7 ms·

A lot of times, I would agree with you. In this case though, things might be a bit different. I'm not sure if you agree, but Google Maps has revolutionized ph

by snoshy 6y ago

A lot of times, I would agree with you. In this case though, things might be a bit different. I'm not sure if you agree, but Google Maps has revolutionized physical location for a large portion of people today. Democratizing a thing mainly involves scaling it, and scaling things rapidly is a difficult task. Having only a few qualified people ready for a task of this magnitude is not surprising to me.

pdonis 6y ago
> Having only a few qualified people ready for a task of this magnitude is not surprising to me. So what you're saying is, there is this hugely valuable application that has "revolutionized" things for a large fraction of the population, but it's perfectly normal that Google can't be bothered to put more than a piddly number of people on it? If it's really that valuable, Google should not handle it in this half-assed fashion. They should charge money for it, just like any other business that has something it knows is hugely valuable to a large number of people. But instead, they prefer to sell everyone's eyeballs to advertisers. How does this make sense?
- anchpop 6y ago
  Something I think is underappreciated is that if something is supported by ads instead of a subscription, then it is more accessible to people who don't have very much money. Google used to run a program called Contributor which let you pay them the minimum amount you'd have to to opt out of ads (you basically just paid them and they used your money to automatically outbid everyone who wanted to advertise to you). I wish they brought this back because I really liked it. They changed it completely so it only worked with "participating sites" [0], which was basically nobody, then killed it altogether (but left the page up). [0]: https://contributor.google.com/v/beta https://contributor.google.com/v/beta
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > if something is supported by ads instead of a subscription, then it is more accessible to people who don't have very much money There's an easy solution to this: what economists call price discrimination. Basically, people who can afford to pay more, pay more, and people who can't afford to pay more, don't. It looks like the Contributor program you describe could have been set up to do this.
    - sidibe 6y ago
      This easy solution sounds very difficult. Also the vast majority of people not in HN prefer free to paying 1 cent. It's no longer a secret that they are the product, even non-technical people see Google as big brother now, but people still prefer not to have to use their credit card.
      - fortran77 6y ago
        The vast majority of people in HN prefer free, too. It's frustrating to see whenever a relevant article from the WSJ or the NY Times is discussed, a significant number of posts are complaining about the paywall. Get all your news from spam-blogs if you want, but don't complain about people who are willing to pay for slightly better (in some dimensions at least) news sources.
      - pdonis 6y ago
        > the vast majority of people not in HN prefer free to paying 1 cent Yes, I get that Google and Facebook and Twitter and friends have gotten people accustomed to having all these wonderful services that everyone loves to use somehow magically appear on the Internet for free. That doesn't mean it's actually free. It just means that the costs are hidden. Which is all fine in and of itself: if everyone else wants to hand over their private data to be sold, sure, go ahead, do it. I don't even have a Twitter account, and while I have a Facebook account I almost never use it and have entered zero data beyond my name into its profile. I can't quite say the same about my Google account, since I do buy books and apps from Google Play, but it's as close as I can get it to zero data in its profile. So I at least have some way of limiting how much I am participating in the great selling of personal data. However, I don't have a way of getting better service from Google for things that could be better services if those of us who want the better service were allowed to pay for it. That's one of the standard ways of doing price discrimination, and should be very familiar to anyone who has dealt with cloud services, or indeed anyone who has used an app with a freemium business model: service tiers. The lowest tier is the free one; the other tiers are progressively more expensive and provide more added functionality. But Google can't be bothered to do it for its hugely useful apps like Maps and search, and then they tell us how difficult it is to staff these hugely useful apps with enough engineering resources. It doesn't add up.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Fuck no. Jesus Christ, thank god Google PMs have their heads on straight and don't listen to random people on the Internet. There is absolutely no way I'm going to give Google my annual W-2 for them to determine how much I should pay and if I'm not going to do that then whatever price they ask is going to be too high for a lot of people for whom this is useful. I'm going to say this as a user. Google Maps is fucking fantastic. The team responsible for it should be proud: * Free * Great data - almost always accurate * Editable - I can contribute Genuinely an amazing product. And all these people on the Internet saying it's shite. No fucking way. It's fantastic. If you ever listen to these people for even a second, go and listen for half that time to folks on the street. They love your shit.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    People are complaining about Google Maps in absolute terms. They forget that products are relative. What is the alternative to Google Maps? I am with you on not being willing to pay anything for the service.
    - hobs 6y ago
      Not really, they are comparing them in relative terms to a service that loses some capabilities for increased accuracy. They are also complaining that someone wants to run a public utility and be the centralized point for information but also doesn't want to pay enough to make that public utility accurate. Not saying that its even feasible to do so, but that's why we pool funds for utilities - we all use them and we all have an incentive to make them not shit.
      - jdm2212 6y ago
        There's a pretty good argument for making Google Maps a utility, but not for a long while yet. Maps adds new features at a pretty impressive clip. Once it's in maintenance mode in a decade or two, it should be nationalized ;)
    - pdonis 6y ago
      > I am with you on not being willing to pay anything for the service. What if it were not offered for free? What if you had to pay a subscription of, say, $10 a year? Would you pay for it then? If your answer is yes, then it's not that you're not willing to pay anything for it; you are simply taking advantage of the fact that right now you don't have to. But the fact that you don't have to is a side effect of the ad-supported business model, which IMO is doing a lot of damage that could be avoided if only Google would take the simple step that businesses have taken since time immemorial, of charging its users directly for the services they use. If your answer is no, then evidently this application is not as great and wonderful and useful as people are claiming it is, since it isn't even worth a $10/year subscription, i.e., about 1/10 the price of Netflix.

by snoshy 6y ago

pdonis 6y ago

> Having only a few qualified people ready for a task of this magnitude is not surprising to me. So what you're saying is, there is this hugely valuable application that has "revolutionized" things for a large fraction of the population, but it's perfectly normal that Google can't be bothered to put more than a piddly number of people on it? If it's really that valuable, Google should not handle it in this half-assed fashion. They should charge money for it, just like any other business that has something it knows is hugely valuable to a large number of people. But instead, they prefer to sell everyone's eyeballs to advertisers. How does this make sense?

anchpop 6y ago
Something I think is underappreciated is that if something is supported by ads instead of a subscription, then it is more accessible to people who don't have very much money. Google used to run a program called Contributor which let you pay them the minimum amount you'd have to to opt out of ads (you basically just paid them and they used your money to automatically outbid everyone who wanted to advertise to you). I wish they brought this back because I really liked it. They changed it completely so it only worked with "participating sites" [0], which was basically nobody, then killed it altogether (but left the page up). [0]: https://contributor.google.com/v/beta https://contributor.google.com/v/beta
- pdonis 6y ago
  > if something is supported by ads instead of a subscription, then it is more accessible to people who don't have very much money There's an easy solution to this: what economists call price discrimination. Basically, people who can afford to pay more, pay more, and people who can't afford to pay more, don't. It looks like the Contributor program you describe could have been set up to do this.
  - sidibe 6y ago
    This easy solution sounds very difficult. Also the vast majority of people not in HN prefer free to paying 1 cent. It's no longer a secret that they are the product, even non-technical people see Google as big brother now, but people still prefer not to have to use their credit card.
    - fortran77 6y ago
      The vast majority of people in HN prefer free, too. It's frustrating to see whenever a relevant article from the WSJ or the NY Times is discussed, a significant number of posts are complaining about the paywall. Get all your news from spam-blogs if you want, but don't complain about people who are willing to pay for slightly better (in some dimensions at least) news sources.
    - pdonis 6y ago
      > the vast majority of people not in HN prefer free to paying 1 cent Yes, I get that Google and Facebook and Twitter and friends have gotten people accustomed to having all these wonderful services that everyone loves to use somehow magically appear on the Internet for free. That doesn't mean it's actually free. It just means that the costs are hidden. Which is all fine in and of itself: if everyone else wants to hand over their private data to be sold, sure, go ahead, do it. I don't even have a Twitter account, and while I have a Facebook account I almost never use it and have entered zero data beyond my name into its profile. I can't quite say the same about my Google account, since I do buy books and apps from Google Play, but it's as close as I can get it to zero data in its profile. So I at least have some way of limiting how much I am participating in the great selling of personal data. However, I don't have a way of getting better service from Google for things that could be better services if those of us who want the better service were allowed to pay for it. That's one of the standard ways of doing price discrimination, and should be very familiar to anyone who has dealt with cloud services, or indeed anyone who has used an app with a freemium business model: service tiers. The lowest tier is the free one; the other tiers are progressively more expensive and provide more added functionality. But Google can't be bothered to do it for its hugely useful apps like Maps and search, and then they tell us how difficult it is to staff these hugely useful apps with enough engineering resources. It doesn't add up.
renewiltord 6y ago
Fuck no. Jesus Christ, thank god Google PMs have their heads on straight and don't listen to random people on the Internet. There is absolutely no way I'm going to give Google my annual W-2 for them to determine how much I should pay and if I'm not going to do that then whatever price they ask is going to be too high for a lot of people for whom this is useful. I'm going to say this as a user. Google Maps is fucking fantastic. The team responsible for it should be proud: * Free * Great data - almost always accurate * Editable - I can contribute Genuinely an amazing product. And all these people on the Internet saying it's shite. No fucking way. It's fantastic. If you ever listen to these people for even a second, go and listen for half that time to folks on the street. They love your shit.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  People are complaining about Google Maps in absolute terms. They forget that products are relative. What is the alternative to Google Maps? I am with you on not being willing to pay anything for the service.
  - hobs 6y ago
    Not really, they are comparing them in relative terms to a service that loses some capabilities for increased accuracy. They are also complaining that someone wants to run a public utility and be the centralized point for information but also doesn't want to pay enough to make that public utility accurate. Not saying that its even feasible to do so, but that's why we pool funds for utilities - we all use them and we all have an incentive to make them not shit.
    - jdm2212 6y ago
      There's a pretty good argument for making Google Maps a utility, but not for a long while yet. Maps adds new features at a pretty impressive clip. Once it's in maintenance mode in a decade or two, it should be nationalized ;)
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > I am with you on not being willing to pay anything for the service. What if it were not offered for free? What if you had to pay a subscription of, say, $10 a year? Would you pay for it then? If your answer is yes, then it's not that you're not willing to pay anything for it; you are simply taking advantage of the fact that right now you don't have to. But the fact that you don't have to is a side effect of the ad-supported business model, which IMO is doing a lot of damage that could be avoided if only Google would take the simple step that businesses have taken since time immemorial, of charging its users directly for the services they use. If your answer is no, then evidently this application is not as great and wonderful and useful as people are claiming it is, since it isn't even worth a $10/year subscription, i.e., about 1/10 the price of Netflix.