[handrous]

That used to be all they did. You'd see a lot of "of course I block all ads—except Google's, they're fine".

They also didn't used to trick unsophisticated or distracted users into clicking ads by putting them inline with search results.

Both changed, I assume, when someone was allowed to run an experiment and the projected profit trend line went from "exceptionally good" to "holy shit, it's all the money in the world". And all it took was being evil. Go figure.

Some tie this to internal fallout from the the DoubleClick acquisition, which checks out pretty well timeline-wise.

[LorenPechtel]

And we don't even know if their measurement is right--they probably got a high rate at first because people weren't used to them and were deceived. As people wise up the effectiveness will drop.

[handrous]

All the non-tech-nerds I see use phones or computers hit the inline ads at a very high rate. As in, on most searches. They do not realize they are ads, mostly, or do but aren't paying attention.