Google Cracks Down on Advertising

Google Inc., which makes practically all its money from advertising, has cracked down on blocking ads from their website. In 2016, they got rid of about 1.7 billion ads — double the number in 2015. The reason? Fraudulent, annoying, and virus-carrying ads make people hesitant to use Google. Real, legitimate ads are what keep users happy and safe. So any ads that violated its advertising policies were eradicated.

Ads that Aren’t Allowed

Advertising makes up 90% of Google’s revenue, which is a good incentive to keep it tidy. Now, more than 1,000 of their employees are working to remove bad ads. This includes ads for illegal products (like pharmaceuticals), misleading ads, ads that are actually viruses, and ads that promote malicious sites (such as weight-loss scams). They’ve also removed over 5 million payday loan ads since they’ve banned them in July. Payday loan ads come from predatory lending companies. They’re short-term loads with incredibly high interest rates, which pull people into a deeper debt than they had to begin with.

Cracking Down on Fake News

Along with ads, Google is cracking down on sites that put out misrepresented content; this includes fake news and companies that mimic news organizations. 200 publishers have been kicked off of Google already. This is something that has become even more important in wake of the election. Both Google and Facebook are attempting to eradicate “fake news” from their websites. To do this, as well as get rid of unwanted ads, Google improved their technology to discover and disable ads faster. They have caught 112 million malware ads, which is six times as many as they caught in 2015.

It’s important for the Google, and all of their users, to eradicate these unwanted advertisements and fake news websites. They’re harmful to all parties involved. When users accidentally download malware to their computer because Google didn’t recognize it as a fake ad, everyone loses.