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Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Isn't it Ironic, Don't You Think?
MSN became the last portal to unveil its own search toolbar. And sure enough, like Google and Yahoo's updated toolbars, the MSN Toolbar features a "Pop-up Guard." (That's a proprietary word to describe a feature that suppresses pop-up ads, in case you were wondering). You can bet there's a trademark coming.
And isn't that feature just rich with irony (yes, I think irony is the right word here, Alanis)? A company that accepts pop-up ads touting software that blocks its own advertisers' pop-up ads. Wow, that's pretty crappy not only to the users who have endured pop-up ads, but also to the advertisers paying Microsoft and its content partners who pay for them. Something's gotta give!
I suppose it's not as crappy as AOL's past shenanigans, an arrogant company that pioneered the pop-up ad by barraging its users with unsolicited ads, whose pitches you had to manually decline just to use the AOL service. Boy, you really have to want it to put up with that transgression. Or, as AOL probably assumed, their novice web surfers didn't know there was A Better Way. AOL finally caved to subscriber protests a few years ago and said they would stop making you jump through such hoops -- and then proceeded to boast about their pop-up ad killer feature in AOL version 8.0.
So that makes it pretty darn clear why just about everyone loves pay-per-click search engine text ads, and why Google is poised to become worth more than AOL ever dreamed after its upcoming IPO.
Posted by
Cory Kleinschmidt
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