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Mass surveillance of billions of people pays off handsomely. Google and Facebook are the only two businesses that prosper on ads, while your local newspapers
by mudil 8y ago
Mass surveillance of billions of people pays off handsomely.
Google and Facebook are the only two businesses that prosper on ads, while your local newspapers, specialized websites, and journalism in general are dying.
- TekMol 8y agoI'm not sure it's the surveillance that makes Google earn so much. I would think the main reason is that search traffic is so valuable to advertisers.
- mudil 8y agoTheir whole business model is a targeting advertisement, and targeting comes from the snooping: what you do, what you eat, what you read, where you are.
- TekMol 8y agoNot true. Their main business is auctioning off ads on their search result pages. That auction is mostly keyword-based and not interest-based.
- bitmapbrother 8y agoI think you're confused. Google generates the majority of their revenue from ad targeting. Snooping and spying are performed by your government and paid for by your tax dollars.
- corv 8y agoNot only web searches. Tracking Google Maps journeys, YouTube, Google Analytics across most of the web, a major portion of global email communications, Hangouts, Google Drive, etc, the list goes on and on. Immensely valuable data that is able to predict trends and behaviour of both businesses and people in many instances
- sctb 8y agoYou've been posting mainly inflammatory comments about Google and Facebook. Could you please try switching it up? > Please don't use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle. This destroys intellectual curiosity, so we ban accounts that do it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mudil 8y agoThese are not inflammatory comments. These are facts about two monopolies, that are dangerous for society and for the internet in general. Plus there is this important thing called privacy of the individual.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> These are facts about two monopolies If you poke through my comments, you'll find we share antipathy for Facebook and, to a less degree, Google. That antipathy, however, is an opinion. Not a fact. Neither Facebook nor Google are monopolies by any common definition. Their business models disagree with our values. But a lot of Americans do as well. Your comments forego the debate necessary to establish agreement, and in that respect I think they are inflammatory. (As well as unproductive towards our common cause of convincing people these companies should be regarded with more caution.)
- Doctor_Fegg 8y agoDepending on the data source, Google has 80%+ share of the search engine market in many countries (such as here in the UK). That's a level often considered monopolistic.
- bduerst 8y agoNo, that's considered having a large market share. Monopolies do not have competitors and have markets that are difficult for other companies to enter. Google has competition, both search (Bing, Baidu, DDG, etc.) and ads (MSN, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Put another way, monopoly companies have a large market share, but not all companies with a large market share are monopolies.
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y agoDoesn't that rather support the notion that personalised, contextual ads are more effective?
- mudil 8y agoThere is this important little thing called privacy of the individual, that FB and Google monopolized and actively violate.
- scarface74 8y agoMost of the other information Facebook has about people is willfully given to them - your age, gender, likes, checkins, etc.
- hndamien 8y agoYou can use Duck Duck Go
- whatyoucantsay 8y agoAnd your Android phone will forever nag you to switch back.