I recently had a two week screaming fit. My computer was infected by a virus that put advertising on nearly every page I regularly viewed. I tried half a dozen Google Chrome ad blockers and pop-up blockers, none of which worked.
There is no way to describe the level of my frustration with ads and pop-ups on nearly everything I was doing.
There is one reason for this disaster: Microsoft announced that it was no longer going to maintain support for one of its earlier programs: XP. XP is the most powerful and popular of all Microsoft programs in the last two decades and I had no desire to give it up nor did most of the people who were using it. But Microsoft, in its shortsighted view, stopped providing updates. This left my computer vulnerable to these goddamn awful viruses.
Let me say that Microsoft is violating one of my first rules of good business. People who buy software to use in their daily lives and in their business expect the relationship with the producer of that software to continue indefinitely. This is called a ‘clientric’ relationship. Microsoft failed.
There are many inducements that Microsoft could have offered to get those of us who love XP to update to a new system. One would be to guarantee that everything running on XP programs would be upgradable with no effort. Apple has done this in a few cases. Microsoft never made such guarantees and consequently new software was mainly bought by businesses, not by decent human beings as individuals. Businesses needed the upgrade and had the staff to make the conversions of old files feasible.
This is a good place for me to mention my final solution which worked. I chose the Dutch AVG 8.5 program which is offered free as a sample for 30 days.
The sample immediately cleaned out 25 viruses, which my other virus suppression programs never touched. It got rid of the ads and pop-ups. I immediately bought the two-year virus protection program from AVG for $85.
There are two elements of good business offered by AVG in contrast to the bad business practices of Microsoft. AVG allowed a 30 day trial and I could see immediately that it worked for me.
Secondly, AVG offers multi-year discounts as well as a discount for having tried it for 30 days. I never gave it a second thought; I was so happy to be rid of my virus problem.
The title of my big selling book Marketing Without Advertising, lets you know what I think about ads. Pop-up ads on the computer screen interfere with what you are working on. It is absolutely no different than advertising in general that appears on television and newspapers everywhere. Advertising is not the same as listing. Listing is information when you want it when you are looking for it. “Advertising is dog poo on the sidewalk” as my co-author Rasberry says.