I hate to hear the news.
But we all need to realize that there is no free lunch. A company like Google must make money somehow in order to pay for what they do. Most people would balk at having to pay a subscription fee for the privilege of viewing the books. Putting up advertisements is a way to get the income to do what they do without customers paying for the product directly, so not feeling the "pinch."
An analogy is television. Programming and other things cost money. Television networks and stations must have a source of income. Few people would be willing to pay directly for over-the-air (e.g., local broadcast channels) TV, but they have been willing to tolerate the annoyance of advertisements, so that they can get the product "free."
But, again, there's no free lunch. The price that companies pay to advertise on TV, radio, the Internet, or wherever gets passed on to the consumers. It has to. But it is a price to the consumers that they are willing to bear, because it is sort of invisible to them. They don't have to feel the "pinch."
Now where I do get incensed is when I'm paying my money to companies for their products and I still am forced to be assaulted with advertising from them or some third party. Case in point: I had to place an order in the past few days on Walmart.com. But seemingly every time that I navigated to a page on their website an annoying video, partially obstructing the view of things that I wanted to see, popped up and started playing. It was for Tidy Cat. I got so angry that I told myself that I was never going to buy that brand of kitty litter again if I could help it (yes, I do own a cat)! Unfortunately, I do feel that, in my circumstances, I do have to shop at Walmart online, or I would drop them, too.
|