Just before Greece and Italy went to war, the Italian Ambassador came to General Metaxas and told him the terms for peace. Metaxas apparently replied in French that they both spoke: ‘Alors c’est la guerre.’
What had happened was that the irreconcilable differences between the two great nations created war. The goals of the Fascist Italian leadership and the national goals of Metaxas made war. And this in spite of the ideological alignment between the two leaders. Mussolini and Metaxas were both fascists.
Apple’s decision to create ad blockers was inevitable. Apple is primarily aligned with the folks who buy their devices. They are absolutely committed to building a compelling experience on their platform at the expense of everyone on their platform. Customers pay for the platform and Apple’s biggest source of revenue is that platform. That single-minded focus on the platform experience had to lead to ad-blocking because ads are the single biggest source of irritation in the web-ecosystem.
Google because it was aligned to maximizing ad revenues and not maximizing the web-ecosystem experience, left Google vulnerable and by extension the web vulnerable to Apple’s decision.
Google had about 15 years to make the web better, instead they focused on extracting even better revenues from the web through more efficient ad-revenues. Google never took ownership of the web-platform. It’s unclear that Google could have taken ownership or stewardship. Because Google didn’t own the platform.
This outcome, the assault on the ad system that powers the web to the detriment of the user experience was inevitable. The only option is for Google and the ad networks it supports to figure out how to make ad’s better.
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