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But YouTube and Search ads are what pays for all of the other services... If you really want to break up Google, people are going to have to get used to paying

But YouTube and Search ads are what pays for all of the other services... If you really want to break up Google, people are going to have to get used to paying for a ton of other services. I’m not saying this is wrong, but it will come as a shock to many people when they have to start paying for email again (or start seeing ads in gmail again).

iroo9fkn 7y ago
Or we could just pay for the infra and host our own, rolling open source into user friendly packages I mean look around Github: people all around the world breaking through social barriers and norms to provide safe, useful software Then look at how every tech company behaves
ryanmercer 7y ago
>But YouTube and Search ads are what pays for all of the other services... Then charge me 1-2$ a month for gmail access... oh wait I already pay for extra storage. I'm quite fine paying if it means that if for some reason I offend them and they decide to suspend my service that I have a window where I'm allowed to exit their ecosystem. Remove my ability to send email, allow me to receive email and give me a 1 week period to export everything and change contact info elsewhere.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  You may want to get a head start while you still can honestly.
me_me_me 7y ago
> People are going to have to get used to paying for a ton of other services. I and a lot of other people are fine with that. Patron et al. showed that people are willing to support things they like. From podcasts to open source projects. The narrative that the only way to have nice things on the internet is via advertisers' money is pushed by the advertisers themselves.
- Kiro 7y ago
  You're in minority. People are buying into the narrative at large scale.
  - angleofrepose 7y ago
    Do you have a source for that? I'd be interested in reading the studies.
  - me_me_me 7y ago
    If that was true how come people are making living creating stuff with Patron supporters? Not everyone has to do it, but there is enough of people to keep creativity free from influance ad companies.
    - Kiro 7y ago
      I have a few people donating money to me on Patreon so I'm not arguing against that. I'm just saying that the majority does not actually want to pay for things, but that doesn't mean people can't make a living out of the minority that does. That's not the topic of this conversation though (see the line you replied to).
- freyr 7y ago
  You can pay for it now? The narrative in this thread seems to be that people are being forced to use Gmail against their will, and paid options don’t exist, both of which are obviously false.
  - Crinus 7y ago
    While strictly speaking you aren't forced to use Gmail, the reason i gave up trying to run my own VPS and mail server was all the little issues that caused people with Gmail to not ever receive (or receive, but in their spam folder) mail sent by me.
nicoburns 7y ago
> If you really want to break up Google, people are going to have to get used to paying for a ton of other services. There's upside to this too: it provides business opportunities. I think it's necessary for a healthy well-functioning economy.
Accujack 7y ago
Something like Gmail should exist.. everyone should have free access to a basic web based email service. However, it shouldn't be a corporate product. It should be a public service, paid for by the taxes everyone already pays and regulated to ensure privacy abuse and productizing of the user base doesn't happen. This is how things used to be done - when a new technology became important enough to society, it became part of the national infrastructure, everyone was guaranteed access and no one was allowed to profit off of it. That's how the original telephone network came to be in the US. Gmail and other private services have been allowed to take the place of something the government should provide so someone can make money off it it, and it's open to abuse and inequity. Some services are important enough that not having them makes you a second class person. Imagine how you'd feel if the US post office told you that you couldn't receive mail any more because you had an unpaid parking ticket in another city? That's not punishment, that's behavior control. Maybe the parking ticket wasn't fair, or maybe it was someone else with the same name as you, or maybe you had a legal, legitimate reason for parking there. The US government is required by law to treat people fairly and protect them (to some extent). More importantly, public services are (in theory) controlled by the people they benefit. Private companies are not, and private companies should not be allowed to provide critical services without regulation to ensure equal treatment for everyone and a means to contest the actions of the company for every user. The US government is far, far behind where it should be as regards updating laws and services for the computer age. It's time to clean out the dusty, old computer illiterate career politicians and replace them with technically adept younger people.
- ProAm 7y ago
  > and no one was allowed to profit off of it. That's how the original telephone network came to be in the US. This is flat out wrong. AT&T made A LOT of money off this.
  - ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
    Exactly. And to add to that public telephone service couldn't exist without a heavy public infrastructure investment in telephone lines, and continued support of that infrastructure. The costs of supporting an email service are probably not great enough that government intervention is necessary.
codegladiator 7y ago
> but it will come as a shock to many people when they have to start paying for email again I bet people will prefer "need to pay" as a shock instead of "locked out" as a shock (with no option of getting your stuff back). I certainly would prefer the former.
- iliketocomplain 7y ago
  But "it won't happen to me, surely".
echelon 7y ago
So many false dichotomies in this and the sibling posts that follow. Email existed before Google. The email services didn't all used to be owned and controlled by giants. Remember Hotmail and Yahoo Mail? Email doesn't have to be a Government-provided utility service as another poster claims. It doesn't have to be free or paid. The market will make it work. Just don't let Google operate it. It's a simple narrative.
- freyr 7y ago
  Speaking of false dichotomies... Google doesn’t “operate” email. Gmail one email service among many, that people can choose to use or not. Yahoo Mail is still an option.
  - nirvdrum 7y ago
    I think this distinction is a bit blurrier than you suggest. For my personal email I pay for and use Fastmail. I think it's a wonderful option and I'm more productive in it. However, when starting a new company recently, we ended up use Gmail because it's required for many SaaS tools. Sometimes you can use something other than Gmail, but it's painful, and in other cases you really can't at all. And that's before you get into the ancillary services like calendar and contacts -- very few tools working with either support either CardDAV or CalDAV.
    - freyr 7y ago
      I'm genuinely curious, what SaaS tool requires Gmail?
alexeiz 7y ago
YouTube doesn't pay for anything. YouTube is not profitable.
lanevorockz 7y ago
Not True, Google is living in Tax Evasion heaven. Their company is so big that they can hide YouTube as one company registered in the US and ADs is some tax haven. You only pay the taxes that you want and can never be regulated. Being Free is not worth considering the amount of crap that they do.
paulie_a 7y ago
I see ads in Gmail all the time
chrshawkes 7y ago
Fine by me.

iroo9fkn 7y ago

Or we could just pay for the infra and host our own, rolling open source into user friendly packages I mean look around Github: people all around the world breaking through social barriers and norms to provide safe, useful software Then look at how every tech company behaves

ryanmercer 7y ago

>But YouTube and Search ads are what pays for all of the other services... Then charge me 1-2$ a month for gmail access... oh wait I already pay for extra storage. I'm quite fine paying if it means that if for some reason I offend them and they decide to suspend my service that I have a window where I'm allowed to exit their ecosystem. Remove my ability to send email, allow me to receive email and give me a 1 week period to export everything and change contact info elsewhere.

giancarlostoro 7y ago
You may want to get a head start while you still can honestly.

me_me_me 7y ago

> People are going to have to get used to paying for a ton of other services. I and a lot of other people are fine with that. Patron et al. showed that people are willing to support things they like. From podcasts to open source projects. The narrative that the only way to have nice things on the internet is via advertisers' money is pushed by the advertisers themselves.

Kiro 7y ago
You're in minority. People are buying into the narrative at large scale.
- angleofrepose 7y ago
  Do you have a source for that? I'd be interested in reading the studies.
- me_me_me 7y ago
  If that was true how come people are making living creating stuff with Patron supporters? Not everyone has to do it, but there is enough of people to keep creativity free from influance ad companies.
  - Kiro 7y ago
    I have a few people donating money to me on Patreon so I'm not arguing against that. I'm just saying that the majority does not actually want to pay for things, but that doesn't mean people can't make a living out of the minority that does. That's not the topic of this conversation though (see the line you replied to).
freyr 7y ago
You can pay for it now? The narrative in this thread seems to be that people are being forced to use Gmail against their will, and paid options don’t exist, both of which are obviously false.
- Crinus 7y ago
  While strictly speaking you aren't forced to use Gmail, the reason i gave up trying to run my own VPS and mail server was all the little issues that caused people with Gmail to not ever receive (or receive, but in their spam folder) mail sent by me.

nicoburns 7y ago

> If you really want to break up Google, people are going to have to get used to paying for a ton of other services. There's upside to this too: it provides business opportunities. I think it's necessary for a healthy well-functioning economy.

Accujack 7y ago

Something like Gmail should exist.. everyone should have free access to a basic web based email service. However, it shouldn't be a corporate product. It should be a public service, paid for by the taxes everyone already pays and regulated to ensure privacy abuse and productizing of the user base doesn't happen. This is how things used to be done - when a new technology became important enough to society, it became part of the national infrastructure, everyone was guaranteed access and no one was allowed to profit off of it. That's how the original telephone network came to be in the US. Gmail and other private services have been allowed to take the place of something the government should provide so someone can make money off it it, and it's open to abuse and inequity. Some services are important enough that not having them makes you a second class person. Imagine how you'd feel if the US post office told you that you couldn't receive mail any more because you had an unpaid parking ticket in another city? That's not punishment, that's behavior control. Maybe the parking ticket wasn't fair, or maybe it was someone else with the same name as you, or maybe you had a legal, legitimate reason for parking there. The US government is required by law to treat people fairly and protect them (to some extent). More importantly, public services are (in theory) controlled by the people they benefit. Private companies are not, and private companies should not be allowed to provide critical services without regulation to ensure equal treatment for everyone and a means to contest the actions of the company for every user. The US government is far, far behind where it should be as regards updating laws and services for the computer age. It's time to clean out the dusty, old computer illiterate career politicians and replace them with technically adept younger people.

ProAm 7y ago
> and no one was allowed to profit off of it. That's how the original telephone network came to be in the US. This is flat out wrong. AT&T made A LOT of money off this.
- ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
  Exactly. And to add to that public telephone service couldn't exist without a heavy public infrastructure investment in telephone lines, and continued support of that infrastructure. The costs of supporting an email service are probably not great enough that government intervention is necessary.

codegladiator 7y ago

> but it will come as a shock to many people when they have to start paying for email again I bet people will prefer "need to pay" as a shock instead of "locked out" as a shock (with no option of getting your stuff back). I certainly would prefer the former.

iliketocomplain 7y ago
But "it won't happen to me, surely".

echelon 7y ago

So many false dichotomies in this and the sibling posts that follow. Email existed before Google. The email services didn't all used to be owned and controlled by giants. Remember Hotmail and Yahoo Mail? Email doesn't have to be a Government-provided utility service as another poster claims. It doesn't have to be free or paid. The market will make it work. Just don't let Google operate it. It's a simple narrative.

freyr 7y ago
Speaking of false dichotomies... Google doesn’t “operate” email. Gmail one email service among many, that people can choose to use or not. Yahoo Mail is still an option.
- nirvdrum 7y ago
  I think this distinction is a bit blurrier than you suggest. For my personal email I pay for and use Fastmail. I think it's a wonderful option and I'm more productive in it. However, when starting a new company recently, we ended up use Gmail because it's required for many SaaS tools. Sometimes you can use something other than Gmail, but it's painful, and in other cases you really can't at all. And that's before you get into the ancillary services like calendar and contacts -- very few tools working with either support either CardDAV or CalDAV.
  - freyr 7y ago
    I'm genuinely curious, what SaaS tool requires Gmail?

alexeiz 7y ago

YouTube doesn't pay for anything. YouTube is not profitable.

lanevorockz 7y ago

Not True, Google is living in Tax Evasion heaven. Their company is so big that they can hide YouTube as one company registered in the US and ADs is some tax haven. You only pay the taxes that you want and can never be regulated. Being Free is not worth considering the amount of crap that they do.

paulie_a 7y ago

I see ads in Gmail all the time

chrshawkes 7y ago

Fine by me.