One of those bits that seems so dumb that there's obviously more details to come. My guess is some group send in massive reports against the game OR the developer is making it all up for publicity.

Ya, they really ought to move that to the top. It's amazing.

Not sure if anyone's working on that yet, but I agree it would be incredibly interesting.

"Selling ads" puts it harshly, but it's entirely what this is about. More information, more organization, more people online, more ads :)

> "Selling ads" puts it harshly, but it's entirely what this is about.

By the same token, you're a machine that transforms food and oxygen into excrement and CO2. That puts it harshly, but it's entirely what this is about - if you judge things at that level.

What I mean is - selling ads is what keeps their "corporate metabolism" going, but the actual long-term goals of the founders might be (and, indeed, are) very different from that most basic of all levels.

I think Google has shown they're trying very hard to become a primary infrastructure host for any business in "The Cloud", getting more people online opens up new opportunities there too

Well, yes, but there's an argument to be made that while your cycle is certainly correct, the starting and ending points aren't necessarily fixed.

Why not:

More ads -> more $$ -> more information -> more organization -> more people online (and, thus, more freedom, more intelligence, etc.)

Not necessarily true. The coconuts used for oil and meat are picked much later than the coconuts used for water. Of course that's only the case if you're talking about pure coconut water -- coconut brands who use concentrate are probably making the concentrate from the mature coconuts that are used for their meat and oil. gross stuff.

I live in the Philippines. Drink coconuts every day. If the coconut is really young the water can have a pinkish beige hue. You usually want to drink the coconut a week or so after that though (when there's a bit of young coconut meat/gel formed inside), but by then the water is clear again.

So does the pink hue mean the coconut water is super fresh from young coconuts? (maybe too fresh?)

This is about Company A removing Company B, C, D, & E from the search results so that Company A gets all the sales and leads from that day. Company A would be happy if it scares them away permanently -- then they don't even have to pay the Hacker to deplete their daily budget anymore.

These particular hackers obviously have a service that Google's Invalid Clicks detection cannot pick up and it's successfully depleting advertisers' budgets -- hence the positive reviews they have.

Right. You can only remove Company B-E's ads by depleting their daily budgets. The service Company A paid for does not include purchasing Company B-E's products or services, just knocking out their ads. Those advertisers will see a negative ROI from their Google ads and eventually cancel them. Now Google has lost four customers and the one that remains no longer has to compete for ad space. Google loses all of Company B-E's ad spend, and most of Company A's ad spend as it can drastically lower its bids. They are not "still being paid", which is why they are heavily incentivized to identify this fraud and ignore or refund for the clicks that company is generating.

Let's see, got to my local library or just tap the kindle app? Hmmmmmm

Agreed with OP. Wish you guys could come up with a different way to show text is annotated. The highlight just grabs my attention way too much and it tells my brain that "this is important" which isn't necessarily true with Genius annotations. It works well for lyrics on rapgenius, but for content on news and other websites not so much. I hope website owners will be able to pick their own style.