I'm not at all against this move from Google - it is good sense. However, to play Devil's advocate, what are the odds this was pushed down by the MPAA/RIAA or similar? This policy more or less directly targets sites that offer free online streaming or torrent downloads of Movies/TV/Music. The sites that wind up with these deceptive ads are typically sites that provide copyrighted content to their users.
Again, this is not a bad move. But I'm curious about the true motivations. If I were the MPAA, and trying to shut down the revenue stream of sites offering free streaming and torrents, this would be one of the ways to do it. That, or Google is simply sick of receiving takedown notices - and this is one method to take these sites out of their listings before even receiving the DMCA.
Download button ads appear on websites providing useful utilities and in particular Minecraft content and add-ons. I'm having to educate my kids on what is and isn't a real download button. Its a pain in the arse.
I would say it hasn't come from the MPAA or RIAA. These deceptive download buttons appear on a myriad of sites which are not related to streaming/torrenting.
Actually when I saw the headline my first thought was sourceforge. You expect these kinds of deep web ads when perusing sites you know damn well are "less than legal" but I've seen them on a number of websites I wouldn't normally expect to, sourceforge being the worst offender in my experience.
In my experience most free online streaming and torrent downloading websites have very small hard-to-find download buttons with a lot of fake "Download Now!" ads. So this would actually make torrenting easier.
Again, this is not a bad move. But I'm curious about the true motivations. If I were the MPAA, and trying to shut down the revenue stream of sites offering free streaming and torrents, this would be one of the ways to do it. That, or Google is simply sick of receiving takedown notices - and this is one method to take these sites out of their listings before even receiving the DMCA.