Joy G.

I love using Bible Gateway! Although, I do miss the most popular paraphrase, the Living Bible: as a paraphrase, it has a legitimate and beneficial place. It is disturbing still that Bible Gateway sadly removed the paraphrase from the available selection of versions and paraphrases. Miss it still.

A far more beneficial alternative would be to make even more obvious that the paraphrase is a paraphrase, and, somewhere obvious near the drop-down, selection list of versions, to concisely and simply explain the difference between a paraphrase and translation.

I have not used paid versions of Bible Gateway at this point. And I have not used the app. I have appreciated the publicly accessible aspects of Bible Gateway. Very useful. Thank you, Bible Gateway and financial contributors to Bible Gateway, for economically inclusively maintaining that access despite the financial costs. Many people are economically unable to pay for access to such resources.

Some Reviewers here who are exasperated by the ads that they see while using the website don't realize how corporate ads on the internet generally work.

First, without the ads, Bible Gateway's website might not be able to afford to run at all!

Secondly, it's extremely unlikely that Bible Gateway is the source that chooses the -- system slowing, function diminishing, distracting, focus destroying, and in some cases objectionable -- ads that those reviewers and other users are unfortunately inundated with.

For example, even the Reviewers' own "operating system" may be a source of the ads. If the understandably exasperated Reviewers use devices that run the Google Chrome operating system and the Reviewers use a Google Account, they can have "some" - limited - choice about which categories of ads they most want to see less of. People who use Apple, Microsoft, or other operating systems likely have more effective options for avoiding the ads.

To reduce the number of ads, while using this website or the rest of the internet, exasperated Reviewers may prefer to try using free, effective ad blocker extensions or other software compatible with their devices' operating system/s. That's not a completely reliable measure though. One reason is that for up to date effectiveness, ad blocking extensions likely will need to be updated, swapped, and replaced continuously. Many internet users will need help with that, especially if they economically cannot pay for related expertise, services, up to date devices, or powerful enough internet access subscriptions.

It's mid 2022 as I write this and Google Chrome and its operating system have become antagonistic toward ad blocking extensions, because Google Chrome's model of business relies directly on providing paying corporations with advertising opportunities. Google Chrome generates sales and profit that way. So Google Chrome now technologically prevents ad blocking extensions from being as effective as some of them were able to be in the past.

Google Chrome's decision is a sadly exclusionary and highly ableist approach that erects impossible barriers everyday for millions of North Americans, of most ages, who have one or more of many brain affecting conditions.

In the conflicts between advertising corporations and human beings (regardless how much or whether they use the internet), including the ads inundated, exasperated users of the Bible Gateway site, Google is firmly on the side of corporations and unfettered profit.

There are likely paid versions of software, too, that can more effectively block ads for many of those internet users who know about them, or who are economically able to pay someone who does know about them, and to pay (for large enough devices, operating systems, programs, subscriptions, and ISP subscriptions that are all always current), so that their security features and any ad blocking opportunities can be kept up to date automatically.

But, again, the source of most of the frustrating troubles for the Reviewers and other users who are inundated with ads while trying to use Bible Gateway is likely NOT Bible Gateway!

(I do not work for Bible Gateway.)