Earlier this week, Google announced it had rolled out technology which would insert advertisements into online video games, thereby increasing revenue from the 'booming' gaming sector.

They call the software -- which is currently in the beta testing phase -- AdSense for Games, AdSense being that ad serving program that puts those dreadful text, image (and recently video) ads on websites:

At the moment it's in the beta testing phase. Within this realm, ads are placed at the beginning, end or in between levels in the online games. Advertisers such as Sprint Nextel Corp and Sony Corp's Sony Pictures will be in the fray, but what about the games? Which should you expect this from? Anything by Konami or Demand Media (run by former MySpace chairman Richard Rosenblatt), so far, we're told. I'm kind of dissapointed with Konami on this, but then, when you think of the product placement in Metal Gear 4, it's not a surprise, really.

How the system works is the advertisers are charged on a cost-per-impression (each time the user sees an ad) or cost-per-click (each time the user clicks an ad) basis, then Google and the game developer or publisher split the revenue.

Evidently over 1/4 of Internet users (about 200 million people) play games online, with statistics rising 17 percent each year. With numbers like that I'm actually surprised it took this long.

I know many people out there don't see the harm in this, or as long as it's not very intrusive, they can pass it off. Personally, I'm terribly stubborn when it comes to this stuff, and I'm already longing for the days when games were ad-free. We survived before without this stuff, I see this now as more or less just letting greed overtake integrity. Oh well, long live capitalism and all that.