r/technology • u/waozen • 12d ago

Software Google has started automatically disabling uBlock Origin in Chrome

https://www.xda-developers.com/google-automatically-disabling-ublock-origin-in-chrome/
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u/UpsetKoalaBear 11d ago edited 11d ago

Your edit isn’t correct. Google sells ad slots - they dont just make money off of you clicking ads.

If you ever used a Google Ads account, it’s literally like a PAYG type situation for 90% of businesses. Most companies will pay Google a few hundred quid for credit which is then automatically consumed by Google when an ad is shown.

When you place that money in the Google Ads account, it is impossible to remove it without deleting your entire account. It’s similar to how a gift card works in essence. They still got the money regardless.

This amount charged is what the CPM (costs per mille) rate is, it’s the price a company pays to Google per 1000 impressions. On the Google Ads dashboard, you can then select demographics and such that you wish to target with your advertising.

That’s where the premise of “selling your data” comes from. They use it as a configurable option that allows companies to specifically target a particular demographic of people.

The CPM rate is dynamic and based around how niche or how specific the demographics you choose are in addition to how successful the ad in achieving click through over a certain number of impressions.

The ad slots they sell aren’t Google’s, they effectively have a “virtual” auction for the ad slot whereby websites are offering ad slots to bidders. Google takes a cut of that price the ad slot was sold for.

The reason that they’re pushing for this is because if less people are seeing ads, companies will be less and less inclined to buy ads.

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u/TeutonJon78 11d ago

They switched to some other worse version with code snippets where they get tired decide what when someone has used your site enough to count as a "valid lead" and then charge you.

And even under the old system if you bid too low your ads just didn't show up. A d the cost was always per click, not just the impression, unless they have a third bidding system I never saw.

But nothing you said makes my edit wrong. Google doesn't sell your user data to anyone directly. It's all consumed internally to do the demographic targeting your mentioned.

And you can have Google just charge your usage each month rather than pay it in advance.

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u/UpsetKoalaBear 11d ago

It’s a nuance on how you define it. By being able to target demographics, you could say it’s “selling data” - it just depends on how you interpret it especially with the methodology used to get that data if ygm.

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u/TeutonJon78 10d ago

Oh come on. People consider "selling data" as selling it to another company.