This is not the case. At least it wasn't the case in the late nineties and early naughts. The web then was full of banner and popup and pop under ads (punch the monkey, remember?). Google was a breath of fresh air then with a clean site and text only ads. No question they strayed from that early vision but they are still far from the worst offenders.
> but they are still far from the worst offenders.
Maybe in the type of ads they show. But don't forget increasingly garbage search results that are also indirectly related to the whole ad-tech business they facilitate.
Which search engine do you find shows better search results? I keep coming back to Google because no one else even comes close to the quality of search results.
That was true even more so when Google started out. Their competition was Yahoo and AltaVista, which were practically useless. I'd argue that Google has done a lot for the web. But I can agree with the sentiment that they took a turn for the worse at some point.
Exactly. After they bought Doubleclick and promised they wouldn't merge the two third-party cookies and the associated data, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. No display advertising ever again!
