5 ms·

Could one do a back-of-the-envelope calculation on a user acquisition cost for Google? 15b USD/year / 500 m users = 30 USD/user/year 3 searches/user/day = 100

by quanto 5y ago

Could one do a back-of-the-envelope calculation on a user acquisition cost for Google? 15b USD/year / 500 m users = 30 USD/user/year 3 searches/user/day = 1000 searches/user/year 30 USD/user/year / 1000 searches/user/year = 0.03 USD/search AFAIK, 0.03 USD per search (or impression) is in the right ballpark for advertising. ------------------------ Data used (retrieved from Google) 446m Safari users. An average user searches on Google 3 - 4 times per day.

polote 5y ago
You have to include the cost of preventing competitors to get bigger. If Google loose its monopoly on search Google as a whole might collapse
tyingq 5y ago
Might be skewed a bit by the fact that iPhone users are generally more affluent.
ricardo81 5y ago
I can't recall the source of how much Google makes per CPM on average, but it's significantly higher than all other search engines. If the deal is cheap/value for anyone, it's Google. It may have been in the UK CMA report on search/online advertising, IIRC it was between $30 and $50 CPM with Bing on around half that. If my arithmetic is right, 1.5bn searches would increase DDG's number of searches 15 fold. It would seem only Bing is potentially capable of putting in a bid similar to Google's.
- nr2x 5y ago
  Until DDG starts serving results from their own index, they are essentially a privacy-branded Bing.
arcticbull 5y ago
My digging indicates that Apple has 1.65B active devices as of Q1 2021. The vast majority (1B) are iPhone users, and I suspect the vast majority of iOS users use Safari. Sounds like Google is getting a pretty good deal.
- znpy 5y ago
  Every iPhone user is a safari user AFAIK. AFAIK on iOS you cannot distribute an alternative browser (as in UI, network engine and rendering engine) --- you can only distribute what is essentially a skin over the default browser, Safari.
  - twobitshifter 5y ago
    But those skinned browsers can have a different default search engine
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    On iOS you have to use their JS virtual machine and their HTML5 renderer. I think you can write your on UI and possibly network engine (although that might be locked down as well, but you can definitely proxy all the results.
- EE84M3i 5y ago
  Google is not the default search engine in China.
jyu 5y ago
If only I could pay Google $30 / year to opt out of their data collection schemes.
- MichaelZuo 5y ago
  I’m fairly sure a lot of folks would sign up at even $30/month, if any product managers are reading this.
  - irjustin 5y ago
    This would be an interesting product especially to those who are relatively price insensitive such as companies. One of the perks of working for us is a google no-ads subscription! could work?
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    I suspect that what people want with "No data collected" is too nebulous to be actionable, at $30/ month or any price. Youtube Premium is something actionable, "I don't want adverts". OK then, no adverts, done for the price. If you try to take it literally it blows up immediately. Who aren't we collecting data about? We can't very well have data like login credentials for a user we don't collect data about, so...
  - misiti3780 5y ago
    I would pay a lot more than 30
  - nathancahill 5y ago
    Give me back the advanced search operators and I'm in for 3 figures/month.
  - Joeri 5y ago
    Sort of reminds me how I can’t get a digital newspaper without ads, regardless of what I’m willing to pay, or how every cable tv provider in my region has unskippable ads in on demand and (soon) recorded tv programs, regardless of what I pay. The content industries are very much stuck in a “content must be financed through advertising” mindset, and google seems trapped with them. I can easily imagine a paid privacy-first google premium service that strips out google ads across the internet, and I would pay for it, but apparently google’s imagination is more limited. So now I just use ad blockers.
the-golden-one 5y ago
On a similar note, assuming this is done with a default=‘true’, would this not be a contender for the most expensive code per letter ever?
dannyr 5y ago
I think part of it is user acquisition and another is preventing another competitor to gain traction.

by quanto 5y ago

polote 5y ago

You have to include the cost of preventing competitors to get bigger. If Google loose its monopoly on search Google as a whole might collapse

tyingq 5y ago

Might be skewed a bit by the fact that iPhone users are generally more affluent.

ricardo81 5y ago

I can't recall the source of how much Google makes per CPM on average, but it's significantly higher than all other search engines. If the deal is cheap/value for anyone, it's Google. It may have been in the UK CMA report on search/online advertising, IIRC it was between $30 and $50 CPM with Bing on around half that. If my arithmetic is right, 1.5bn searches would increase DDG's number of searches 15 fold. It would seem only Bing is potentially capable of putting in a bid similar to Google's.

nr2x 5y ago
Until DDG starts serving results from their own index, they are essentially a privacy-branded Bing.

arcticbull 5y ago

My digging indicates that Apple has 1.65B active devices as of Q1 2021. The vast majority (1B) are iPhone users, and I suspect the vast majority of iOS users use Safari. Sounds like Google is getting a pretty good deal.

znpy 5y ago
Every iPhone user is a safari user AFAIK. AFAIK on iOS you cannot distribute an alternative browser (as in UI, network engine and rendering engine) --- you can only distribute what is essentially a skin over the default browser, Safari.
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  But those skinned browsers can have a different default search engine
- HWR_14 5y ago
  On iOS you have to use their JS virtual machine and their HTML5 renderer. I think you can write your on UI and possibly network engine (although that might be locked down as well, but you can definitely proxy all the results.
EE84M3i 5y ago
Google is not the default search engine in China.

jyu 5y ago

If only I could pay Google $30 / year to opt out of their data collection schemes.

MichaelZuo 5y ago
I’m fairly sure a lot of folks would sign up at even $30/month, if any product managers are reading this.
- irjustin 5y ago
  This would be an interesting product especially to those who are relatively price insensitive such as companies. One of the perks of working for us is a google no-ads subscription! could work?
- tialaramex 5y ago
  I suspect that what people want with "No data collected" is too nebulous to be actionable, at $30/ month or any price. Youtube Premium is something actionable, "I don't want adverts". OK then, no adverts, done for the price. If you try to take it literally it blows up immediately. Who aren't we collecting data about? We can't very well have data like login credentials for a user we don't collect data about, so...
- misiti3780 5y ago
  I would pay a lot more than 30
- nathancahill 5y ago
  Give me back the advanced search operators and I'm in for 3 figures/month.
- Joeri 5y ago
  Sort of reminds me how I can’t get a digital newspaper without ads, regardless of what I’m willing to pay, or how every cable tv provider in my region has unskippable ads in on demand and (soon) recorded tv programs, regardless of what I pay. The content industries are very much stuck in a “content must be financed through advertising” mindset, and google seems trapped with them. I can easily imagine a paid privacy-first google premium service that strips out google ads across the internet, and I would pay for it, but apparently google’s imagination is more limited. So now I just use ad blockers.

the-golden-one 5y ago

On a similar note, assuming this is done with a default=‘true’, would this not be a contender for the most expensive code per letter ever?

dannyr 5y ago

I think part of it is user acquisition and another is preventing another competitor to gain traction.