Elliott

"We've argued that a full load of display ads on Google.com could add $3-$4 billion in annual revenue." Holy Cow. - Elliott

This is sad. One of the differentiators of Google is its advertising. Now they just are going for the profits. Sigh. - Robert Scoble

Like they're not making enough money. What they're doing is working. Why change? - David Risley

do no evil, indeed. - Chris Hollander

worst...idea...ever. - Morgan via twhirl

they have sooo many other avenues to produce income. why that? they need to be more creative. - Josh via twhirl

I wonder how they put them on iGoogle. Honestly, though, a couple half banners surrounding the logo wouldn't really bother me. Everyone's got the right to earn a few billion more. :) - felix

Scoble - don't you hate it when a site gets loaded down with ads? Even after the person said they wouldn't run them? - Dave Hodson

If the display ads from google are every bit as intelligent as the link ads, they'll be fine. I'm disappointed by how this will likely effect the page load times on Google (which are the primary reason I use Google over Yahoo or MSN anyway) - Adam Posey

lets see how this *pushing envelope* ends up... I guess this is classical case of big company taken over by mediocrity step by step, described so many times that it should be recognized without effort - silpol

i wont believe this until i see it. - Chris Farrugia

Isn't this the same as with Wordpress ads (only for Internet Explorer?). Power-users probably never see the Google homepage. - Meryn Stol

Really bad idea. - terry radford

I guess it was only a matter of time... As long as it's unobtrusive in terms of pageload &&,|| client-side processing I'm fine with it. Could probably add rule(s) to ipfw... - RandaL Hicks

the display ads might be put on Google image search which is all about images anyway, not main .com text homepage - Kevin Gough

If Google manages to get advertisers to clean up their act and create ads that don't slow down/break web pages, then everyone wins. If they let the same ads run on Google that run everywhere else, then Google loses bigtime. - Jason Wehmhoener

Personally, I think the article is trying to stir up unfounded attention. It talks about display ads in general raking in cash for Google, but then the quote from the Google rep talks about ads in image search only. If that's the case, what is the big deal? - Jason Dettbarn

Agree w @Jason and add that people had the same sort of reaction when text ads were introduced. It's not like you're going to wake up one day and it's going to look like the old TW Pathfinder site. - Erik Dafforn

I'm not sure how I feel about this...I mean, if Google can display ads that are in fact relevant to me, then I might be interested. I also think that while this idea does suck - it is important to remember what Google is...a public company that has to make profit. Sometimes I have a hard time understanding where all their money comes from....(i.e. who clicks on all those ads anyway?) - Elliott

I also agree with @Jason. The reference to Google.com is like saying "Google.com properties" - (i.e. Image Search). - Elliott

Is Google trying to be the next Yahoo!? Do not like. - darnell