This is nothing at all like copy and paste. It's a MITM attack. With copy and paste, the user is in control. With this attack, only Google is in control. Not the user, not even the website owner, but an ad company.

The plain fact is that Google is injecting its own content at its own discretion while disguising it to make it look like it's the website owner that did it. What would you think if I randomly injected my own promotional content in your HN comments in a way that's indistinguishable from your own writing? A few, if any, people on this site might not mind, but the overwhelming majority will.

> With this attack, only Google is in control. Not the user, not even the website owner, but an ad company.

You, as a website owner, can opt out via: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1h9I0TbN-H_1e85CqXYb1ng7rQfg...

> What would you think if I randomly injected my own promotional content in your HN comments in a way that's indistinguishable from your own writing?

Through what vector, the Unofficial Hacker News for iOS app that you maintain? Because that's the correct analogy here.

Also stating 'promotional content' is being disingenuous to the type of Google content states it will surface through these links, see my other comment on this thread.

I'm not in support of what Google is doing but I think we should be fair in our assessment and especially in our presentation of our assessment to others.

When you think about it, the goal of browsers is to MITM the data in order to present it in a way that is helpful to the users.

> What would you think if I randomly injected my own promotional content in your HN comments in a way that's indistinguishable from your own writing

It's a simplification, but in short if you create a bad browser, people won't use it.