Love the comment pix, can we have a "balls to Google" one, please?

Been working on the project for two years - the same two years since Google aquired Android (Andy Rubin's "secretive mobile startup")?

How do I offer to pay NOT to be advertised to?

I'm sorry, I'd never buy a phone that ran adverts I had no control over.

Still, if it is linux based, it shouldn't be hard to crack ;-) or better still run OpenMoko instead...

Am I one of the dwindling band of people who doesn't want their life peppered by any more ads? Do I really want to read a text from my wife followed by Google adwords that matches me with Tesco or Asda because she asked me what we were having for dinner that night? Do I really need an advert for Pampers when she reminds me to get more nappies? All Google really want to do is monetise all our communications in as many forms as possible and commercialise all aspects of our lives. Fuck that.

Adverts get a huge amount of bad press - and have for many, many years. Yet, without advertising - specifically advertising for products that we do NOT know about, we have very few sources for discovering these products. So many of today's "required" tools of daily life were "solutions looking for a problem" until advertising informed the world that the product was available.

(As an aside, one of the worst things that occurred over the years, for me, was the demise of billboards on the highways of America. I live in a motor home and spend a LOT of time on the road: billboards are a crucial data input when you're trying to find fuel, propane, a camp ground, place to eat, etc. as most mapping software is not up to date enough to provide the information, and cell broadband isn't always available to use Google maps. But I digress...)

Google, with embedded advertising on mobile devices, could be opening the door to a major "solution" to modern life - getting that "convergence" boost out of your mobile device. And here's how it would work.

Google has access to millions of businesses and products in their advertisers. Your mobile device provides information about location; your text messages can provide context about your needs. Better yet, if you can text Google while being mobile about your needs, location-based services can get the information to you very, VERY quickly. When you're looking for a restaurant or the closest grocery store (very, very trivial problems - a truck-tire dealer that carries Goodyear fleet traction tires in 19.5 sizes is much more complex and closer to my needs) having the results return faster than you could look it up in the Yellow Pages or call your cellco's 411 (for a fee) - and get it FOR FREE is a nice benefit.

If you consider that we've all gotten to the point that we ignore on-line, television, radio or print advertising 99% of the time (as it usually doesn't apply to our current task), how hard is it to ignore the irrelevant adverts on the mobile phone? Or better yet, if 50% of the adverts actually HAVE relevance to your current task, would this suddenly make the advertising acceptable?

So before we condemn Google for privacy invasion and distraction, let's consider how this service COULD help us. Far, far better for us to send feedback to Google about how we would like this service to work, and get it close right out of the box, rather than letting it evolve through random changes.

One final note: advertisers HATE "shotgun" advertising. The "holy grail" of advertising-based sales is being able to place one advert to one customer and get a sale from that advert. Any thing that gets closer to that goal is whole-heartedly embraced by the seller, and instantly reduces "spam" advertising: after all, why pay for something that isn't benefiting you?

OK, I'm getting off the soap box now...

I am so sick of commercials becoming more and more prominent than the content. Why the hell would I want an OS designed around advertising??

It's getting pathetic. Now, in the US, there are LCD screens on top of the gas pumps that throw commercials in your face as you are pumping gas. Goddamn ridiculous. Any commercial I see on that screen I will make a note of it and WILL NOT BUY.

@ Brett

Who do you work for..really?

Ads, hopefully not intrusive, or the subscription model?'

I thought you would say that.

You see, no one in their right mind will give you something for free and then not make money later too.

Consumers can be so dumb sometimes.

Free, no ads, just what you want.

Yeah right! In your dreams. No such thing as a free lunch. Um, I don't know how else to out it.

There is a divide in philosophies surrounding ads. Personally I hate them and here is why:

100% of my purchases are when I go looking for them, and not because I saw an ad while I was trying to focus on something else.

Those who do make purchases because of an ad placement arguably benefited from the ad which led them to the purchase. It might not be such a stretch to think that these people would actually prefer to leave ads turned on?

As for myself, if I am never going to be tempted to buy products due to advertising then I should have an option not to view them on TV, the radio, the internet, etc, because they won't work anyways.

Why should I have to waste portions of my attention during movies, tv, radio, etc waiting for long ads to finish up? Multiply this by millions of people and there's alot of wasted man-hours and due to useless ads.

Ads also raise retail prices causing consumer price inflation. People thinking ads don't cost them money are mistaken. It costs everyone money. Wouldn't it be nice if I could pay the ad-free price for products, since I had the Ads turned off and didn't get an opportunity to see them.

Next they'll be sending out big three-legged machines to round us all up and embed triangular plates into the top of our heads that let them know what we're doing and thinking at all times.

How about adding a pair of saint-or-devil icons for Google next to the ones for Bill and Steve below this form?

Google's agenda is to remove control of content from network carriers, in the same way they fixed network (broadband) carriers do not control your internet use. That is sufficient for Google to obtain huge revenues from mobile search just as it is on the wired internet. Google's method is to undermine Windows Mobile with a free Linux based OS for handset makers to use.

Most posters here seem to think they object to ad-funded services. Presumably they don't use search engines at all, or indeed read the Register. Strange.

Anyone who has used Google maps on a well-integrated handset (try an iPhone) will know that a major use is to find paid-for services in the vicinity (eg a pub). Pull advertising. Here's Apple's advertisement for such advertisements:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/ads/ad2/

how do i loathe thee. let me count the ways....... and now a word from our sponsor...

i hate 'em. despise 'em. cannot stand 'em, 'em being ads. i would rather - and frequently do - watch a commercial free show that i've already seen [or read a book] than watch ad plagued media entities. better to see a bbc documentary like 'herman's hermits - the vegas years' 3 times than one more beer or air freshener ad. i mean what the hell is air freshener anyway? some crap someone invented because the odors of human life repelled them? hey moron, the smells go away and that raspberry smelling spray is worse anyway.... i will say one good thing about advertising on tv. i have started watching soccer - football - instead of american football because there are no f'ing commercials. what an idea. a 90 minute game played in 90 minutes, extra time maybe - instead of a 60 minute game played in 3 1/2 hours. another good thing about tv ads though, i must admit, is that they allow me to watch 2 or even 3 shows at once, going one to another during the 4 and 6 minute commercial breaks. tv content isn't exactly tough to follow so juggling many shows is no big deal. better ad free public radio shows about differentiating species of garden slugs than anything on commercial radio.

and now the hubris to plug their crap on my phone???!!! well actually i don't have a mobile phone. inasmuch as phones are my business line, i like to leave my calls behind when i absent myself from the premises wherein the phone rests. they can leave a message. life is short.

don't get me wrong. i like goog as much as any upstanding american looking to make a easy buck in the stock market. but mobile ads are un un un acceptable. monetise my ass google billionaire motherf....s

ps. how on earth anyone say they want their environment cluttered with billboards is beyond belief. i will file it with the current arguments against free health care. 'free? health? i wanna pay dammit!!! '

Mr. Brennan works for me. I am Mrs. Brennan. We have a two-man (database) consulting company.

Kathleen

Ads ... hmmm. What can I say? @ Mr. Brennan: You say we have few sources for findoing about new products. That's true in the main but it's not carved in stone. Especially now with user-generated content proliferating on the web, ad makers have a harder time than before to compete with the word-of-mouth revenue stream. Personally I support that sort of WoM information simply because it takes the influence and agenda that a large ad agency may have and puts it in the hand of the buyers and sellers in a single location that people know about, more like a traditional marketplace.; therefore giving you a more level playing field.

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@ Mr B's detractors: We can moan about ads but it's all capitalism in action. If we don't like it we need to opt out of buying advertised stuff, as one poster does, and / or form forums in which to buy and sell this stuff ourselves.

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