Pining For The Fjords

Soon we will dream wistfully for the long ago days of broadcast media. Our favorite entertainment beamed to us free of charge through the airwaves: comedy, drama, music, news. The trade-off? Listen to a minute or two of advertisements every quarter hour. Ah, for those halcyon days.

This evening I learned that the latest stable version of the Google Chrome browser has been released. A key feature: extensions, small helper programs that work with the browser providing additional features. The one I installed first: AdBlock. I use Chrome on my netbook, and Firefox on my more powerful desktop. Firefox has had the capability to install extensions for some time and I use AdBlock on it too. Now I am "ad-free" on either machine. If I wished, I could use Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) for which there is also an Ad blocking add-on.

Between them, those three browsers represent most of the web browsing access here, and probably around the world. Soon many people will learn that they need not see advertisements around every page they visit. No more dancing girls getting you to click on "lower your mortgage", no more flashy video mixed in to the television listings and around the news.

Problem? Yes, problem. Big problem. Billions of dollars depend upon those ads peppered all over the web. Google's existence is fueled by those ads. E-tailers, retailers, publishers, depend on those ads to help drive business to their websites. How will the search-powered results be paid for, if the ads don't get shown (and clicked) along with the results? If search isn't funded, then no search. If there is no search, no "organic results," no contextual ads alongside the results. There's a circle for you.

Options:

1. Subscription based content and services. If you want the newspaper online, you subscribe. If you want access to search, you subscribe. 
2. The advertisers get even sneakier to outwit the ad blocker. That means ads that will probably be even more intrusive. 
3. Broadcast style: every few minutes your browsing will be interrupted by an ad, just like on TV. 
4. Even more email, twitter and social marketing disguised ads. And maybe more snail mail marketing. 

But search has become essential. If the search companies cannot earn the revenue to fund search, will we be in the position of having to operate search, and the Internet, as a publicly funded service? The information superhighway will become more like our regular highways: publicly built and maintained. And not necessarily where we need them.

Oh, for the days when we turned on the radio and waited for the tubes to heat up.
I bet most people have no idea what that even means.

"...that parrot isn't dead, he's probably just pining for the fjords..." - Monty Python's Flying Circus' Parrot Sketch

Postscript: 
Google seems to have a little workaround for this, but the only ad I see in my mail account is one for Indian Weddings at the Crystal Golf Resort, Crystal Springs, New Jersey. I wonder what algorithm matches me to an Indian Wedding. And will it feature curry or maize?
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