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The right to directly vote for a search engine with actual money is huge, as is the right to withdraw that vote. If Google went this route a few decades ago, th
by dmw_ng 5y ago
The right to directly vote for a search engine with actual money is huge, as is the right to withdraw that vote. If Google went this route a few decades ago, their search product (and the Internet as a whole) would likely be in a much, much healthier place today
- nine_k 5y agoAlso, Google would have much, much less money. What ad-supported financing removes, along with other things, is friction. You open google.com for the first time, and you can instantly use it. Also, Google started in 1998. I don't know whether you remember, but I do: paying for stuff over the internet was pretty hard by then. Paying across national borders was harder still. I wished to pay for several pieces of software by then, but it was hard even if I agreed to walk down to a bank. Compared to that, selling ads and receiving money from businesses was incomparably easier, for everyone involved. Unlike billing search users, it was a viable business model.
- Kye 5y agoThat was back when shareware told you to mail a check. I think "people who forgot" is a smaller set than "people who never knew." It's easy to forget a lot of this forum is people well into adulthood who weren't even alive in the '90s, and people who didn't get online until after the boom of new things built on the discounted ruins of the .com crash.