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>Google's customers For the search engine (e.g. not GSuite), Google's customers are actually the advertisers and not the users. This is not meant to be a cyn
by jasode 6y ago
>Google's customers
For the search engine (e.g. not GSuite), Google's customers are actually the advertisers and not the users. This is not meant to be a cynical take but just stating financial reality. The advertisers are the ones paying billions into Google's revenue to maintain the expensive data centers and host petabytes of disk space for Youtube videos. Because money flows from advertisers to Google, the advertisers are the ones that caused Adpocalypse[1].
The websurfers querying the search engine are users or consumers and not the paying customers. Not sure how a users' union would have much leverage since they don't pay. If they're unhappy, they can use another search engine (e.g. Bing) or influence indirectly (e.g. boycott advertisers which causes Adpocalypse.)
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+advertisers+adpocalypse https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+advertisers+adpocaly...
- indigochill 6y ago> Not sure how a users' union would have much leverage since they don't pay. Well, advertisers require traffic. If traffic adjacent to Google ads dried up, so would the value proposition of Google's products to its advertising customers. In this way, users collectively could exercise leverage on Google and its advertising clients by boycotting sites/services that serve Google ads (though good luck organizing that).
- notahacker 6y agoI think the 'good luck organising that' is the key bit. The number of people who care enough about privacy to consider joining a union dedicated to protesting Google Ads but not enough to already use ad blockers isn't going to meaningfully affect traffic.
- cj 6y ago> The advertisers are the ones paying billions into Google's revenue I control a decent chunk budget on Google Ads (although probably not comparable to Fortune 500 spend) and would happily sign up for a customer union, along with a "users union" if one were to create one :)
- matsemann 6y agoI think most GSuite customers would love a customer union to twist Google's arm when they screw something up and refuse to answer support tickets..
- j_shi 6y agoBingo and similar deal with Facebook. The best way to get leverage and power with FBGOOG is for advertisers to cooperate instead of compete. We are trying to do this with ecomm advertisers right now (by getting advertisers to coordinate instead of bid against each other) but goes beyond any particular ad vertical