[willwhitney]

Would it be bad if we made advertising... illegal? In small part because it would reduce the principal-agent disparity between what you want to do and what Google wants you to do, but more importantly because it would remove the incentive to create blogspam and game the results.

Advertising serves a positive purpose by informing people about products that they will like and otherwise would not find. It also serves a negative purpose by attempting to cause people to make decisions which are not in their best interests.

I am genuinely curious what proportion of ads seen serve each of those two purposes.

[Volker_W]

I want to be informed as good and as neutral as possible.

Ad spaces are sold to the highest bidder.