4 ms·

Would you give up Google for $17,000 a year? The Fed wants to know

28 points by kjhughes 7y ago

ntw1103 7y ago
Considering I already make an effort of avoiding Google, sure, free money. When I say make an effort, that is because if you really are trying to avoid Google, it is an effort, there services are embedded everywhere. The 17k figure in the article was associated with all online search engines. This would be a little more difficult. I remember the internet before search engines. I would probably be creating my own, and better about book marking things.
- corodra 7y ago
  Yea, I'm fine with using duckduckgo or even something else. But "no search engines"...eh... well, that might bring back sites like HappyPuppy... that'd be fun... well, wouldn't that make "influencers" actually really valuable? I'd imagine they'd jump on that opportunity.
- rolph 7y ago
  i think i still have my old IP address book buried in kruft somewhere.
corodra 7y ago
I think avoiding using GPS is the hardest one. Youtube... 90% of my viewing consists of history, documentaries, programming tutorials and maker/engineer channels. Adequate replacement of that, that's a toughy. But what's funny, Youtube is demonetizing a lot of that. So, I'm hoping for a new platform to pop-up soon. But man, "Twitter, however, was valued at zero euros." Burn.
mrkstu 7y ago
The biggest difficulty is that many of the web 'accounts' I've created have been only ever accessed via my Google account- i.e. I effectively don't have an account there w/o my Google account. I assume Github and some of the others have mechanisms to migrate to a 'local' account, but I'm fairly sure some of the others would involve basically starting from scratch. That said, for $17,000, of course I would, it would pay for the inconvenience many times over.
- mikestew 7y ago
  That said, for $17,000, of course I would, it would pay for the inconvenience many times over. EDIT: ignore; went back and re-read it and sounds like the user would be paid. Unless I'm reading TFA wrong, they're not paying you, you're paying them. I took it to mean that they are trying to place a value on personal data required for such "free" internet services as Google.
  - RandomBacon 7y ago
    The wording is ambiguous, but they meant the user would need to be paid.
- etbebl 7y ago
  Typically you can associate a password to an OAuth account through a password reset flow, if you know which email the account you linked has provided (for Google it would be your Gmail I assume).
obenn 7y ago
If I stopped using YouTube I would already be eligible, and the answer is yes.
tonyedgecombe 7y ago
Brynjolfsson is advocating an entirely new measure of economic health that calculates benefit rather than output. This needs to go well beyond a few internet services. GDP is a poor measure that was never intended for what it is used for today.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
RandomBacon 7y ago
Not Google, but "search engines". I wonder how that would affect the Internet, and society. People would have to learn how to find information out for themselves. Yes, some people will find wrong info, but I'd argue there's still a lot of wrong info floating around today. Hopefully such skills would carry over to the physical world as well.
freediver 7y ago
The idea does sound silly, because Google and Facebook are not "free". The economic output of Google and Facebook (ad revenue) is already being factored into GDP. But lets explore the possibility of unaccounted economic value for a second. Today there are roughly about 3 billion people using search engines with total ad revenue roughly around $150Bn, meaning value per user is ~$50/year. In order for unaccounted economic surplus to exist, all of these users would need to be ready to pay more than $50/year (and that there are no ads). Another scenario is 90% of population keeps it as it is and 10% (300M people) get no ads and pay more than $50/year. With adblockers around and no other value proposition I can think of right now, this sounds unlikely. There is a big difference between being offered $17k to entirely quit search engines and being ready to pay $17k a year to use them.
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  This argument doesn't follow: if I create something of value, and give it away for free, it still creates value even if no money changes hands. > $17k to entirely quit search engines and being ready to pay $17k a year to use them. No, economically speaking these are equivalent constructs. Of the value of a service is X, then I would be willing to pay X for access to the service, and similarly be willing to be paid X to lose access to the service. If people are willing to pay for a search engine, just because they aren't, doesn't mean they wouldn't be willing to. It just means that there's deadweight loss somewhere, or in this case that Google isn't operating at maximum short term profitability.
  - kd5bjo 7y ago
    Except that $17k is a large enough portion of most people’s income that there may be a significant difference in marginal utility between adding and subtracting it: $43k vs $60k looks very different from $60k vs $77k.
  - notpeter 7y ago
    > No, economically speaking these are equivalent constructs. "Economically speaking" ignores that we are human beings with biases. There is significant experimental evidence our brains don't perceive them as equal. Google "Prospect Theory" for more.
rolph 7y ago
ive already firewalled google from everything i do, so can i have my 17k now and how much tax do i owe for it?
JohnFen 7y ago
I gave up Google about five years ago, in exchange for no money -- so sure, I'd do it for $17,000 a year.
- zamadatix 7y ago
  FWIW the article is actually about "internet search" which the writer equated to "Google".

28 points by kjhughes 7y ago

Considering I already make an effort of avoiding Google, sure, free money. When I say make an effort, that is because if you really are trying to avoid Google, it is an effort, there services are embedded everywhere. The 17k figure in the article was associated with all online search engines. This would be a little more difficult. I remember the internet before search engines. I would probably be creating my own, and better about book marking things.

corodra 7y ago
Yea, I'm fine with using duckduckgo or even something else. But "no search engines"...eh... well, that might bring back sites like HappyPuppy... that'd be fun... well, wouldn't that make "influencers" actually really valuable? I'd imagine they'd jump on that opportunity.
rolph 7y ago
i think i still have my old IP address book buried in kruft somewhere.

corodra 7y ago

I think avoiding using GPS is the hardest one. Youtube... 90% of my viewing consists of history, documentaries, programming tutorials and maker/engineer channels. Adequate replacement of that, that's a toughy. But what's funny, Youtube is demonetizing a lot of that. So, I'm hoping for a new platform to pop-up soon. But man, "Twitter, however, was valued at zero euros." Burn.

mrkstu 7y ago

The biggest difficulty is that many of the web 'accounts' I've created have been only ever accessed via my Google account- i.e. I effectively don't have an account there w/o my Google account. I assume Github and some of the others have mechanisms to migrate to a 'local' account, but I'm fairly sure some of the others would involve basically starting from scratch. That said, for $17,000, of course I would, it would pay for the inconvenience many times over.

mikestew 7y ago
That said, for $17,000, of course I would, it would pay for the inconvenience many times over. EDIT: ignore; went back and re-read it and sounds like the user would be paid. Unless I'm reading TFA wrong, they're not paying you, you're paying them. I took it to mean that they are trying to place a value on personal data required for such "free" internet services as Google.
- RandomBacon 7y ago
  The wording is ambiguous, but they meant the user would need to be paid.
etbebl 7y ago
Typically you can associate a password to an OAuth account through a password reset flow, if you know which email the account you linked has provided (for Google it would be your Gmail I assume).

obenn 7y ago

If I stopped using YouTube I would already be eligible, and the answer is yes.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago

Brynjolfsson is advocating an entirely new measure of economic health that calculates benefit rather than output. This needs to go well beyond a few internet services. GDP is a poor measure that was never intended for what it is used for today.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

RandomBacon 7y ago

Not Google, but "search engines". I wonder how that would affect the Internet, and society. People would have to learn how to find information out for themselves. Yes, some people will find wrong info, but I'd argue there's still a lot of wrong info floating around today. Hopefully such skills would carry over to the physical world as well.

freediver 7y ago

The idea does sound silly, because Google and Facebook are not "free". The economic output of Google and Facebook (ad revenue) is already being factored into GDP. But lets explore the possibility of unaccounted economic value for a second. Today there are roughly about 3 billion people using search engines with total ad revenue roughly around $150Bn, meaning value per user is ~$50/year. In order for unaccounted economic surplus to exist, all of these users would need to be ready to pay more than $50/year (and that there are no ads). Another scenario is 90% of population keeps it as it is and 10% (300M people) get no ads and pay more than $50/year. With adblockers around and no other value proposition I can think of right now, this sounds unlikely. There is a big difference between being offered $17k to entirely quit search engines and being ready to pay $17k a year to use them.

joshuamorton 7y ago
This argument doesn't follow: if I create something of value, and give it away for free, it still creates value even if no money changes hands. > $17k to entirely quit search engines and being ready to pay $17k a year to use them. No, economically speaking these are equivalent constructs. Of the value of a service is X, then I would be willing to pay X for access to the service, and similarly be willing to be paid X to lose access to the service. If people are willing to pay for a search engine, just because they aren't, doesn't mean they wouldn't be willing to. It just means that there's deadweight loss somewhere, or in this case that Google isn't operating at maximum short term profitability.
- kd5bjo 7y ago
  Except that $17k is a large enough portion of most people’s income that there may be a significant difference in marginal utility between adding and subtracting it: $43k vs $60k looks very different from $60k vs $77k.
- notpeter 7y ago
  > No, economically speaking these are equivalent constructs. "Economically speaking" ignores that we are human beings with biases. There is significant experimental evidence our brains don't perceive them as equal. Google "Prospect Theory" for more.

rolph 7y ago

ive already firewalled google from everything i do, so can i have my 17k now and how much tax do i owe for it?

JohnFen 7y ago

I gave up Google about five years ago, in exchange for no money -- so sure, I'd do it for $17,000 a year.

zamadatix 7y ago
FWIW the article is actually about "internet search" which the writer equated to "Google".