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Put another way, this is an example of standard Google strategy: defend and control the approaches to the advertising river of gold. Chrome was itself just suc

Put another way, this is an example of standard Google strategy: defend and control the approaches to the advertising river of gold. Chrome was itself just such an investment. By controlling a major browser (eventually, the dominant browser), they can prevent Mozilla or Microsoft from cutting them out. Now they want to prevent the increasing pool of ad blockers from freezing out adsense. Happily for Google, this means that advertisers will prioritise advertising through them, as they will only be guaranteed to show up in Chrome if they use adsense. Their next step will be to bundle Contributor with Chrome. Again, by happy coincidence, this blocks out anyone else from getting a good run at microsubscription. Last I checked, the design is intended to be revenue-neutral for Google. Disclosure: I have been working on a business, Robojar, intended to remove advertising and bypass paywalls in exchange for microsubscriptions. Google have a very similar model in Contributor.

Dylan16807 9y ago
> Disclosure: I have been working on a business, Robojar, intended to remove advertising and bypass paywalls in exchange for microsubscriptions. Google have a very similar model in Contributor. Good luck! I love the idea of micropayments from a fixed budget to support sites, but Contributor's bidding-based system was not a good path at all. > they will only be guaranteed to show up in Chrome if they use adsense That's the worst-case scenario, as far as power abuse here. But they might be fair! We'll have to see.
- jacques_chester 9y ago
  I want to give Google the credit for a conceptually elegant approach that will slot neatly into the existing bidding system. But it seems to think of humans and adtech bidding ecosystems as identical economic agents. If we're all perfect consumers, sure, the system converges to an equilibrium. That seems like a mighty generous "if". It's already annoying to manage the mental cost of schemes like Patreon's. How much more annoying is to have to forecast, several weeks in advance, a bidding system that settles in milliseconds, millions of times per minute? It's worth noting that I may be misunderstanding or misrepresenting the nuances and design of the Contributor scheme. I'm a potential competitor, my remarks ought to be look on skeptically. But likewise I ask people to follow the money. Cui bono? In this case: Google.
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    My main objection to the bidding system is not even the unpredictability, but that it rewards the wrong things. I don't want to pay more to a site that happens to have car insurance ads. I don't want to pay less to a site that installed fewer banners. ...hang on, when did google contributor relaunch as a service that pays per-page-load, is opt-in per domain, and is basically useless? Google, you manage to do youtube red just fine. Try harder.
    - jacques_chester 9y ago
      Oh wow, you're right. The model has gotten even more cognitively expensive. This somewhat widens my ray of hope.

Dylan16807 9y ago

> Disclosure: I have been working on a business, Robojar, intended to remove advertising and bypass paywalls in exchange for microsubscriptions. Google have a very similar model in Contributor. Good luck! I love the idea of micropayments from a fixed budget to support sites, but Contributor's bidding-based system was not a good path at all. > they will only be guaranteed to show up in Chrome if they use adsense That's the worst-case scenario, as far as power abuse here. But they might be fair! We'll have to see.

jacques_chester 9y ago
I want to give Google the credit for a conceptually elegant approach that will slot neatly into the existing bidding system. But it seems to think of humans and adtech bidding ecosystems as identical economic agents. If we're all perfect consumers, sure, the system converges to an equilibrium. That seems like a mighty generous "if". It's already annoying to manage the mental cost of schemes like Patreon's. How much more annoying is to have to forecast, several weeks in advance, a bidding system that settles in milliseconds, millions of times per minute? It's worth noting that I may be misunderstanding or misrepresenting the nuances and design of the Contributor scheme. I'm a potential competitor, my remarks ought to be look on skeptically. But likewise I ask people to follow the money. Cui bono? In this case: Google.
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  My main objection to the bidding system is not even the unpredictability, but that it rewards the wrong things. I don't want to pay more to a site that happens to have car insurance ads. I don't want to pay less to a site that installed fewer banners. ...hang on, when did google contributor relaunch as a service that pays per-page-load, is opt-in per domain, and is basically useless? Google, you manage to do youtube red just fine. Try harder.
  - jacques_chester 9y ago
    Oh wow, you're right. The model has gotten even more cognitively expensive. This somewhat widens my ray of hope.