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Except without advertising half of the internet collapses. And to anyone suggesting that a paid model will just surface, I don't really want to live in a world

Except without advertising half of the internet collapses. And to anyone suggesting that a paid model will just surface, I don't really want to live in a world where only the rich have access to tools as useful as Maps, Translate or Youtube.

FlowNote 7y ago
Only the bad half collapses.
floatingatoll 7y ago
Half of the Internet collapsing due to lack of ad revenue isn’t necessarily an apocalypse, even though it sounds like one. For example, it’d end domain squatting. (EDIT: Guess not!)
- quotemstr 7y ago
  No it won't. Domain squatting is so cheap that it's worth it even without ads.
saiya-jin 7y ago
so it will collapse, and new stuff will emerge to fill the void... so?
- ehsankia 7y ago
  And how do you suggest a service such as Maps or Youtube stay free? Do you realize the amount of money that goes into maintaining those services? Would you be okay to returning to using paper maps? Or do you propose the rich get richer by having better tools and the poor are stuck with primitive tools?
  - falcolas 7y ago
    How has openstreetmap.org remained free, if it's impossible to do without ads? Or torrents? Or GitHub? Or webarchive? Or any of the millions of other dual-licensed services or volunteer run services? It will still get done, even without ads. The internet has, oddly enough, been the one to prove that to be the rule, not the exception.
  - packet_nerd 7y ago
    I haven't tried it yet, but Peertube looks like an interesting alternative to Youtube. Mastadon and Matrix are similar exciting projects too. I host a Matrix instance that I and my extended family use to keep in touch, and we can seamlessly interoperate with anyone on any other Matrix instance. A few kinks to work out still (I wish the server software was way less bloated) but overall I think it's a really promising approach. My instance is completely ad-free, I might add.
  - hedora 7y ago
    Here Maps is free to end users (there is a cell phone app with traffic, and offline support). It has (had?) 80% market share in car navigation systems, and makes money by charging car manufacturers for its product: https://venturebeat.com/2015/08/03/why-3-car-giants-just-bought-nokias-mapping-division-for-3b/ https://venturebeat.com/2015/08/03/why-3-car-giants-just-bou... Apple maps is similar: you pay for the phone, and map updates are free. Android could be the same (if google charged for the OS).
  - ummonk 7y ago
    >And how do you suggest a service such as Maps or Youtube stay free? Maps isn't fully free; they charge exorbitantly for the API. The freemium model works for e.g. Dropbox and Vimeo without needing to show ads.
nerdjon 7y ago
I never suggested that, hell Apple does not even suggest that. They proposed an option for allowing ads without them being a privacy nightmare.
- ehsankia 7y ago
  Isn't that exactly what this blog post is proposing too?
  - nerdjon 7y ago
    No it is not, Google is just proposing extra protections around existing mechanisms. That will continue to likely allow google nearly unlimited access to data. Apple's plan is a complete departure from current setups. https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-attribution-for-the-web/ https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-att... I don't really know if its viable, but its something.
    - ehsankia 7y ago
      That's not how I read it. To me, it just sounded like trying to standardize all the different approaches everyone is using, so we don't end up with a mess like the User-Agent field currently is, because everyone tries their own hack on top of hack on top of hack trying to play a cat and mouse game.
      - nerdjon 7y ago
        Trying to standardize is already what Mozilla and Apple (by openly stating their proposal was based on Mozilla) attempting to do. The only thing Google is doing by proposing this is to attempt to remove or lower the impact on them. Considering this in the beginning: >Recently, some other browsers have attempted to address this problem, but without an agreed upon set of standards, attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences.
- quotemstr 7y ago
  > They proposed an option for allowing ads without them being a privacy nightmare. Non-personalized ads won't be lucrative enough to fund the web. Let's stop this equivocation. When people say that preventing tracking will kill advertising, they mean that it'll kill personalized advertising. When you respond to these concerns by pointing out that non-personalized advertising would still be possible, you're using this one word, "advertising", to refer to a different concept. Word games make for bad arguments.
techntoke 7y ago
So you'd rather live in a world where the rich exploit and consumerize everyone else with targeted propaganda?
mbrumlow 7y ago
> half of the internet collapses Is that a bad thing ?? There are a lot of good aguments that the bad brought by the internet out weighs the good. I also don't think all the nice tools you described would go away. People would still provide these services for free, although it would be different people than today.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  > People would still provide these services for free Citation needed.
jedberg 7y ago
> Except without advertising half of the internet collapses. You can still run ads without knowing anything about the user. They will be less targeted and less profitable, but you can still use them.
- SimeVidas 7y ago
  > less profitable Source? Last I heard, targeted advertising isn’t more profitable.
- jefftk 7y ago
  > They will be less targeted and less profitable, but you can still use them. Specifically, about half as profitable: https://www.blog.google/products/ads/next-steps-transparency-choice-control/ https://www.blog.google/products/ads/next-steps-transparency... "Based on an analysis of a randomly selected fraction of traffic on each of the 500 largest Google Ad Manager publishers globally over the last three months, we evaluated how the presence of a cookie affected programmatic revenue. Traffic for which there was no cookie present yielded an average of 52 percent less revenue for the publisher than traffic for which there was a cookie present." (Disclosure: I work for Google on ads, speaking only for myself)
  - jedberg 7y ago
    That seems like a reasonable tradeoff for privacy.
  - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
    Wouldn't this data be tainted by the fact that those deleting your cookies are the sort of people who actively adblock or protect their privacy, and hence are naturally unlikely to click on ads? If the default for everyone was to not target users, the actual revenue value would probably be a wash, because ad targeting is useless.
    - jefftk 7y ago
      Ad blocking users wouldn't be affected by the study at all.
giancarlostoro 7y ago
I am not rich but I would pay a monthly subscription for a Google-like service that isnt as crippled or now politically inclined as Google is. A service that gives me the same results as any other customer. If I want my results to be bubbled may it be by tags I choose such as "Programmer" bubble or "Medical Professional" and maybe even Public Libraries and schools could pay for access to such engines. If I remember correctly many schools pay for curated search engines as it is. I would also pay money for a solid social network and / or IM service. If I dont see certain people on it even better. My favorite thing about the internet is meeting new people anyway.
- ehsankia 7y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I would also love to have the option between a free and a paid model, but that's beside the point, which is that there will always be some people who can't afford the paid one, and for them, access to these tools far outweighs whatever privacy implication there is. Furthermore, we all enjoy our accurate and free traffic predictions every day, but you do realize that it wouldn't be possible without user data, right?
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    I'm not against general metrics, I am against about online stalking that companies do while getting those metrics.
falcolas 7y ago
Why would you have to be rich? If something can be supported by ads, it can be supported by a less than a penny from each user. You don't have to be rich to afford a penny. And I stated this in a separate child content, but the internet has proven repeatedly that services can be provided ad-free. No ads anywhere. They're either supported by donations, a subset of users who pay for advanced features, or run by volunteers on their own dime. Listing three Google properties supposedly without competitors (which they do) does not prove that it's impossible (in fact, the hundreds and thousands of other web properties actually prove that ad-unsupported services can and do thrive). EDIT: Reworded a few poorly phrased sentences.
hedora 7y ago
Google’s annual revenue is $136b (5/6th is from ads) and there are ~2.5 billion active android users. So, google would still be wildly profitable if they charged each user $3.7 a month, and eliminated their ads division. This ignores revenue from iOS users, and the cost savings from shutting down their ads and tracking businesses.
- dzader 7y ago
  lol in what world do you think even 1/10000th of those 2.5 billion people would spend 3.7 a month to run android?
- ehsankia 7y ago
  And the people who can't afford 3.7$ a month? They go back to using paper maps I guess?
zzzcpan 7y ago
> Except without advertising half of the internet collapses. This is a lie adtech industry tries to spread, but it was never true. Among a top couple of million of websites almost none are funded through adtech, as it doesn't pay much to websites at all. Adtech first and foremost is about making money for advertising companies, on all websites it can convince to join in aggregate, and for a couple of big platforms, but definitely not about supporting websites.
etchalon 7y ago
Entire industries (TV, Radio, Print) have been funded with advertising that did not require the degree of privacy-invasion we see today. The idea that "half the internet would collapse" doesn't seem to be backed by historical precedence. Content targeting worked for a century just fine.

FlowNote 7y ago

Only the bad half collapses.

floatingatoll 7y ago

Half of the Internet collapsing due to lack of ad revenue isn’t necessarily an apocalypse, even though it sounds like one. For example, it’d end domain squatting. (EDIT: Guess not!)

quotemstr 7y ago
No it won't. Domain squatting is so cheap that it's worth it even without ads.

saiya-jin 7y ago

so it will collapse, and new stuff will emerge to fill the void... so?

ehsankia 7y ago
And how do you suggest a service such as Maps or Youtube stay free? Do you realize the amount of money that goes into maintaining those services? Would you be okay to returning to using paper maps? Or do you propose the rich get richer by having better tools and the poor are stuck with primitive tools?
- falcolas 7y ago
  How has openstreetmap.org remained free, if it's impossible to do without ads? Or torrents? Or GitHub? Or webarchive? Or any of the millions of other dual-licensed services or volunteer run services? It will still get done, even without ads. The internet has, oddly enough, been the one to prove that to be the rule, not the exception.
- packet_nerd 7y ago
  I haven't tried it yet, but Peertube looks like an interesting alternative to Youtube. Mastadon and Matrix are similar exciting projects too. I host a Matrix instance that I and my extended family use to keep in touch, and we can seamlessly interoperate with anyone on any other Matrix instance. A few kinks to work out still (I wish the server software was way less bloated) but overall I think it's a really promising approach. My instance is completely ad-free, I might add.
- hedora 7y ago
  Here Maps is free to end users (there is a cell phone app with traffic, and offline support). It has (had?) 80% market share in car navigation systems, and makes money by charging car manufacturers for its product: https://venturebeat.com/2015/08/03/why-3-car-giants-just-bought-nokias-mapping-division-for-3b/ https://venturebeat.com/2015/08/03/why-3-car-giants-just-bou... Apple maps is similar: you pay for the phone, and map updates are free. Android could be the same (if google charged for the OS).
- ummonk 7y ago
  >And how do you suggest a service such as Maps or Youtube stay free? Maps isn't fully free; they charge exorbitantly for the API. The freemium model works for e.g. Dropbox and Vimeo without needing to show ads.

nerdjon 7y ago

I never suggested that, hell Apple does not even suggest that. They proposed an option for allowing ads without them being a privacy nightmare.

ehsankia 7y ago
Isn't that exactly what this blog post is proposing too?
- nerdjon 7y ago
  No it is not, Google is just proposing extra protections around existing mechanisms. That will continue to likely allow google nearly unlimited access to data. Apple's plan is a complete departure from current setups. https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-attribution-for-the-web/ https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-att... I don't really know if its viable, but its something.
  - ehsankia 7y ago
    That's not how I read it. To me, it just sounded like trying to standardize all the different approaches everyone is using, so we don't end up with a mess like the User-Agent field currently is, because everyone tries their own hack on top of hack on top of hack trying to play a cat and mouse game.
    - nerdjon 7y ago
      Trying to standardize is already what Mozilla and Apple (by openly stating their proposal was based on Mozilla) attempting to do. The only thing Google is doing by proposing this is to attempt to remove or lower the impact on them. Considering this in the beginning: >Recently, some other browsers have attempted to address this problem, but without an agreed upon set of standards, attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences.
quotemstr 7y ago
> They proposed an option for allowing ads without them being a privacy nightmare. Non-personalized ads won't be lucrative enough to fund the web. Let's stop this equivocation. When people say that preventing tracking will kill advertising, they mean that it'll kill personalized advertising. When you respond to these concerns by pointing out that non-personalized advertising would still be possible, you're using this one word, "advertising", to refer to a different concept. Word games make for bad arguments.

techntoke 7y ago

So you'd rather live in a world where the rich exploit and consumerize everyone else with targeted propaganda?

mbrumlow 7y ago

> half of the internet collapses Is that a bad thing ?? There are a lot of good aguments that the bad brought by the internet out weighs the good. I also don't think all the nice tools you described would go away. People would still provide these services for free, although it would be different people than today.

cameronbrown 7y ago
> People would still provide these services for free Citation needed.

jedberg 7y ago

> Except without advertising half of the internet collapses. You can still run ads without knowing anything about the user. They will be less targeted and less profitable, but you can still use them.

SimeVidas 7y ago
> less profitable Source? Last I heard, targeted advertising isn’t more profitable.
jefftk 7y ago
> They will be less targeted and less profitable, but you can still use them. Specifically, about half as profitable: https://www.blog.google/products/ads/next-steps-transparency-choice-control/ https://www.blog.google/products/ads/next-steps-transparency... "Based on an analysis of a randomly selected fraction of traffic on each of the 500 largest Google Ad Manager publishers globally over the last three months, we evaluated how the presence of a cookie affected programmatic revenue. Traffic for which there was no cookie present yielded an average of 52 percent less revenue for the publisher than traffic for which there was a cookie present." (Disclosure: I work for Google on ads, speaking only for myself)
- jedberg 7y ago
  That seems like a reasonable tradeoff for privacy.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  Wouldn't this data be tainted by the fact that those deleting your cookies are the sort of people who actively adblock or protect their privacy, and hence are naturally unlikely to click on ads? If the default for everyone was to not target users, the actual revenue value would probably be a wash, because ad targeting is useless.
  - jefftk 7y ago
    Ad blocking users wouldn't be affected by the study at all.

giancarlostoro 7y ago

I am not rich but I would pay a monthly subscription for a Google-like service that isnt as crippled or now politically inclined as Google is. A service that gives me the same results as any other customer. If I want my results to be bubbled may it be by tags I choose such as "Programmer" bubble or "Medical Professional" and maybe even Public Libraries and schools could pay for access to such engines. If I remember correctly many schools pay for curated search engines as it is. I would also pay money for a solid social network and / or IM service. If I dont see certain people on it even better. My favorite thing about the internet is meeting new people anyway.

ehsankia 7y ago
Don't get me wrong, I would also love to have the option between a free and a paid model, but that's beside the point, which is that there will always be some people who can't afford the paid one, and for them, access to these tools far outweighs whatever privacy implication there is. Furthermore, we all enjoy our accurate and free traffic predictions every day, but you do realize that it wouldn't be possible without user data, right?
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  I'm not against general metrics, I am against about online stalking that companies do while getting those metrics.

falcolas 7y ago

Why would you have to be rich? If something can be supported by ads, it can be supported by a less than a penny from each user. You don't have to be rich to afford a penny. And I stated this in a separate child content, but the internet has proven repeatedly that services can be provided ad-free. No ads anywhere. They're either supported by donations, a subset of users who pay for advanced features, or run by volunteers on their own dime. Listing three Google properties supposedly without competitors (which they do) does not prove that it's impossible (in fact, the hundreds and thousands of other web properties actually prove that ad-unsupported services can and do thrive). EDIT: Reworded a few poorly phrased sentences.

hedora 7y ago

Google’s annual revenue is $136b (5/6th is from ads) and there are ~2.5 billion active android users. So, google would still be wildly profitable if they charged each user $3.7 a month, and eliminated their ads division. This ignores revenue from iOS users, and the cost savings from shutting down their ads and tracking businesses.

dzader 7y ago
lol in what world do you think even 1/10000th of those 2.5 billion people would spend 3.7 a month to run android?
ehsankia 7y ago
And the people who can't afford 3.7$ a month? They go back to using paper maps I guess?

zzzcpan 7y ago

> Except without advertising half of the internet collapses. This is a lie adtech industry tries to spread, but it was never true. Among a top couple of million of websites almost none are funded through adtech, as it doesn't pay much to websites at all. Adtech first and foremost is about making money for advertising companies, on all websites it can convince to join in aggregate, and for a couple of big platforms, but definitely not about supporting websites.

etchalon 7y ago

Entire industries (TV, Radio, Print) have been funded with advertising that did not require the degree of privacy-invasion we see today. The idea that "half the internet would collapse" doesn't seem to be backed by historical precedence. Content targeting worked for a century just fine.