7 ms·

> "The company must also settle some internal feuds. Some of the principles that Fuchsia creators are pursuing have already run up against Google’s business mod

by drewda 8y ago

> "The company must also settle some internal feuds. Some of the principles that Fuchsia creators are pursuing have already run up against Google’s business model. Google’s ads business relies on an ability to target users based on their location and activity, and Fuchsia’s nascent privacy features would, if implemented, hamstring this important business. There’s already been at least one clash between advertising and engineering over security and privacy features of the fledgling operating system, according to a person familiar with the matter. The ad team prevailed, this person said."

eganist 8y ago
> The ad team prevailed, this person said. Of course they did. A controversial idea, but you know how much easier this would be for everyone if Google offered an option for users to be paid for volunteering your information to them? It's a precedent most fledgling ad companies wouldn't be able to match... even if it's just a few dollars a month, or maybe 30ish bucks a year. It'd cut into Google's bottom line, but it would eradicate the competition. And then on top of that, you've got the security and privacy wins by baking the product to be secure by default but allowing consumers to accept a paycheck to disable some of it for Google. That risk calculus works for plenty of people (if not for myself). Google's wins: • Security and Privacy by default • Dismantling start-up competition who can't afford to pay for the data they harvest • Growing marketshare. Drawbacks: • Immediate hit to Google's revenue stream • Permanent assignment of value to data in the perception of consumers The only big outstanding risk would be posed by rivals with large warchests able to subsidize a similar payment scheme, but honestly once that's done, the winner is a public which now has the ability to monetize their data.
- epicide 8y ago
  What would be better is the ability to pay for Google not to sell your data. However, the new problem would be making sure they aren't selling your data, anyway.
  - judge2020 8y ago
    Google Contributor: https://contributor.google.com/v/marketing https://contributor.google.com/v/marketing
    - epicide 8y ago
      That does not include Google's services and only includes a handful of sites. I also see nothing about not still collecting information about you. It appears to just remove showing you some ads.
    - propogandist 8y ago
      'allow us to track you across the web, so we can stop showing you ads on publishers that are in our network, once you pay for this privilege'
  - bitmapbrother 8y ago
    Google doesn't sell your data. Advertisers pay Google to deliver their ads to the demographic they want to target.
    - mattkevan 8y ago
      Right. They don’t sell our data, they rent us out to the highest bidder. Much better.
      - evv 8y ago
        It is much better, considering there are companies that do actually sell our data. "rent us out to the highest bidder" is the perfect description of Google and FB's business model. It's hard to imagine how either company could change course at this point, even if they wanted to.
        sharcerer 8y ago
        Exactly, people lovw to give a negative spin to 'rent','bid'. I see it as an exchange of value. Data, money both serve same purpose: we give them vakue,they give back. My data helps them improve their systems, make recommendation engine etc. and they give me services in return. Making sense of vast troves of data is their main competency or of any internet service. Would YouTube be relevant without recommendations? Just open incognito mode in YouTube and find out! One thing they could do in future is maybe allow users to store their data somewhere locally,and which gets updated with new recommendations,profilinf info; but that'll involve losts of code changes, engineering challenges i suppose.
- curuinor 8y ago
  Isn't the competition already mostly eradicated, except for Facebook? The other ad companies are orders of magnitude smaller.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  It would be too expensive. Google is making $40 every time someone clicks on many categories of ads. They probably have users generating them thousands of dollars a year.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I’ve got a better idea. Google could always ship a product that people are willing to pay enough for where it is a sustainable business without being as supported.
  - s17n 8y ago
    Google is a consumer software company. Consumers aren't willing to pay for software.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      The article is not about standalone software. It is about an operating system that will be used to sell hardware. Apple is proof that consumers are willing to pay enough for hardware to keep a company profitable.
  - owaislone 8y ago
    They could and it would make them a few million dollars, not billions of dollars.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      Selling hardware products that people want without advertising or collecting user data unnecessarily seems to be making Apple slightly more than a “few million”.....
  - megy 8y ago
    > I’ve got a better idea. Except that is an awful idea.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      Since when was it an awful idea to sell something that the market valued enough for a company to make a profit without subsidizing the product with ads?
- technofiend 8y ago
  >but you know how much easier this would be for everyone if Google offered an option for users to be paid for volunteering your information to them? Have you not seen their Opinion Rewards app for Android? They do precisely that.
  - eganist 8y ago
    That's a wholly different context. In that context, you're not selling usage data, you're selling conscious opinions/preferences. More than anything, all that does is confirm the assumptions Google is already making about your tastes based on your usage. This is about valuing the usage data itself that's passively collected on the Android platform.
    - candiodari 8y ago
      Is it ? Google provides free functionality, like a (pretty nice) mail client in the cloud in trade for mail usage data. Those things go, outside of Google, for 2$/month minimum, and more often 10$ per month ... Similar things go for Google's index of the web, phone operating system, ...
      - eganist 8y ago
        The real indicator of how outsized the value is compared to the perception of such is the revenue inflow. There's no reason for the suppliers of raw materials here not to raise their prices (from zero). If anyone wants to provide it for less, so be it, but given that Google wants insight into everyone marketable, there's no reason for people not to raise their own prices for the data they supply.
- nameless912 8y ago
  They already do this-it's called Google Opinion Rewards and it's how I feed my Clash Royale habit.
- HillaryBriss 8y ago
  > Immediate hit to Google's revenue stream but maybe only a temporary one. after knifing the babies (i mean honestly outcompeting the startups), Google could discontinue that option and stop all the payments. at least for a while, until a fresh crop of foolhardy competitors boldly entered that market again.
- RestlessMind 8y ago
  The main reason why this won't work is that majority of public simply prefers free ad-infested services over paid ad-free ones. Case in point - YouTube Red and it's abysmal adoption rate. One might reasonable argue that YT Red just removes ads, but doesn't do anything for privacy / data collection. But I have two questions for them: 1. what makes you think people would gladly pay for privacy (any glaring example)? , 2. even if Google were to offer such an option, would you trust it?
  - Razengan 8y ago
    > The main reason why this won't work is that majority of public simply prefers free ad-infested services over paid ad-free ones. Counterpoint: Apple, one of the most profitable companies. People have been giving their money to Apple before they even flaunted a strong pro-privacy stance, and I have yet to see an ad from Apple that I did not opt in for (although their recent Apple Pay emails have been slightly annoying, given that I'm in a country where I cannot use Apple Pay but there's no option to opt-out from only Apple Pay related emails while still receiving offers for other Apple services.)
    - 0xFFC 8y ago
      Please, people don’t buy apple stuff because apple cares for privacy. People buy apple because its products are top notch quality wise.
      - scarface74 8y ago
        I don’t buy Apple products because of privacy. I buy Apple products because the alternative in the consumer market -Windows and Android feel like a flea market where Im constantly being advertise to. I like Apple’s business model. I give them money and they give me stuff. Too many other companies sell hardware subsidized by ad sales. For instance, I would gladly pay more for my Roku devices to avoid advertising on the home screen and paid for placement on the remote. I have three Roku TVs but I still use my attached AppleTV devices more often than the Roku apps for just that reason.
    - 8y ago
- matt4077 8y ago
  People willing to accept money for their data are useless as advertising targets, because they have already proven that something is wrong about them, and that they have less money than others.
ilikehurdles 8y ago
Would be nice if there were a competitor mobile platform to iOS that wasn't built from the ground up to sell you advertising based on personal data. I guess Blackberry was the last mobile OS that didn't need to know every detail of my pissing habits.
- antpls 8y ago
  Android, iOS and other competitors will have to comply with EU regulations about data privacy. They can build OSes with ads in mind, but it has to comply with laws anyway.
- elithrar 8y ago
  Sure, but Blackberry - specifically, the BBM service - had no qualms about setting up intercepting proxies with governments when pressured.
- scj 8y ago
  Blackberry gave the RCMP a global decryption key[0], then defended the practice[1]. Given the chance, they probably would have sold out their users as well. [0] https://news.vice.com/article/exclusive-canada-police-obtained-blackberrys-global-decryption-key-how https://news.vice.com/article/exclusive-canada-police-obtain... [1] http://blogs.blackberry.com/2016/04/lawful-access-corporate-citizenship-and-doing-whats-right/ http://blogs.blackberry.com/2016/04/lawful-access-corporate-...
- iainmerrick 8y ago
  I take it you have a different problem with iOS? It seems to be pretty good on privacy, at least.
  - ilikehurdles 8y ago
    Nope, I like competition, and until I see some I'll stick with iOS. They're way better on privacy than others.
thinkingemote 8y ago
When we are in our nursing homes later in life we will get to hear some interesting stories about the creation of these world changing technologies in a middle of the afternoon radio show.
foodstances 8y ago
I often wonder what kind of amazing company Google could be if only their cash cow was not from advertising, but something neutral and profitable like AT&T was to foster Bell Labs.
megy 8y ago
> The ad team prevailed, this person said. Sure, don't they make >95% of all google profits.

by drewda 8y ago

eganist 8y ago

> The ad team prevailed, this person said. Of course they did. A controversial idea, but you know how much easier this would be for everyone if Google offered an option for users to be paid for volunteering your information to them? It's a precedent most fledgling ad companies wouldn't be able to match... even if it's just a few dollars a month, or maybe 30ish bucks a year. It'd cut into Google's bottom line, but it would eradicate the competition. And then on top of that, you've got the security and privacy wins by baking the product to be secure by default but allowing consumers to accept a paycheck to disable some of it for Google. That risk calculus works for plenty of people (if not for myself). Google's wins: • Security and Privacy by default • Dismantling start-up competition who can't afford to pay for the data they harvest • Growing marketshare. Drawbacks: • Immediate hit to Google's revenue stream • Permanent assignment of value to data in the perception of consumers The only big outstanding risk would be posed by rivals with large warchests able to subsidize a similar payment scheme, but honestly once that's done, the winner is a public which now has the ability to monetize their data.

epicide 8y ago
What would be better is the ability to pay for Google not to sell your data. However, the new problem would be making sure they aren't selling your data, anyway.
- judge2020 8y ago
  Google Contributor: https://contributor.google.com/v/marketing https://contributor.google.com/v/marketing
  - epicide 8y ago
    That does not include Google's services and only includes a handful of sites. I also see nothing about not still collecting information about you. It appears to just remove showing you some ads.
  - propogandist 8y ago
    'allow us to track you across the web, so we can stop showing you ads on publishers that are in our network, once you pay for this privilege'
- bitmapbrother 8y ago
  Google doesn't sell your data. Advertisers pay Google to deliver their ads to the demographic they want to target.
  - mattkevan 8y ago
    Right. They don’t sell our data, they rent us out to the highest bidder. Much better.
    - evv 8y ago
      It is much better, considering there are companies that do actually sell our data. "rent us out to the highest bidder" is the perfect description of Google and FB's business model. It's hard to imagine how either company could change course at this point, even if they wanted to.
      - sharcerer 8y ago
        Exactly, people lovw to give a negative spin to 'rent','bid'. I see it as an exchange of value. Data, money both serve same purpose: we give them vakue,they give back. My data helps them improve their systems, make recommendation engine etc. and they give me services in return. Making sense of vast troves of data is their main competency or of any internet service. Would YouTube be relevant without recommendations? Just open incognito mode in YouTube and find out! One thing they could do in future is maybe allow users to store their data somewhere locally,and which gets updated with new recommendations,profilinf info; but that'll involve losts of code changes, engineering challenges i suppose.
curuinor 8y ago
Isn't the competition already mostly eradicated, except for Facebook? The other ad companies are orders of magnitude smaller.
Spooky23 8y ago
It would be too expensive. Google is making $40 every time someone clicks on many categories of ads. They probably have users generating them thousands of dollars a year.
scarface74 8y ago
I’ve got a better idea. Google could always ship a product that people are willing to pay enough for where it is a sustainable business without being as supported.
- s17n 8y ago
  Google is a consumer software company. Consumers aren't willing to pay for software.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    The article is not about standalone software. It is about an operating system that will be used to sell hardware. Apple is proof that consumers are willing to pay enough for hardware to keep a company profitable.
- owaislone 8y ago
  They could and it would make them a few million dollars, not billions of dollars.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Selling hardware products that people want without advertising or collecting user data unnecessarily seems to be making Apple slightly more than a “few million”.....
- megy 8y ago
  > I’ve got a better idea. Except that is an awful idea.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Since when was it an awful idea to sell something that the market valued enough for a company to make a profit without subsidizing the product with ads?
technofiend 8y ago
>but you know how much easier this would be for everyone if Google offered an option for users to be paid for volunteering your information to them? Have you not seen their Opinion Rewards app for Android? They do precisely that.
- eganist 8y ago
  That's a wholly different context. In that context, you're not selling usage data, you're selling conscious opinions/preferences. More than anything, all that does is confirm the assumptions Google is already making about your tastes based on your usage. This is about valuing the usage data itself that's passively collected on the Android platform.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    Is it ? Google provides free functionality, like a (pretty nice) mail client in the cloud in trade for mail usage data. Those things go, outside of Google, for 2$/month minimum, and more often 10$ per month ... Similar things go for Google's index of the web, phone operating system, ...
    - eganist 8y ago
      The real indicator of how outsized the value is compared to the perception of such is the revenue inflow. There's no reason for the suppliers of raw materials here not to raise their prices (from zero). If anyone wants to provide it for less, so be it, but given that Google wants insight into everyone marketable, there's no reason for people not to raise their own prices for the data they supply.
nameless912 8y ago
They already do this-it's called Google Opinion Rewards and it's how I feed my Clash Royale habit.
HillaryBriss 8y ago
> Immediate hit to Google's revenue stream but maybe only a temporary one. after knifing the babies (i mean honestly outcompeting the startups), Google could discontinue that option and stop all the payments. at least for a while, until a fresh crop of foolhardy competitors boldly entered that market again.
RestlessMind 8y ago
The main reason why this won't work is that majority of public simply prefers free ad-infested services over paid ad-free ones. Case in point - YouTube Red and it's abysmal adoption rate. One might reasonable argue that YT Red just removes ads, but doesn't do anything for privacy / data collection. But I have two questions for them: 1. what makes you think people would gladly pay for privacy (any glaring example)? , 2. even if Google were to offer such an option, would you trust it?
- Razengan 8y ago
  > The main reason why this won't work is that majority of public simply prefers free ad-infested services over paid ad-free ones. Counterpoint: Apple, one of the most profitable companies. People have been giving their money to Apple before they even flaunted a strong pro-privacy stance, and I have yet to see an ad from Apple that I did not opt in for (although their recent Apple Pay emails have been slightly annoying, given that I'm in a country where I cannot use Apple Pay but there's no option to opt-out from only Apple Pay related emails while still receiving offers for other Apple services.)
  - 0xFFC 8y ago
    Please, people don’t buy apple stuff because apple cares for privacy. People buy apple because its products are top notch quality wise.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      I don’t buy Apple products because of privacy. I buy Apple products because the alternative in the consumer market -Windows and Android feel like a flea market where Im constantly being advertise to. I like Apple’s business model. I give them money and they give me stuff. Too many other companies sell hardware subsidized by ad sales. For instance, I would gladly pay more for my Roku devices to avoid advertising on the home screen and paid for placement on the remote. I have three Roku TVs but I still use my attached AppleTV devices more often than the Roku apps for just that reason.
  - 8y ago
matt4077 8y ago
People willing to accept money for their data are useless as advertising targets, because they have already proven that something is wrong about them, and that they have less money than others.

ilikehurdles 8y ago

Would be nice if there were a competitor mobile platform to iOS that wasn't built from the ground up to sell you advertising based on personal data. I guess Blackberry was the last mobile OS that didn't need to know every detail of my pissing habits.

antpls 8y ago
Android, iOS and other competitors will have to comply with EU regulations about data privacy. They can build OSes with ads in mind, but it has to comply with laws anyway.
elithrar 8y ago
Sure, but Blackberry - specifically, the BBM service - had no qualms about setting up intercepting proxies with governments when pressured.
scj 8y ago
Blackberry gave the RCMP a global decryption key[0], then defended the practice[1]. Given the chance, they probably would have sold out their users as well. [0] https://news.vice.com/article/exclusive-canada-police-obtained-blackberrys-global-decryption-key-how https://news.vice.com/article/exclusive-canada-police-obtain... [1] http://blogs.blackberry.com/2016/04/lawful-access-corporate-citizenship-and-doing-whats-right/ http://blogs.blackberry.com/2016/04/lawful-access-corporate-...
iainmerrick 8y ago
I take it you have a different problem with iOS? It seems to be pretty good on privacy, at least.
- ilikehurdles 8y ago
  Nope, I like competition, and until I see some I'll stick with iOS. They're way better on privacy than others.

thinkingemote 8y ago

When we are in our nursing homes later in life we will get to hear some interesting stories about the creation of these world changing technologies in a middle of the afternoon radio show.

foodstances 8y ago

I often wonder what kind of amazing company Google could be if only their cash cow was not from advertising, but something neutral and profitable like AT&T was to foster Bell Labs.

megy 8y ago

> The ad team prevailed, this person said. Sure, don't they make >95% of all google profits.