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I'm starting to think that if Google had a service where you could pay $10/$20/whatever, and actually get someone reasonably well informed to read what you're s
by petercooper 10y ago
I'm starting to think that if Google had a service where you could pay $10/$20/whatever, and actually get someone reasonably well informed to read what you're saying and direct your issue to the right person, they'd have another significant revenue stream on their hands ;-)
- majewsky 10y agoThere is a larger pattern here. Is there any large B2C web service that's not monetized by selling the users' data (for advertisement targeting etc.)? For example, I would absolutely love to pay a monthly fee to Twitter (say, 3-5€) in exchange for an ad-free, unmodified, chronological timeline. And I would also consider paying something (say, 10€ a month) to Google in exchange for an ad-free search site that does not collect any data about me without my explicit consent.
- gvurrdon 10y agoI too would very much like those things. But, how would we know that they were telling the truth about not collecting the data?
- watwatwatwat 10y agoIt would be illegal.
- aembleton 10y agoYou could compare your search results to a fresh browser on a new IP address.
- CapitalistCartr 10y agoThus far, I accomplish that via: Duck, Duck, Go; NoScript; Privacy Badger; and uBlock Origin. Its silly to need to do all that, but it works well for me.
- majewsky 10y agouBlock cannot give me a pristine timeline; Twitter's algorithms still mess with the content ordering. It's not just about ads, it's about how a tool's design is poisoned by the need for maximal ad revenue. As far as DuckDuckGo goes, I would really love to use them regularly. DDG is even the default search engine on my notebook, but I find myself going to Google in the second step about 90% of the time because DDG's results are too bad. Also, DDG is still running on ads, so it's more of the same, albeit implemented more privacy-consciously.
- toxican 10y agoI love DDG in theory. In practice, I append !g to about half of my searches because the results aren't good enough. Say what you will about the privacy concerns, but Google knowing I frequently search for programming stuff makes finding other programming stuff a much easier process.
- karrotwaltz 10y agoI have this !g routine too, but lately I'm having a much harder time finding good, technical programming answers than before, even on Google. I would love being able to easily blacklist some websites such as stackoverflow and the likes which often have unanswered questions or incomplete answers, and often fills the first 2 Google's result pages.
- raverbashing 10y ago> Twitter's algorithms still mess with the content ordering. Settings -> Account, under "Content" unmark "Show me the best Tweets first"
- majewsky 10y agoAs if I hadn't disabled that long ago.
- newscracker 10y agoI have DDG as my default search engine, but for many things (mainly tech related) I use a !s command to search on StartPage. [1] While Startpage claims not to track users, it has some ads similar to Google (these can be blocked easily). Since it searches through Google, the results are great. That leaves me using Google somewhat rarely, like for example, if I want to search based on a specific time range or do a reverse image search. This approach provides me the freedom to be logged into say, Gmail, without worrying that my searches would be recorded and used for profile building and advertising (I take care not to search on Google while logged in to any of its sites in the same browser or a non-private browser window in the same browser). [1]: https://startpage.com https://startpage.com
- firasd 10y agoI think there's at least two reasons. With Twitter or Facebook the problem is that they're dependent on network effects so asking for payments from users is out of the question, they would never get to 100s of millions of users that way. With Google search, you may have more of a point, but I guess in the end Procter and Gamble has more money to spend on individual search transactions for ads than the other parties involved (users searching for sites and website publishers who want to appear in results.) Apple is probably the most successful counter-example but even they are now going to have app store ads.
- nerdponx 10y agoDon't have to charge everybody. There can be a free tier ("pay with your data") and a paid tier ("pay with your wallet")
- ajanuary 10y agoIt can be complicated. For example, now you're not advertising to your most engaged users, so advertising on the service becomes less valuable.
- toxican 10y agoOver the years I've seen the reaction to a lot of those "Facebook is going to start charging money!" fake posts and it's very negative. I can't imagine the outrage that would ensue if twitter or Facebook offered a "pro" experience. People don't respond well to free things becoming paid, even if the free version remains largely the same.
- baldfat 10y agoYou can pay less then 10€ a month to get ad free YouTube and Music. Best money I spend every month.
- majewsky 10y agoGreat. Now they should offer the same for the search engine.
- robin_reala 10y agoI think you can? https://contributor.google.com https://contributor.google.com . Not that I’ve tried it - I’m not allowed to in the UK.
- Globz 10y agoI get this error when I try to sign-up : Error fetching data. Please try again later.
- Veen 10y agoContributor is only for sites that use Google's ad products. I don't think it works in Search. Essentially, it's a way for a site's users to bid for its ad spots. If you bid more than the advertisers, you don't have to see the ads. It's quite a clever idea really, but I don't think it has much uptake from publishers.
- bduerst 10y agoI use it and it probably covers about 65-75% of ads I see, and almost 100% on news websites. I've also seen it work in apps. It's too bad there wasn't some way to have it cross over networks too.
- baldfat 10y agoThey have adds on Google Search? I swear my mind automatically just remove them subconsciously. Also you could just use an add block
- chiefalchemist 10y agoSupport costs money. Big money. Just as FB, IG, TW, etc. For the most part, they all suck.
- red_admiral 10y agoMy guess here is that the subset of users who would be willing to pay a monthly subscription is strongly correlated with the subset that advertisers are interested in targeting most. If a site got say 10% of users to pay a subscription, their value to advertisers - and hence their advertising revenue - might drop a lot more than 10%, leaving them with a net loss.
- watwatwatwat 10y agoI run uBlock origin and would pay for a monthly subscription.
- fauigerzigerk 10y agoThat's a very interesting point. I never thought of that and I think you're right.
- GrinningFool 10y agoIt seems to me the opposite. If someone cares enough to pay for the content directly ,I suspect that person is the one who will be going out of the way to avoid ads and tracking in the first place.
- fdgdasfadsf 10y agoThe trouble is that at this stage hoovering up customer data is in Google's DNA. As far as my perceptions go all a paid option means is that now they attach my credit card details to their data on me.
- lliiffee 10y agoThat's a good point, but it also seems strongly correlated with those that run ad/privacy blockers. (Even with such a blocker, perhaps the data collected is still valuable, though?) My instinct is that by selling an ad and tracking-free site, they would be indicating that the ads and tracking are a bad thing, as opposed to the party line that it's all "to deliver better services to you".
- spot 10y agogoogle does not sell your data. this is such a tired canard.
- mhurron 10y agoSelling access to the user that created the data is the same damn thing for the end user. It's just that in the way Google does it, Google gets paid over and over instead of one time selling a static list.
- spot 10y agonot it isn't. if you sell the data then it goes into 3rd party hands and out of google's control and they can do all kinds of bad things with it.
- majewsky 10y agoAnd what exactly prevents them from doing the bad things themselves? What is the inherent reason that I should trust Google more than any other business?
- spot 10y agothey have a track record.
- karmachameleon2 10y agoA track record of doing bad things behind the scenes, perhaps?
- mhurron 10y ago'Bad things' are tracking (Google does this), targeted ads (Google does this), selling access to information so others can target ads and drop tracking (Google does this), allowing Governments access to your activities (Google does this) Exactly what 'bad things' are being prevented here? The end result is exactly the same for the end user, its simply a question of who is getting paid how much and how often for that information.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoThe problem is that Google does not want that messaging. If they collected money in exchange for not violating your privacy, they'd be acknowledging that what they do, is actually violating your privacy. At times, Google has even tried to use the rhetoric that providing you more relevant ads is a service to you that improves your experience on the Internet. (LOL) Basically, the income they'd gain from offering this would pale in comparison of the reputation they'd lose (and following that, users) from admitting what they do is bad for you.
- eveningcoffee 10y agoThe problem is that by paying you are also identifying yourself and what user data would be better than clearly identified user data? Second problem is that there is potentially more money in you than this proposed relatively low amount because you are probably spending a lot more in a month and it is big attraction to become a middleman in every transaction you make.
- jeffmould 10y agoA little off-topic, but I was just talking about that Twitter idea the other day with someone. He had asked if I thought Twitter would go private or sell off. I said that Twitter should look at ways to monetize their stream outside of ads. Like you, I would gladly pay a couple bucks a month to customize my feed how I want it.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- fractal618 10y agoAssuming one person could serve 50 customers in this manner. And they were to earn 50k/year. The monthly fee for this service would be about $80.
- newscracker 10y agoYour assumption that one person can serve 50 customers a month seems to be quite low. That comes to spending about four hours per customer to respond, track and provide a resolution or workaround! Of course, the duration would vary depending on what kind of support channel is used (phone vs. chat vs. email). You also seem to be assuming that all paying customers would have major issues that can only be resolved by working with other teams, getting a new resolution or change implemented, etc. In reality, most customer cases can be resolved quickly by searching for documentation and pointing them to it and/or explaining things better (and improving the support documentation along side when necessary). I would assume that at least 30 customers can be served per eight hour working day. That's spending more than 15 minutes per customer and is usually adequate (on average) even for phone support! With my extrapolation here, which is again just an example (real scenarios would be different), the basic cost incurred by the service provider for the salary alone comes to about $7 per user per month. Add for overheads and it would still be fine to charge $10 or $12 per month. If service tiers are used, then there could be multiple slabs, mechanisms for support and turnaround times - all these would bring down the actual cost further.
- bussiere 10y agowe can also imagine that the people who get the message get a part of the money. And the more you pay the more your message is higlighted or promote to these people.
- dboreham 10y agoIt would cost much more than $10/$20 to provide that service, so you'd be in "whatever" territory.
- criddell 10y agoThen charge $500. Whatever it needs to cost, charge it.
- zenopopovici 10y agoI would gladly pay for developer support. I do it for Apple. (I'm the original author).