses under scrutiny of evil people because of people like Musk. It’s only fair that he takes his turn.
“Operating systems will be required to let the user choose the browser, virtual assistant and search engine of their choice. Microsoft cannot force users to use Bing or Edge. Apple will have to open up its iOS operating system to allow third-party app stores, aka allow sideloading of apps. Google, on the other hand, will need to provide users with the ability to uninstall preloaded apps (bloatware) from Android devices. Online services will need to allow users to unsubscribe from their platform easily. Gatekeepers need to provide interoperability with third-parties that offer similar services.”
Wonderful ! Let’s hope they’ll comply with that law more than they are doing with the GDPR.
No, they didn’t lmao.
https://twitter.com/vxunderground/status/1706523877478670542
What does this article about Musk/Tesla have to do with computing, devices, phones?
More irelevant filler.
yeah sure… they are always the victims and it is only against them ????
Believe them 100% and never question anything. This lawsuit sounds like the type you heard when people were eating batteries.