14 DAY TRIAL // Google takes its ad business very seriously, as it should since it generates most of its revenue. In particular, it takes care in ensuring that its ads don't end up on spammy sites or software.
Last week, Google published a blog post explaining its effort to maintain a quality standard for the publishers that rely on Google ads.
In particular, it took a stance against software which abused user trust, things like changing the default search provider, installing browser toolbars and so on.
Google adopted new policies for software makers that rely on Google ads for revenue with some tougher rules.
For example, all the apps have to be pre-approved by Google and must allow users to completely uninstall it with one-click.
The software must also make very clear what is installed, what is changed and so on. A lot of software makers, unfortunately, employ these practices to make money.
But the post did seem to target one in particular. It's now pretty clear that Google's changes and the message itself were aimed at AVG, the antivirus software maker.
AVG has the annoying habit of changing search providers, replacing the default one with a custom search loaded with Google ads.
Google was having no more of it and implemented the changes to force any software maker that wants to use Google ads to provide a much better user experience.
Obviously, AVG and others are free to choose other ad providers, but none is as lucrative as Google.
At the same time, not hijacking users' browsers, settings or search engines means that AVG and others will see less people use the toolbars or custom search engines and so will make less money.
But AVG at least decided the drop in revenue was preferable to switching from Google altogether, so it has already started implementing all of Google's requests.