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> Of course, AFAIK these people aren't paying Google, so to Google they're not customers We’ve been told over and over and over and over again we are somehow p

> Of course, AFAIK these people aren't paying Google, so to Google they're not customers We’ve been told over and over and over and over again we are somehow paying with our data even after they refuse any other form of payment, so this seems like a meaningless distinction.

acituan 6y ago
I think the meaning of OP was they are not paying explicitly, and in that don’t have much contractual entitlement to receive support. “Paying in data” is a euphemism that we are used for the positive externality we provide when we allow being surveilled on our usage of their system. This is not an explicit transaction, and buried in information asymmetries, corp-speak, abstract terms-of-service banners and whatnot.
- monadic2 6y ago
  Right, so why do they treat their customers who make them their money with such disrespect? You won’t even allow me to pay for my own fucking ad slots to get you out of my computer? Seems like... not very neighborly behavior. Anyway you can see the lack of “support” with the black hole they call end-user product feedback.
  - acituan 6y ago
    > why do they treat their customers who make them their money with such disrespect Because "respect" in this case costs money. And because they can, since precisely the transaction is so tacit. It might take a few more decades until we can make explicit the nature of data and surveillance based transactions. Imagine if your grocery store's loyalty card was used in a way that required saying "do you want to sell the information of what you bought today for $x.xx?" or "you are paying %x more today for this product because we were able to calculate it with the data you or people like you provided in the past, which shows you would pay for it". I think it is obvious the billions of profit ads businesses are making is not matching their value to the humanity or the productivity of the company. It is a monopolistic game with economies of scale on these little externalities, unpriced transactions that creates that sweet margin. In that scale, you are almost nothing, while "respecting" you doesn't work well. Unless there is PR pressure or a reduction to product usage, there is absolutely no incentive to be better in that regard, while there is all the incentive to grow the userbase, grow the margins, grow the surveillance.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > why do they treat their customers who make them their money with such disrespect? The people they are treating with such disrespect are not customers, just users. That's because Google refuses to even give them the chance to be customers, even though, as you say, they are making Google a lot of money.
chrischen 6y ago
You definitely do pay. Your data is used to target yourself with ads, which advertisers pay a lot for. Even if you don’t click on ads, anytime you search for something to buy, those ads you see force the merchant you ultimately purchase from to have to buy defensive ads. Those costs get passed back to you in a roundabout way. So google gives you free stuff with one hand and reaches into your back pocket with the other. It’s great because then you have no idea the true cost of that free thing you got. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/04/google-paid-search-ads-shakedown-basecamp-ceo-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/04/google-paid-search-ads-shake...

acituan 6y ago

I think the meaning of OP was they are not paying explicitly, and in that don’t have much contractual entitlement to receive support. “Paying in data” is a euphemism that we are used for the positive externality we provide when we allow being surveilled on our usage of their system. This is not an explicit transaction, and buried in information asymmetries, corp-speak, abstract terms-of-service banners and whatnot.

monadic2 6y ago
Right, so why do they treat their customers who make them their money with such disrespect? You won’t even allow me to pay for my own fucking ad slots to get you out of my computer? Seems like... not very neighborly behavior. Anyway you can see the lack of “support” with the black hole they call end-user product feedback.
- acituan 6y ago
  > why do they treat their customers who make them their money with such disrespect Because "respect" in this case costs money. And because they can, since precisely the transaction is so tacit. It might take a few more decades until we can make explicit the nature of data and surveillance based transactions. Imagine if your grocery store's loyalty card was used in a way that required saying "do you want to sell the information of what you bought today for $x.xx?" or "you are paying %x more today for this product because we were able to calculate it with the data you or people like you provided in the past, which shows you would pay for it". I think it is obvious the billions of profit ads businesses are making is not matching their value to the humanity or the productivity of the company. It is a monopolistic game with economies of scale on these little externalities, unpriced transactions that creates that sweet margin. In that scale, you are almost nothing, while "respecting" you doesn't work well. Unless there is PR pressure or a reduction to product usage, there is absolutely no incentive to be better in that regard, while there is all the incentive to grow the userbase, grow the margins, grow the surveillance.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > why do they treat their customers who make them their money with such disrespect? The people they are treating with such disrespect are not customers, just users. That's because Google refuses to even give them the chance to be customers, even though, as you say, they are making Google a lot of money.

chrischen 6y ago

You definitely do pay. Your data is used to target yourself with ads, which advertisers pay a lot for. Even if you don’t click on ads, anytime you search for something to buy, those ads you see force the merchant you ultimately purchase from to have to buy defensive ads. Those costs get passed back to you in a roundabout way. So google gives you free stuff with one hand and reaches into your back pocket with the other. It’s great because then you have no idea the true cost of that free thing you got. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/04/google-paid-search-ads-shakedown-basecamp-ceo-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/04/google-paid-search-ads-shake...