I don’t see a lot of ads. I don’t watch pushed commercial television, I tend to avoid streams with ads. I have a network-wide malware blocker on my home network, and since virtually every major ad network has allowed dissemination of malware, most “legitimate” ads end up getting blocked as well. It’s easy for me to forget how pervasive, intrusive, and scary online advertising has become.
I was riding in the car with HA driving, and we were looking for nearby coffee. I used Google Maps to look for “coffee house near me” and found that we were within a mile of one. But we were in unfamiliar territory and I couldn’t see the establishment in question, so I asked Google for directions.
What I got instead were ads. So. Many. Ads.
What I didn’t get was a link or button that would take me to the directions. I tried scrolling but the ads kept coming. I searched the impossibly busy screen. By now, HA had pulled over and was getting out her own phone, apparently convinced that I would never actually give her directions.
I ended up having to select the address of the place Maps had found, copy it to the clipboard, force quit Maps as the address bar was no longer visible, re-launch Maps and paste the address back in. As it turns out, we were literally driving past the place as soon as we were moving again.
It was insane. So many ads that the program was unusable.
Google. We’re evil now. Deal with it.
—2p