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> The best outcome is to come up with a fundamentally better business model A fundamentally better business model already exists: make users into customers. Go

by pdonis 6y ago

> The best outcome is to come up with a fundamentally better business model A fundamentally better business model already exists: make users into customers. Google should charge users directly for the services they use. Then they wouldn't need to resort to all these underhanded tactics to try to monetize their valuable services. They could just monetize them directly. Of course this is highly unlikely to happen now that everyone is conditioned to expect valuable services like Google's to be available for "free". But they're not free and never have been: the only question is how we pay the costs. Right now we pay those costs with our personal data and our attention, plus the time and effort we have to spend to try to push back against our personal data being monetized and our attention being incessantly competed for by advertisers. I would gladly pay in money to make those non-monetary costs go away. Perhaps I am an outlier and not many people would. But that just means we pay the costs in other ways that end up being even more costly than the direct money costs would be.

jakelazaroff 6y ago
Fundamentally better for whom? Do you think Google has never considered that business model? I think it’s much more likely that they’ve put a considerable amount of effort and research into it, and concluded that their current business model will let them extract the most money from their products. That’s why we need regulation. Under these market conditions, Google’s business model does appear to be the best for them.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > Fundamentally better for whom? In the long run it's better for everybody. But it is true that "the long run" can be pretty long. > Do you think Google has never considered that business model? I think Google probably considered it early on but found it easier to go the way they actually went. But "easier" is not the same as "best in the long run". > their current business model will let them extract the most money from their products Google doesn't have products, they have services. And of course, since their services are free to users and users are now addicted to that, they can obviously extract more money with their current business model since they have made a concerted effort to make the "users as customers" business model impossible. However, their current business model was being built during the same time period when "Don't be evil" was still the company's motto and still apparently taken seriously by company leaders. Which means those leaders were either very disingenuous or delusional. Because addicting people to a free service and then exploiting them and their personal data in order to make the money they can't make from the users directly, as customers, is evil. And trying to keep their current business model propped up in the face of users becoming increasingly aware of the ways in which they are being exploited, is only going to force Google to be more and more evil. Sooner or later, if it doesn't change, it will kill Google as a company. > That’s why we need regulation. Regulation won't fix this problem. Corporations can always either buy their way around regulations (oh, another million dollar fine because we broke regulation XYZ about exploiting user data? just rounding error in our accounting) or buy enough influence to get the regulations written so they don't actually impose a burden on them (but do impose a huge burden on potential competitors, the new startups that would otherwise be finding ways to disrupt Google's current business model, since users are clearly becoming dissatisfied with it). The only thing that will fix this problem in the long run is for users to realize that there is no such thing as a service that is (a) free and (b) valuable. We are going to pay the costs somehow. The simplest way to pay them--with money--is also, in the long run, the best.
  - jakelazaroff 6y ago
    Can you explain how exactly charging their users money is a better long term business model for Google than selling their data? If you don’t count the threat of regulation (since you say it won’t solve the issue) I can’t think of a single piece of evidence supporting that. It sounds like your reasoning is “users will eventually wake up!” which I would bet a lot of money will never happen.
    - pdonis 6y ago
      > Can you explain how exactly charging their users money is a better long term business model for Google than selling their data? Because long term, users will realize that letting their data be sold is bad for them and will stop considering it acceptable. Indeed, that is already happening. And so, as I said, Google will have to continually become more and more evil to try to prop up their business model by further obfuscating what they are doing, until it becomes unsustainable and they crash. > It sounds like your reasoning is “users will eventually wake up!” More like: when enough users have suffered serious harm from having their data sold (which is only a matter of time--plenty of users already have suffered harm due to Google's incessant seeking after data--see for example all the furor over the "real names" policy, which was not just Google but they took plenty of flak for it), it will stop being considered acceptable. (Users who already correctly foresee such harms, like me, are already taking whatever precautions we can to avoid providing the data in the first place. I don't use Facebook, I don't use Twitter, I don't use any other social medial "platforms", the only Google services I use are search and maps, and I never click on ads. And I would be glad to pay Google directly for search and maps, if only they would let me do so in order to avoid having what data I do provide them sold to third parties. In fact, given that "freemium" is now a recognized business model, I don't see why they aren't trying it.) > which I would bet a lot of money will never happen. Then I assume you are long Google?
      - jakelazaroff 6y ago
        > Because long term, users will realize that letting their data be sold is bad for them and will stop considering it acceptable. Indeed, that is already happening. It's happening at the fringes, in communities that are already more privacy-conscious. I haven't seen any signs of a groundswell of support for this position. > Then I assume you are long Google? No, I was speaking figuratively; I don't have any desire to profit off surveillance capitalism. I simply see regulation as a far more likely solution than users demanding an ethical business model with their wallets.
Nasrudith 6y ago
Do you think it woukd be better if we were still billed by the kilobyte used? A pay per use or monthly quota would outright discourage curiosity and add in another mental fatigue of tracking costs. Keeping information access gated behind wealth would not be an improvement. Those very real costs outweigh the vague theoretical and frankly some psychologically self-inflicted ones. Your data being monetized by others is not an intrinsic harm. Be wary of abuses but use isn't always a harm. Somebody doing a traffic survey may make money from your data but that does not make you poorer.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > Do you think it woukd be better if we were still billed by the kilobyte used? What does this have to do with Google? Yes, my ISP charges me a flat monthly fee for Internet access, and I prefer that pricing structure to being billed by the kilobyte (not that any ISP I'm aware of tries that any longer). But I'm still paying directly for the service. My ISP doesn't give me my Internet connection for free and then try to monetize it by showing me ads. > A pay per use or monthly quota would outright discourage curiosity and add in another mental fatigue of tracking costs Google could use the same pricing structure my ISP does: a flat monthly fee, with no limit on usage, billed to my credit card. No more mental fatigue than "do I have a working Internet connection?", which is exactly how much mental fatigue it takes for me to use Google now. Would this be a challenge to achieve at scale? Sure. But a company that really took the motto "don't be evil" seriously would be taking on exactly this kind of challenge, precisely because it's a problem that someone is going to have to solve sooner or later, and is worth a lot to whoever solves it because it makes things better for everybody. Who better to do it than Google? But instead of hiring smart engineers to solve this problem, they're hiring smart engineers to figure out better ways to capture users' eyeballs. It's insane. > Keeping information access gated behind wealth In a sane society, resources like Google search would be made more widely available by the standard method taught in economics classes: price discrimination. The price they charge for their services would vary according to what the particular customer can easily afford. People in first world countries, like me, might pay $10 or $20 a month. People in the poorest countries, where Internet access itself is not guaranteed, might pay nothing, as they do now. Google has about four billion users and about $180 billion in annual revenue; that works out to an average of $45 a year per user. That seems feasible, if they are allowed to price discriminate. But of course price discrimination is considered "evil", even though it's not--it delivers more value to more people when it is allowed to happen. > Your data being monetized by others is not an intrinsic harm. While there are of course ways in which my data can be monetized that don't harm me, I think the actual evidence clearly shows that the ways in which our data is being monetized do carry a high risk of causing harm. "Traffic surveys" is not a good proxy for what most data harvesters are actually doing.

by pdonis 6y ago

jakelazaroff 6y ago

Fundamentally better for whom? Do you think Google has never considered that business model? I think it’s much more likely that they’ve put a considerable amount of effort and research into it, and concluded that their current business model will let them extract the most money from their products. That’s why we need regulation. Under these market conditions, Google’s business model does appear to be the best for them.

pdonis 6y ago
> Fundamentally better for whom? In the long run it's better for everybody. But it is true that "the long run" can be pretty long. > Do you think Google has never considered that business model? I think Google probably considered it early on but found it easier to go the way they actually went. But "easier" is not the same as "best in the long run". > their current business model will let them extract the most money from their products Google doesn't have products, they have services. And of course, since their services are free to users and users are now addicted to that, they can obviously extract more money with their current business model since they have made a concerted effort to make the "users as customers" business model impossible. However, their current business model was being built during the same time period when "Don't be evil" was still the company's motto and still apparently taken seriously by company leaders. Which means those leaders were either very disingenuous or delusional. Because addicting people to a free service and then exploiting them and their personal data in order to make the money they can't make from the users directly, as customers, is evil. And trying to keep their current business model propped up in the face of users becoming increasingly aware of the ways in which they are being exploited, is only going to force Google to be more and more evil. Sooner or later, if it doesn't change, it will kill Google as a company. > That’s why we need regulation. Regulation won't fix this problem. Corporations can always either buy their way around regulations (oh, another million dollar fine because we broke regulation XYZ about exploiting user data? just rounding error in our accounting) or buy enough influence to get the regulations written so they don't actually impose a burden on them (but do impose a huge burden on potential competitors, the new startups that would otherwise be finding ways to disrupt Google's current business model, since users are clearly becoming dissatisfied with it). The only thing that will fix this problem in the long run is for users to realize that there is no such thing as a service that is (a) free and (b) valuable. We are going to pay the costs somehow. The simplest way to pay them--with money--is also, in the long run, the best.
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  Can you explain how exactly charging their users money is a better long term business model for Google than selling their data? If you don’t count the threat of regulation (since you say it won’t solve the issue) I can’t think of a single piece of evidence supporting that. It sounds like your reasoning is “users will eventually wake up!” which I would bet a lot of money will never happen.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > Can you explain how exactly charging their users money is a better long term business model for Google than selling their data? Because long term, users will realize that letting their data be sold is bad for them and will stop considering it acceptable. Indeed, that is already happening. And so, as I said, Google will have to continually become more and more evil to try to prop up their business model by further obfuscating what they are doing, until it becomes unsustainable and they crash. > It sounds like your reasoning is “users will eventually wake up!” More like: when enough users have suffered serious harm from having their data sold (which is only a matter of time--plenty of users already have suffered harm due to Google's incessant seeking after data--see for example all the furor over the "real names" policy, which was not just Google but they took plenty of flak for it), it will stop being considered acceptable. (Users who already correctly foresee such harms, like me, are already taking whatever precautions we can to avoid providing the data in the first place. I don't use Facebook, I don't use Twitter, I don't use any other social medial "platforms", the only Google services I use are search and maps, and I never click on ads. And I would be glad to pay Google directly for search and maps, if only they would let me do so in order to avoid having what data I do provide them sold to third parties. In fact, given that "freemium" is now a recognized business model, I don't see why they aren't trying it.) > which I would bet a lot of money will never happen. Then I assume you are long Google?
    - jakelazaroff 6y ago
      > Because long term, users will realize that letting their data be sold is bad for them and will stop considering it acceptable. Indeed, that is already happening. It's happening at the fringes, in communities that are already more privacy-conscious. I haven't seen any signs of a groundswell of support for this position. > Then I assume you are long Google? No, I was speaking figuratively; I don't have any desire to profit off surveillance capitalism. I simply see regulation as a far more likely solution than users demanding an ethical business model with their wallets.

Nasrudith 6y ago

Do you think it woukd be better if we were still billed by the kilobyte used? A pay per use or monthly quota would outright discourage curiosity and add in another mental fatigue of tracking costs. Keeping information access gated behind wealth would not be an improvement. Those very real costs outweigh the vague theoretical and frankly some psychologically self-inflicted ones. Your data being monetized by others is not an intrinsic harm. Be wary of abuses but use isn't always a harm. Somebody doing a traffic survey may make money from your data but that does not make you poorer.

pdonis 6y ago
> Do you think it woukd be better if we were still billed by the kilobyte used? What does this have to do with Google? Yes, my ISP charges me a flat monthly fee for Internet access, and I prefer that pricing structure to being billed by the kilobyte (not that any ISP I'm aware of tries that any longer). But I'm still paying directly for the service. My ISP doesn't give me my Internet connection for free and then try to monetize it by showing me ads. > A pay per use or monthly quota would outright discourage curiosity and add in another mental fatigue of tracking costs Google could use the same pricing structure my ISP does: a flat monthly fee, with no limit on usage, billed to my credit card. No more mental fatigue than "do I have a working Internet connection?", which is exactly how much mental fatigue it takes for me to use Google now. Would this be a challenge to achieve at scale? Sure. But a company that really took the motto "don't be evil" seriously would be taking on exactly this kind of challenge, precisely because it's a problem that someone is going to have to solve sooner or later, and is worth a lot to whoever solves it because it makes things better for everybody. Who better to do it than Google? But instead of hiring smart engineers to solve this problem, they're hiring smart engineers to figure out better ways to capture users' eyeballs. It's insane. > Keeping information access gated behind wealth In a sane society, resources like Google search would be made more widely available by the standard method taught in economics classes: price discrimination. The price they charge for their services would vary according to what the particular customer can easily afford. People in first world countries, like me, might pay $10 or $20 a month. People in the poorest countries, where Internet access itself is not guaranteed, might pay nothing, as they do now. Google has about four billion users and about $180 billion in annual revenue; that works out to an average of $45 a year per user. That seems feasible, if they are allowed to price discriminate. But of course price discrimination is considered "evil", even though it's not--it delivers more value to more people when it is allowed to happen. > Your data being monetized by others is not an intrinsic harm. While there are of course ways in which my data can be monetized that don't harm me, I think the actual evidence clearly shows that the ways in which our data is being monetized do carry a high risk of causing harm. "Traffic surveys" is not a good proxy for what most data harvesters are actually doing.