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The now-trite "if you're not the customer, you're the product" distinction just isn't helpful anymore. Youtube is a great example where creators, subscribers (
by ballenf 6y ago
The now-trite "if you're not the customer, you're the product" distinction just isn't helpful anymore.
Youtube is a great example where creators, subscribers (both Premium and ad-watching) and advertisers are all Google's customers. Google profits by providing a platform for all those parties to come together and engage in commerce.
And yet none of those parties are really buying anything directly from Google -- even for ads Google is just facilitating the placement of ads on creators' content. Premium subscribers are paying creators with Google divvying up the payment and taking its cut.
- pdonis 6y ago> Youtube is a great example where creators, subscribers (both Premium and ad-watching) and advertisers are all Google's customers. Google profits by providing a platform for all those parties to come together and engage in commerce. That makes them users, not customers. As you note, none of them are paying Google. A user who does not pay for the service is not a customer, because they don't have the most important capability that a customer has: taking your money elsewhere if you are not satisfied. That means Google itself does not know how much its services are worth to their users, because it has prevented those users from telling it what the services are worth by paying for them. And that is why Google is notorious for killing services that are valuable to users but don't generate enough ad revenue.