For $1 to $3 per month, visitors of certain web sites will now be able to get rid of those pesky ads through Google Contributor, an online subscription program that lets you surf the Internet free of advertisements.
However, Google Contributor will not be able to get the entire Web from advertisements, just ten participating web sites, including photo sharing web site Imgur, news satire site The Onion, slang-explanation site Urban Dictionary and news site Mashable.
When you visit a participating website, part of your contribution goes to the creators of that site," the Google Contributor site said. "The more you contribute, the more you support the websites you visit."
Instead of ads, those who visit the web sites will see a "thank you" note instead, according to spokeswoman Andrea Faville.
"Today's internet is mostly funded by advertising. But what if there were a way to directly support the people who create the sites you visit each day?-Introducing Contributor by Google," the opening statement at the project's web site read.
Google Contributor is a game changer in an Internet driven by ads; however, it is only an experiment.
Web sites with ads are plagued by privacy issues since in order to generate hits from ads, web site operators need to acquire the visitor's personal information.
Google Contributor gets rid of that Internet paranoia. In effect, a person is paying for and ad-free experience as well as his/her privacy.
"Use of this service will not be used to target ads," Faville said.
Faville also shared how Google and the web sites plan to split the buck from the subscription fees.
"The more a person pays, the more they'll see ad-free sites, and websites shouldn't see a difference in revenue, Google said.
"In terms of the rates, the amount that goes to the publishers is essentially the market rate for ad space on their site (in the ad auction). So the amounts going to publishers wouldn't really be affected, although the higher the amount in a person's Contributor account, the more times they would see the thank-you messages versus ads," Faville said.
CNET reports that advertisers would shell out $141 billion on online ads in 2014, with Google receiving 32.4 percent of that amount, the highest in the Internet. Facebook ranks next with 8 percent followed by Microsoft at 2.9 percent and Yahoo at 2.4 percent.
