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Ask HN: Why is Google Premium not a thing?

114 points by achenet 4y ago

We have Youtube premium, where it is possible to pay a monthly fee not to have adds. Why isn't there an analogous version of this for the Google search engine?

sysadm1n 4y ago
Well there is Kagi[0], a 'Premium search engine where everything on the page matters' Haven't tried it, but it looks promising. [0] https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/
- andrelaszlo 4y ago
  I've been using it for over a month now and it's great. Search results are on par with Google,if not better. (Probably better, subjectively, since I switched mostly due to getting annoyed daily with worsening results. Ignoring my search terms was especially annoying.) The privacy aspect felt like a bonus, but now I never want to go back.
- mertd 4y ago
  It requires a login to use and aside from not showing ads, the FAQ makes no promises about not monetizing the per user search history. That's bit of a red flag for me.
  - voltaireodactyl 4y ago
    This portion of the FAQ: https://kagi.com/faq#privacy https://kagi.com/faq#privacy Would seem to address those concerns — if the only money coming in is users paying directly, that would seem to preclude selling the data for further monetization. Or are those known weasel words?
magusd 4y ago
I'd pay for google premium, but since that's not offered I use ad blockers. Just like I used to torrent before streaming services came up.
sedad 4y ago
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seydor 4y ago
Would be too expensive
- achenet 4y ago
  for who? Is the value that Google gets from one user having ads really that high? Youtube Premium is only ~$10/month, does Google really make that much more with ads?
  - arkitaip 4y ago
    No but the value they extraxt from millions of advertisers is much higher.
    - achenet 4y ago
      that seems like a logical contradiction. Money made with ads = how much advertisers pay Money made with ads per user = how much advertisers pay / number of users. If they average to... $10/user, then it's viable.
      - emerongi 4y ago
        There's still long-term brand value in just being the biggest ad delivery machine that can bring eyeballs to your ads from any potential customer group. Once you remove a portion of those eyeballs, you might make more money short-term, but long-term you might end up in difficult conversations with large advertisers.
  - est31 4y ago
    > Youtube Premium is only ~$10/month, does Google really make that much more with ads? Yes! Already their average per-user revenue was 21 USD per user per month in 2018 (couldn't find newer data) [0]. Furthermore, the first people to sign up would be the richest folks, those who are the most interesting to advertisers. Meaning: they are worth way more than 21 USD per month to Google. To compensate, the price would have to be even higher. If only 5% of Google's userbase signed up, and those 5% are, on average, worth to Google 5 times as people from the general population, then you'd have to pay 100 USD per month for getting rid of ads across all Google products. That number would also have to grow at least as quickly as the ad revenue for it to make sense for Google to do it. [0]: https://mondaynote.com/the-arpus-of-the-big-four-dwarf-everybody-else-e5b02a579ed3 https://mondaynote.com/the-arpus-of-the-big-four-dwarf-every...
jstx1 4y ago
The people who would pay for premium are also the among the most desireable targets for ads because they have disposable income.
erezsh 4y ago
Maybe they're hoping to find better ways to leverage your private information in the future.
bluenose69 4y ago
I'd pay for this, if it also applied to other google products. In particular, google maps has become unpleasant to use lately, with a lot of extra stuff drawn on top of the actual map. I've switched to apple maps, for this reason. I wonder how many others have done the same.
altdataseller 4y ago
Because there would be much less demand. Scrolling past goog ads takes 1 mouse scroll. Skipping YT ads can take 30 seconds Some Goog ads are also very useful since it’s intent based.
- pooper 4y ago
  I think you are right. If Google thought even a small minority of people would subscribe to it, too small to make a dent in revenue, Google should do it if it is enough to show advertisers that "inventory" is limited and to use it as a bargaining chip. I am sure companies like WPP are pressuring Google even today to open up more and share all kinds of data with them. It is not in Google's best interest to do so but how do you fend off attacks like the adpocalypse if you can't show advertisers that you don't need them as much as they need you? Edit: spelling
- 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
  dude. how can you stand an ad in 2022? i have been using ublock origin everywhere since it was released, abp before that. i have a pi-hole at home. on my android i often use apps like blokada. the other day i had visited a friend at home and their tv was at full blast. the ads felt really jarring/irritating/obnoxious to a point i requested them to just turn the tv off. then another day i saw a coworker on his laptop, edge opened on homepage with big 2000's style banner ads, sidebar ads, full page ads and they were just keeping the page open because "eh, dont care". try to use ublock origin on your browser for a week and then the next week without it.
  - altdataseller 4y ago
    I was referring to just ads on Google, not any other type. Dude.
  - muzani 4y ago
    I have ublock origin. I actually disable it at times because it's killing some of the ads that I do like. Google is an excellent example, where the ads are often literally the thing I'm looking for.
eimrine 4y ago
Because you will end up with no-result for mostly any search input, except of few situations when you are searching something like "hackernews" on input and getting "news.ycombinator.com" on output.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  What? Are you really suggesting that most searches only return sponsored results?
  - eimrine 4y ago
    Either sponsored or gamed from my experience. I would rather ask HN then Google search.
deleted 4y ago
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jfoster 4y ago
On YouTube, the ads block the entire experience until they're done. Search ads are relatively unintrusive, even if some users take offence.
sz4kerto 4y ago
Too expensive. Google makes, on average, smtg like $50/user/year or something (not an accurate number). Now obviously this varies, so some people are much more valuable, and some are less valuable. The value depends on many things, but one of the biggest factor is purchasing power. Now -- if you're willing and able to pay eg. $10/month for Google Premium, then you likely worth much more than the average user. So the more you're willing to pay the more you worth as an advertisement target. I am not sure where those curves meet, but I presume it'd be a lot.
- throwamon 4y ago
  I know I'd pay just to never see an ad again because I don't care about them at all. If one slips through the cracks I do whatever I can to suppress it as soon as possible while actively denying any form of sensorial engagement with it. I suppose this is true for many people and paying might be more convenient than using adblockers, installing alternative apps, using PiHoles...
  - passerby1 4y ago
    Using adblock is indeed very convenient. Enable browser extension and forget about all web annoyances. Calm and peece. Google Ad Premium disables google ads only (or most of them?), while other ad nets (avg more than 80 cookies on every major news site!) will continue to annoy.
  - fartcannon 4y ago
    Ublock Origin and never see an ad again. I can't believe there are still people who don't do this. You can even do it on your mobile device if you use android and firefox.
    - IgorPartola 4y ago
      It works pretty well but (a) not on mobile and (b) not on blogspam.
      - 4y ago
alaricus 4y ago
No one would pay for it. Why pay for somthing that uBlock Origin can give you for free?
- morsch 4y ago
  I'm paying for YouTube. I already blocked ads on my desktop computer, but I wanted to use the official (I know third-party apps exist including YouTube vanced) youtube app on Android. Similarly, I can block ads in web search results in desktop and mobile. But I can't block ads in the Android apps for Google maps and Gmail. What would I pay to get rid of them. Not much, admittedly. But I would pay more if it was part of an overall package that'd make it easier to pretend Google is not a semi-hostile entity.
  - alaricus 4y ago
    I don't understand why anyone pays for YouTube either. It doesn't make any sense.
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
Because if google offered it, people that are worried about tracking like myself wouldn't buy it. Indeed, it would require a google account, and one that is always connected. Basically giving full view of my private life to google and trust that no matter how bad their track record is, from now on they are going to respect it. I don't trust them to give them that data, and even if I did, I don't trust a gov won't abuse it eventually or something else down the line. Hence I'd rather not have a google account, and use ad blockers so that the data is just not communicated to them. It should be a constitutional right to do so.
- gtirloni 4y ago
  > people that are worried about tracking like myself wouldn't buy it. That's an incredibly tiny fraction of Google Search users.
  - OJFord 4y ago
    But a larger fraction of the users that seek a method of stopping ads.
- judge2020 4y ago
  Ideally you would be able to have an extension that says “hey, I’m on example.com/page and I’m not going to load ads. That all you get to know to pay out a portion of my subscription to the website operator”. The issue with this is that Google typically doesn’t have an exclusivity agreement with websites, and header bidding is quite prevalent, so it doesn’t make sense for Google to allow people to pay to remove Google ads if they’re just going to get out-header-bid anyways when someone comes along with Google Premium+no ad blocker and suddenly the website is showing ads from another ad network instead, leading the user to think Google Premium doesn’t work. And I don’t think most people would buy a Premium offering if all it did was remove results in Google Search; the only people that helps is Google and most people can easily scroll past those even without Adblock.
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    Brave tried to build this into the browser.
SquareWheel 4y ago
Google has tried this multiple times with Contributor. They tested a few different models but it never seemed to gain any traction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  Yup. I know some people at Google who just smack their foreheads every time the HN "of course we'd all pay to eliminate ads" narrative shows up. There have been a bunch of attempts at this over time. They've just never got traction and slowly died.
  - randomsearch 4y ago
    Speculation but: there will be a huge amount of institutional inertia around this. It sure suits a large number of Google employees that "paying for a service" will fail. Newspapers, tv, and music, are counter-examples to the assertion that people won't pay for things - even when they've previously been free. Google's main product focus now should be Cloud, the ad debate is long-term done.
    - UncleMeat 4y ago
      > It sure suits a large number of Google employees that "paying for a service" will fail. Let me get this straight. The idea is that Google has deliberately constructed several different systems over the years to enable micropayments or subscriptions to replace ads with the plan of them failing so they can use this as evidence that the ad model is unstoppable and that people shouldn't try to replace it? And this was done despite knowing that an alternative would make Google more money? And not a single person who was involved in this deliberate sabotage has ever spoken about it? Come on. > Newspapers, tv, and music, are counter-examples to the assertion that people won't pay for things - even when they've previously been free. Newspapers are a dying industry and are filled with ads. TV is filled with ads. Even paid streaming services like Hulu (and soon maybe Netflix) are ad supported. Spotify has an ad-driven free service. > Google's main product focus now should be Cloud, the ad debate is long-term done. Ad revenue continues to grow every quarter. Yes, Google obviously wants another similarly sized revenue stream and there are very few domains that can generate that kind of revenue. But "the ad debate is long-term done" is just not based in facts.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
oefrha 4y ago
Google has a custom search API that comes in two flavors — ad-supported or $5/thousand queries (beyond 100 free queries a day). You can either use their Search Element API (HTML, comes with standard Google Search UI, customizable) or build your own UI with the JSON API. Obviously you’re talking about a consumer offering, but I just want to point out that paid, ad-free Google Search does exist and is pretty easy to set up. https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/overview https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/overview
- gtirloni 4y ago
  I didn't know it existed, thanks. This should be the top comment for the tech-savvy HN crowd.
- whs 4y ago
  I wish someone would plug this into Searx, then we could reuse its UI. [Searx upstream doesn't seems to be keen on implementing it though](https://github.com/searx/searx/issues/2622 https://github.com/searx/searx/issues/2622)
- bryans 4y ago
  An interesting portion of this is the Restricted API, which limits the number of sites to 10, but allows an unlimited number of requests at the $5/k rate. There doesn't seem to be any restriction on business use, which seems like a good option for paid, ad-free and anonymized code search, since 95% of the desired results are from three sources: GH, SO and Reddit.
unixhero 4y ago
Just install Adblock: ublock origin And if you can't on your iPhone, get a better phone
- scarface74 4y ago
  You realize content blockers have been on iOS for 8 years - including supporting embedded web views.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    The iOS content blocking framework is nowhere near as powerful as what uBlock Origin can do.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      A real world example?
skdotdan 4y ago
YouTube ads are way more disruptive because they have to interrupt the video you are playing for at least a few seconds.
binarymax 4y ago
Because paying customers expect some modicum of support, and Google HATES providing support.
- passerby1 4y ago
  Google loves to provide support, but for its customers only. Customer is a one who pays them millions of dollars for ads.
  - binarymax 4y ago
    That’s not support, it’s account management :)
  - GuB-42 4y ago
    No they don't, you are going to find plenty of horror stories from people who make Google money. Content/app creators, people paying for ads, G-suite customers, Pixel phone buyers, etc... Maybe it is different for companies literally paying millions of dollars, but don't expect more than bot treatment below that.
  - cal85 4y ago
    I’m a paying customer. They do not like to provide support.
- robk 4y ago
  They hate unprofitable service. If they can give email away why should you get service without paying?
classified 4y ago
Google has zero support even for paying users, so if you got locked out of your account, you're f*cked without recourse.
douchescript 4y ago
Heh, I’d Pay to get better search results like google was a couple of years ago. Maybe a like/dislike button for search results and some machine learning on top of that would do it.
- beej71 4y ago
  Rank sites by "fewest ads". :)
darkerside 4y ago
This would only make it even more obvious that all Google search results for anything that can be sold are advertisements at this point.
AhtiK 4y ago
It's about target platform and time spent. Youtube Premium is a perfect proposition for an easy ad free streaming to TV and to mobile. On Desktop browser adblock extension is efficient enough to cut out the ads. Google search on the other hand is primarily for desktop and is not a streaming platform that consumes your attention minutes, hence Google Premium has little market with effective adblockers.
- smoovb 4y ago
  The product needs to be Chrome Premium, which blocks all ads, on all platforms for a fee, where a share goes back to the sites you visit most.
tmoertel 4y ago
I'd rather have the ability to buy a Google Bond for $X that Google must return to me in the event they lock or terminate my account. That way, if their algorithmic classifiers on a whim decide that I'm a bad person and they should lock my account, Google would have a financial incentive to invest up to $X verify that I wasn't the victim of a false positive before pulling the rug out from under me.
- joezydeco 4y ago
  For a company with $60,000,000,000 in annual revenue, what should the price of the bond be? What amount would make them think investigating your lock is worth the effort?
  - kylecordes 4y ago
    It's not so much that they would be desperate to keep the $x; but rather "has had $x posted for Y years" is a strong signal the account warrants careful human review for any flagged issue.
    - kevmo314 4y ago
      Surely any actual nefarious user would see that $x as a small cost of doing business...
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        Why do you think that? What kind of nefarious use makes a hundred bucks or more per account and is subtle enough for the ban review to let them keep doing it?
        jsnell 4y ago
        There is no cost to a bad actor in the OP's proposal. If/when the account gets terminated, the money is returned to them. This policy would be worse than useless. No real users would sign up for it, only abusers.
BirAdam 4y ago
Just my opinion/suspicion: Google doesn’t want to give up its current model of operation. Google as a corporation likes being able to surveil the Earth. Google likes being able to control information. Google likes being (essentially) part of the US state department.
vonwoodson 4y ago
Are you aware of Neeva? https://neeva.com/ https://neeva.com/ I’ve tried it on a couple of demo searches, and the results seem good.
- slotrans 4y ago
  I tried to sign up for it and they wanted to do a Zoom call before they'd give me an account. Absurd.
  - zimbabao 4y ago
    We are self serve now, give us a try. Zoom calls were done during our alpha release.
ceeg 4y ago
Undermines the psychological warfare google is waging to make a normal part of life IMHO, it would be tacit acknowledgment that search ads and widespread data collection are a messed up business model. Youtube ads are different to them bc they interrupt directly and are much more of a clear "nuisance" in an entertainment product
6510 4y ago
You can buy queries tho.
ergonaught 4y ago
Because ads on Google Search are among the least intrusive/offensive, and most frequently relevant, ads in the entire advertising space, and most people using it aren't bothered by it. It won't make relevant revenue; it will in some degree harm their real customers; it's a distraction serving no purpose.
paulcole 4y ago
People love to say they’d pay for something until they have the opportunity to pay for it. Then the interest in paying suddenly dries up.
asiachick 4y ago
This won't solve your issues imo. Go to almost any ad laden site. There is generally at most one ad by Google per page and 50 ads by other providers
ISL 4y ago
One could be offered the opportunity to bid for ad slots on your own search results -- that way you would know that someone was paying oodles for your eyes.... I doubt there would be much of a market, especially when ad-blockers exist.
smoovb 4y ago
Brave IS Google Premium. Sadly they tied it to crypto and made a mess of the payment / payout mechanism, but the product is live and works. Likely Google has noted Brave's uptake and is in no hurry to compete. I'd pay for Chrome Premium as I do for YT premium.
mrkramer 4y ago
Because 90% of people don't even know it exists despite Google flashing it in their face every now and then inside the YouTube's app. And the second thing is like other people said the price; $10 a month is just too much for the moderate income people taking in consideration they have other subscription/s plus costs of living are rising without signs of stopping.
1270018080 4y ago
This is hackernews, is installing uBlock Origin not the first thing everyone does when they set up a browser?
hamiltont 4y ago
My ad experience has changed dramatically after I leaned into multiple browser personas. In personal persona, I hate ads with passion and do everything to get rid of them (browser extensions, premium membership, etc). I value my personal time and the ads are totally useless. In work persona, I suddenly have found ads are actually useful. Often find myself choosing to spend 30 seconds watching a YouTube ad because it is relevant to topics I need to be aware of as a CTO. It's clear my daily browsing history influences the ads I am seeing, and I see useful information. Been looking into SIEM tools lately, and via an ad I was just made aware of some data center appliances for security. I clicked to their website and browsed a while to learn what was available. When you have some real challenges to solve and the targeting is on point, ads can be a great news feed. Clearly segmenting my browser history into one persona where I am actively looking for solutions vs my personal persona where I want to be left alone helped the feeds target me. Still, surreal feeling to intentionally choose to watch an ad...
- yumraj 4y ago
  > Been looking into SIEM tools lately, and via an ad I was just made aware of some data center appliances for security. Would you not have come cross them if you were actively searching for data center appliances for security? Were Ads the only way to find them?
- londons_explore 4y ago
  You would be far better served by taking advice of someone you've hired than taking the advice from YouTube ads about snake-oil...
- amelius 4y ago
  Yes, ads should be locked up inside services that users specifically choose to use if and when they want. Those services should not have overlapping features, like providing mail, social media, or general search, for example, as that would be a clear conflict of interest.
fishtoaster 4y ago
"Pay to have no ads" always seems great from a consumer perspective, but terrible from the ad buyer perspective. The people who would buy google premium are the people ad buyers most want to advertise to. Widget Salesman: "I'd like to buy some ads for my widgets" Google: "Cool. Some users won't see them." Widget Salesman: "Which ones?" Google: "Only the most-engaged ones with the most money." Widget Salesman: "..."
- psnehanshu 4y ago
  It it works for YouTube, why wouldn't it work for Google? Both use the same ad network anyway, so their advertisers are the same people.
- rc_mob 4y ago
  This is a brilliant comment to this topic. Its so logical that I'm embarrassed I didn't see it.
- throw10920 4y ago
  I would assume that Google cares more about total profit, from any available source, over some lesser amount of profit from a particular source, such as ad sales. ... Which implies that they think that continuing to sell ads will make them more total profit than Google Premium, at any price.
- beamatronic 4y ago
  “Showing an ad” is a bad paradigm. Instead, get to know me. Find out my values and needs. Then, sell to me. Make me feel like you understand my problem and then show me several good options. That’s how you get the users with money to spend.
  - flax 4y ago
    "Get to know me" is a bad paradigm. I don't want them to know shit about me. But since it's safe to assume that is you're serving content, then someone is consuming it, you can base ads on that content. You know, like TV, radio, and magazines have done the whole time. I'm still going to block those ads though.
rc_mob 4y ago
Kagi.com is my nee search engine of choice for this among other reasons
sedad 4y ago
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corderop 4y ago
I guess Google don't want this. In the last years Google has been hiding ads making them looking like the normal results [1]. From an advertiser perspective, you want to have your ad as the best result for a search, "lying" to users to use your website or product because is the best for what you're looking for. I think this is different with Youtube. I see those ads like TV ones. Everyone know it's an ad, so the advertiser has to use their ability to catch the costumer. [1] - https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/1/23/21078343/google-ad-desktop-design-change-favicon-icon-ftc-guidelines https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/1/23/21078343/google-ad-d...
TrinaryWorksToo 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor
jonplackett 4y ago
Because Google can sell you for a lot more money than you’d be willing to pay
JaceLightning 4y ago
Adblock works wonders. I never see Google ads.
vivab0rg 4y ago
Because your data is more valuable than your money.
taf2 4y ago
You might want to try Neeva - it’s exactly this idea and I believe started by a few x googlers… trying it out seems pretty good so far…
winternett 4y ago
Because it's class-ism. Any service that becomes essential to online functionality should be regulated to prevent that kind of opportunistic profiteering in my opinion. Most of these companies already profit off of the ad revenue, then they turn around and want to tax people to opt out of increasingly obstructive and unbearable ads? Asking if you can pay an already very profitable company to end their manipulation of you is rewarding bad behavior. Too many companies are hobbling their standard services as a cover for extra pocket change annually. Ask yourself why standard gmail has been only trending towards reduced functionality and more ads every year without innovating useful new features? Because now they know it is profitable to hobble an essential and usually stable service, they are working to slowly convert it from a (previously promised) free service into a monthly fee-based service now that literally billions of people can't live without identity management integrated into it. This trend in software-based services is upsetting in many ways people don't realize until it's too late... Netflix pushing ads on paying customers (as another example).
peri 4y ago
So many Google engineers have asked this question and run into the same answer: the org chart prevents real action towards unifying services across Alphabet’s holdings. Sometimes that’s a bad thing, but in many cases I would expect regulatory compliance in local areas to trump other kinds of safety concerns. Note: I am a Xoogler and was far more concerned about the state of the organization in early 2016 than in any year since I was “hired” as an L3 Engineer in Network Software Engineering and Testing in Google’s Cloud division. While I do not expect that to mean anything, it does mean that politics and workplace safety matter more to me than most people. Google paid me less in total compensation over that time than anywhere else I have worked internationally. Alphabet Women decided to walk out separate from issues with Maven, Dragonfly, TCP, BBR, BBRv2, Stadia, and other “magic” features that clearly risked lives long before Waymo admitted that even DeepMind can’t “solve” self-diving cars any better than ReCaptcha’s success rate.
gjvnq 4y ago
I think removing ads from Google Search is pointless for most users. However, giving extra search features for paying costumers might work. E.g. letting you write complex queries or using operator like AROUND or page types (e.g. querying "3d printing pagetype:academic" or "3d printing pagetype:tutorial") or all the other query features that they deprecated over the years (see https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/ https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/) or reverse citations (e.g. querying "cites:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Thing" and getting all pages that link to Crazy Thing on Wikipedia)

114 points by achenet 4y ago

We have Youtube premium, where it is possible to pay a monthly fee not to have adds. Why isn't there an analogous version of this for the Google search engine?

sysadm1n 4y ago

Well there is Kagi[0], a 'Premium search engine where everything on the page matters' Haven't tried it, but it looks promising. [0] https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/

andrelaszlo 4y ago
I've been using it for over a month now and it's great. Search results are on par with Google,if not better. (Probably better, subjectively, since I switched mostly due to getting annoyed daily with worsening results. Ignoring my search terms was especially annoying.) The privacy aspect felt like a bonus, but now I never want to go back.
mertd 4y ago
It requires a login to use and aside from not showing ads, the FAQ makes no promises about not monetizing the per user search history. That's bit of a red flag for me.
- voltaireodactyl 4y ago
  This portion of the FAQ: https://kagi.com/faq#privacy https://kagi.com/faq#privacy Would seem to address those concerns — if the only money coming in is users paying directly, that would seem to preclude selling the data for further monetization. Or are those known weasel words?

magusd 4y ago

I'd pay for google premium, but since that's not offered I use ad blockers. Just like I used to torrent before streaming services came up.

sedad 4y ago

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seydor 4y ago

Would be too expensive

achenet 4y ago
for who? Is the value that Google gets from one user having ads really that high? Youtube Premium is only ~$10/month, does Google really make that much more with ads?
- arkitaip 4y ago
  No but the value they extraxt from millions of advertisers is much higher.
  - achenet 4y ago
    that seems like a logical contradiction. Money made with ads = how much advertisers pay Money made with ads per user = how much advertisers pay / number of users. If they average to... $10/user, then it's viable.
    - emerongi 4y ago
      There's still long-term brand value in just being the biggest ad delivery machine that can bring eyeballs to your ads from any potential customer group. Once you remove a portion of those eyeballs, you might make more money short-term, but long-term you might end up in difficult conversations with large advertisers.
- est31 4y ago
  > Youtube Premium is only ~$10/month, does Google really make that much more with ads? Yes! Already their average per-user revenue was 21 USD per user per month in 2018 (couldn't find newer data) [0]. Furthermore, the first people to sign up would be the richest folks, those who are the most interesting to advertisers. Meaning: they are worth way more than 21 USD per month to Google. To compensate, the price would have to be even higher. If only 5% of Google's userbase signed up, and those 5% are, on average, worth to Google 5 times as people from the general population, then you'd have to pay 100 USD per month for getting rid of ads across all Google products. That number would also have to grow at least as quickly as the ad revenue for it to make sense for Google to do it. [0]: https://mondaynote.com/the-arpus-of-the-big-four-dwarf-everybody-else-e5b02a579ed3 https://mondaynote.com/the-arpus-of-the-big-four-dwarf-every...

jstx1 4y ago

The people who would pay for premium are also the among the most desireable targets for ads because they have disposable income.

erezsh 4y ago

Maybe they're hoping to find better ways to leverage your private information in the future.

bluenose69 4y ago

I'd pay for this, if it also applied to other google products. In particular, google maps has become unpleasant to use lately, with a lot of extra stuff drawn on top of the actual map. I've switched to apple maps, for this reason. I wonder how many others have done the same.

altdataseller 4y ago

Because there would be much less demand. Scrolling past goog ads takes 1 mouse scroll. Skipping YT ads can take 30 seconds Some Goog ads are also very useful since it’s intent based.

pooper 4y ago
I think you are right. If Google thought even a small minority of people would subscribe to it, too small to make a dent in revenue, Google should do it if it is enough to show advertisers that "inventory" is limited and to use it as a bargaining chip. I am sure companies like WPP are pressuring Google even today to open up more and share all kinds of data with them. It is not in Google's best interest to do so but how do you fend off attacks like the adpocalypse if you can't show advertisers that you don't need them as much as they need you? Edit: spelling
2Gkashmiri 4y ago
dude. how can you stand an ad in 2022? i have been using ublock origin everywhere since it was released, abp before that. i have a pi-hole at home. on my android i often use apps like blokada. the other day i had visited a friend at home and their tv was at full blast. the ads felt really jarring/irritating/obnoxious to a point i requested them to just turn the tv off. then another day i saw a coworker on his laptop, edge opened on homepage with big 2000's style banner ads, sidebar ads, full page ads and they were just keeping the page open because "eh, dont care". try to use ublock origin on your browser for a week and then the next week without it.
- altdataseller 4y ago
  I was referring to just ads on Google, not any other type. Dude.
- muzani 4y ago
  I have ublock origin. I actually disable it at times because it's killing some of the ads that I do like. Google is an excellent example, where the ads are often literally the thing I'm looking for.

eimrine 4y ago

Because you will end up with no-result for mostly any search input, except of few situations when you are searching something like "hackernews" on input and getting "news.ycombinator.com" on output.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
What? Are you really suggesting that most searches only return sponsored results?
- eimrine 4y ago
  Either sponsored or gamed from my experience. I would rather ask HN then Google search.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jfoster 4y ago

On YouTube, the ads block the entire experience until they're done. Search ads are relatively unintrusive, even if some users take offence.

sz4kerto 4y ago

Too expensive. Google makes, on average, smtg like $50/user/year or something (not an accurate number). Now obviously this varies, so some people are much more valuable, and some are less valuable. The value depends on many things, but one of the biggest factor is purchasing power. Now -- if you're willing and able to pay eg. $10/month for Google Premium, then you likely worth much more than the average user. So the more you're willing to pay the more you worth as an advertisement target. I am not sure where those curves meet, but I presume it'd be a lot.

throwamon 4y ago
I know I'd pay just to never see an ad again because I don't care about them at all. If one slips through the cracks I do whatever I can to suppress it as soon as possible while actively denying any form of sensorial engagement with it. I suppose this is true for many people and paying might be more convenient than using adblockers, installing alternative apps, using PiHoles...
- passerby1 4y ago
  Using adblock is indeed very convenient. Enable browser extension and forget about all web annoyances. Calm and peece. Google Ad Premium disables google ads only (or most of them?), while other ad nets (avg more than 80 cookies on every major news site!) will continue to annoy.
- fartcannon 4y ago
  Ublock Origin and never see an ad again. I can't believe there are still people who don't do this. You can even do it on your mobile device if you use android and firefox.
  - IgorPartola 4y ago
    It works pretty well but (a) not on mobile and (b) not on blogspam.
    - 4y ago

alaricus 4y ago

No one would pay for it. Why pay for somthing that uBlock Origin can give you for free?

morsch 4y ago
I'm paying for YouTube. I already blocked ads on my desktop computer, but I wanted to use the official (I know third-party apps exist including YouTube vanced) youtube app on Android. Similarly, I can block ads in web search results in desktop and mobile. But I can't block ads in the Android apps for Google maps and Gmail. What would I pay to get rid of them. Not much, admittedly. But I would pay more if it was part of an overall package that'd make it easier to pretend Google is not a semi-hostile entity.
- alaricus 4y ago
  I don't understand why anyone pays for YouTube either. It doesn't make any sense.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

Because if google offered it, people that are worried about tracking like myself wouldn't buy it. Indeed, it would require a google account, and one that is always connected. Basically giving full view of my private life to google and trust that no matter how bad their track record is, from now on they are going to respect it. I don't trust them to give them that data, and even if I did, I don't trust a gov won't abuse it eventually or something else down the line. Hence I'd rather not have a google account, and use ad blockers so that the data is just not communicated to them. It should be a constitutional right to do so.

gtirloni 4y ago
> people that are worried about tracking like myself wouldn't buy it. That's an incredibly tiny fraction of Google Search users.
- OJFord 4y ago
  But a larger fraction of the users that seek a method of stopping ads.
judge2020 4y ago
Ideally you would be able to have an extension that says “hey, I’m on example.com/page and I’m not going to load ads. That all you get to know to pay out a portion of my subscription to the website operator”. The issue with this is that Google typically doesn’t have an exclusivity agreement with websites, and header bidding is quite prevalent, so it doesn’t make sense for Google to allow people to pay to remove Google ads if they’re just going to get out-header-bid anyways when someone comes along with Google Premium+no ad blocker and suddenly the website is showing ads from another ad network instead, leading the user to think Google Premium doesn’t work. And I don’t think most people would buy a Premium offering if all it did was remove results in Google Search; the only people that helps is Google and most people can easily scroll past those even without Adblock.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Brave tried to build this into the browser.

SquareWheel 4y ago

Google has tried this multiple times with Contributor. They tested a few different models but it never seemed to gain any traction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor

UncleMeat 4y ago
Yup. I know some people at Google who just smack their foreheads every time the HN "of course we'd all pay to eliminate ads" narrative shows up. There have been a bunch of attempts at this over time. They've just never got traction and slowly died.
- randomsearch 4y ago
  Speculation but: there will be a huge amount of institutional inertia around this. It sure suits a large number of Google employees that "paying for a service" will fail. Newspapers, tv, and music, are counter-examples to the assertion that people won't pay for things - even when they've previously been free. Google's main product focus now should be Cloud, the ad debate is long-term done.
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    > It sure suits a large number of Google employees that "paying for a service" will fail. Let me get this straight. The idea is that Google has deliberately constructed several different systems over the years to enable micropayments or subscriptions to replace ads with the plan of them failing so they can use this as evidence that the ad model is unstoppable and that people shouldn't try to replace it? And this was done despite knowing that an alternative would make Google more money? And not a single person who was involved in this deliberate sabotage has ever spoken about it? Come on. > Newspapers, tv, and music, are counter-examples to the assertion that people won't pay for things - even when they've previously been free. Newspapers are a dying industry and are filled with ads. TV is filled with ads. Even paid streaming services like Hulu (and soon maybe Netflix) are ad supported. Spotify has an ad-driven free service. > Google's main product focus now should be Cloud, the ad debate is long-term done. Ad revenue continues to grow every quarter. Yes, Google obviously wants another similarly sized revenue stream and there are very few domains that can generate that kind of revenue. But "the ad debate is long-term done" is just not based in facts.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

oefrha 4y ago

Google has a custom search API that comes in two flavors — ad-supported or $5/thousand queries (beyond 100 free queries a day). You can either use their Search Element API (HTML, comes with standard Google Search UI, customizable) or build your own UI with the JSON API. Obviously you’re talking about a consumer offering, but I just want to point out that paid, ad-free Google Search does exist and is pretty easy to set up. https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/overview https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/overview

gtirloni 4y ago
I didn't know it existed, thanks. This should be the top comment for the tech-savvy HN crowd.
whs 4y ago
I wish someone would plug this into Searx, then we could reuse its UI. [Searx upstream doesn't seems to be keen on implementing it though](https://github.com/searx/searx/issues/2622 https://github.com/searx/searx/issues/2622)
bryans 4y ago
An interesting portion of this is the Restricted API, which limits the number of sites to 10, but allows an unlimited number of requests at the $5/k rate. There doesn't seem to be any restriction on business use, which seems like a good option for paid, ad-free and anonymized code search, since 95% of the desired results are from three sources: GH, SO and Reddit.

unixhero 4y ago

Just install Adblock: ublock origin And if you can't on your iPhone, get a better phone

scarface74 4y ago
You realize content blockers have been on iOS for 8 years - including supporting embedded web views.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  The iOS content blocking framework is nowhere near as powerful as what uBlock Origin can do.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    A real world example?

skdotdan 4y ago

YouTube ads are way more disruptive because they have to interrupt the video you are playing for at least a few seconds.

binarymax 4y ago

Because paying customers expect some modicum of support, and Google HATES providing support.

passerby1 4y ago
Google loves to provide support, but for its customers only. Customer is a one who pays them millions of dollars for ads.
- binarymax 4y ago
  That’s not support, it’s account management :)
- GuB-42 4y ago
  No they don't, you are going to find plenty of horror stories from people who make Google money. Content/app creators, people paying for ads, G-suite customers, Pixel phone buyers, etc... Maybe it is different for companies literally paying millions of dollars, but don't expect more than bot treatment below that.
- cal85 4y ago
  I’m a paying customer. They do not like to provide support.
robk 4y ago
They hate unprofitable service. If they can give email away why should you get service without paying?

classified 4y ago

Google has zero support even for paying users, so if you got locked out of your account, you're f*cked without recourse.

douchescript 4y ago

Heh, I’d Pay to get better search results like google was a couple of years ago. Maybe a like/dislike button for search results and some machine learning on top of that would do it.

beej71 4y ago
Rank sites by "fewest ads". :)

darkerside 4y ago

This would only make it even more obvious that all Google search results for anything that can be sold are advertisements at this point.

AhtiK 4y ago

It's about target platform and time spent. Youtube Premium is a perfect proposition for an easy ad free streaming to TV and to mobile. On Desktop browser adblock extension is efficient enough to cut out the ads. Google search on the other hand is primarily for desktop and is not a streaming platform that consumes your attention minutes, hence Google Premium has little market with effective adblockers.

smoovb 4y ago
The product needs to be Chrome Premium, which blocks all ads, on all platforms for a fee, where a share goes back to the sites you visit most.

tmoertel 4y ago

I'd rather have the ability to buy a Google Bond for $X that Google must return to me in the event they lock or terminate my account. That way, if their algorithmic classifiers on a whim decide that I'm a bad person and they should lock my account, Google would have a financial incentive to invest up to $X verify that I wasn't the victim of a false positive before pulling the rug out from under me.

joezydeco 4y ago
For a company with $60,000,000,000 in annual revenue, what should the price of the bond be? What amount would make them think investigating your lock is worth the effort?
- kylecordes 4y ago
  It's not so much that they would be desperate to keep the $x; but rather "has had $x posted for Y years" is a strong signal the account warrants careful human review for any flagged issue.
  - kevmo314 4y ago
    Surely any actual nefarious user would see that $x as a small cost of doing business...
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      Why do you think that? What kind of nefarious use makes a hundred bucks or more per account and is subtle enough for the ban review to let them keep doing it?
      - jsnell 4y ago
        There is no cost to a bad actor in the OP's proposal. If/when the account gets terminated, the money is returned to them. This policy would be worse than useless. No real users would sign up for it, only abusers.

BirAdam 4y ago

Just my opinion/suspicion: Google doesn’t want to give up its current model of operation. Google as a corporation likes being able to surveil the Earth. Google likes being able to control information. Google likes being (essentially) part of the US state department.

vonwoodson 4y ago

Are you aware of Neeva? https://neeva.com/ https://neeva.com/ I’ve tried it on a couple of demo searches, and the results seem good.

slotrans 4y ago
I tried to sign up for it and they wanted to do a Zoom call before they'd give me an account. Absurd.
- zimbabao 4y ago
  We are self serve now, give us a try. Zoom calls were done during our alpha release.

ceeg 4y ago

Undermines the psychological warfare google is waging to make a normal part of life IMHO, it would be tacit acknowledgment that search ads and widespread data collection are a messed up business model. Youtube ads are different to them bc they interrupt directly and are much more of a clear "nuisance" in an entertainment product

6510 4y ago

You can buy queries tho.

ergonaught 4y ago

Because ads on Google Search are among the least intrusive/offensive, and most frequently relevant, ads in the entire advertising space, and most people using it aren't bothered by it. It won't make relevant revenue; it will in some degree harm their real customers; it's a distraction serving no purpose.

paulcole 4y ago

People love to say they’d pay for something until they have the opportunity to pay for it. Then the interest in paying suddenly dries up.

asiachick 4y ago

This won't solve your issues imo. Go to almost any ad laden site. There is generally at most one ad by Google per page and 50 ads by other providers

ISL 4y ago

One could be offered the opportunity to bid for ad slots on your own search results -- that way you would know that someone was paying oodles for your eyes.... I doubt there would be much of a market, especially when ad-blockers exist.

smoovb 4y ago

Brave IS Google Premium. Sadly they tied it to crypto and made a mess of the payment / payout mechanism, but the product is live and works. Likely Google has noted Brave's uptake and is in no hurry to compete. I'd pay for Chrome Premium as I do for YT premium.

mrkramer 4y ago

Because 90% of people don't even know it exists despite Google flashing it in their face every now and then inside the YouTube's app. And the second thing is like other people said the price; $10 a month is just too much for the moderate income people taking in consideration they have other subscription/s plus costs of living are rising without signs of stopping.

1270018080 4y ago

This is hackernews, is installing uBlock Origin not the first thing everyone does when they set up a browser?

hamiltont 4y ago

My ad experience has changed dramatically after I leaned into multiple browser personas. In personal persona, I hate ads with passion and do everything to get rid of them (browser extensions, premium membership, etc). I value my personal time and the ads are totally useless. In work persona, I suddenly have found ads are actually useful. Often find myself choosing to spend 30 seconds watching a YouTube ad because it is relevant to topics I need to be aware of as a CTO. It's clear my daily browsing history influences the ads I am seeing, and I see useful information. Been looking into SIEM tools lately, and via an ad I was just made aware of some data center appliances for security. I clicked to their website and browsed a while to learn what was available. When you have some real challenges to solve and the targeting is on point, ads can be a great news feed. Clearly segmenting my browser history into one persona where I am actively looking for solutions vs my personal persona where I want to be left alone helped the feeds target me. Still, surreal feeling to intentionally choose to watch an ad...

yumraj 4y ago
> Been looking into SIEM tools lately, and via an ad I was just made aware of some data center appliances for security. Would you not have come cross them if you were actively searching for data center appliances for security? Were Ads the only way to find them?
londons_explore 4y ago
You would be far better served by taking advice of someone you've hired than taking the advice from YouTube ads about snake-oil...
amelius 4y ago
Yes, ads should be locked up inside services that users specifically choose to use if and when they want. Those services should not have overlapping features, like providing mail, social media, or general search, for example, as that would be a clear conflict of interest.

fishtoaster 4y ago

"Pay to have no ads" always seems great from a consumer perspective, but terrible from the ad buyer perspective. The people who would buy google premium are the people ad buyers most want to advertise to. Widget Salesman: "I'd like to buy some ads for my widgets" Google: "Cool. Some users won't see them." Widget Salesman: "Which ones?" Google: "Only the most-engaged ones with the most money." Widget Salesman: "..."

psnehanshu 4y ago
It it works for YouTube, why wouldn't it work for Google? Both use the same ad network anyway, so their advertisers are the same people.
rc_mob 4y ago
This is a brilliant comment to this topic. Its so logical that I'm embarrassed I didn't see it.
throw10920 4y ago
I would assume that Google cares more about total profit, from any available source, over some lesser amount of profit from a particular source, such as ad sales. ... Which implies that they think that continuing to sell ads will make them more total profit than Google Premium, at any price.
beamatronic 4y ago
“Showing an ad” is a bad paradigm. Instead, get to know me. Find out my values and needs. Then, sell to me. Make me feel like you understand my problem and then show me several good options. That’s how you get the users with money to spend.
- flax 4y ago
  "Get to know me" is a bad paradigm. I don't want them to know shit about me. But since it's safe to assume that is you're serving content, then someone is consuming it, you can base ads on that content. You know, like TV, radio, and magazines have done the whole time. I'm still going to block those ads though.

rc_mob 4y ago

Kagi.com is my nee search engine of choice for this among other reasons

sedad 4y ago

How to Accordion instagram hacked

corderop 4y ago

I guess Google don't want this. In the last years Google has been hiding ads making them looking like the normal results [1]. From an advertiser perspective, you want to have your ad as the best result for a search, "lying" to users to use your website or product because is the best for what you're looking for. I think this is different with Youtube. I see those ads like TV ones. Everyone know it's an ad, so the advertiser has to use their ability to catch the costumer. [1] - https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/1/23/21078343/google-ad-desktop-design-change-favicon-icon-ftc-guidelines https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/1/23/21078343/google-ad-d...

TrinaryWorksToo 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor

jonplackett 4y ago

Because Google can sell you for a lot more money than you’d be willing to pay

JaceLightning 4y ago

Adblock works wonders. I never see Google ads.

vivab0rg 4y ago

Because your data is more valuable than your money.

taf2 4y ago

You might want to try Neeva - it’s exactly this idea and I believe started by a few x googlers… trying it out seems pretty good so far…

winternett 4y ago

Because it's class-ism. Any service that becomes essential to online functionality should be regulated to prevent that kind of opportunistic profiteering in my opinion. Most of these companies already profit off of the ad revenue, then they turn around and want to tax people to opt out of increasingly obstructive and unbearable ads? Asking if you can pay an already very profitable company to end their manipulation of you is rewarding bad behavior. Too many companies are hobbling their standard services as a cover for extra pocket change annually. Ask yourself why standard gmail has been only trending towards reduced functionality and more ads every year without innovating useful new features? Because now they know it is profitable to hobble an essential and usually stable service, they are working to slowly convert it from a (previously promised) free service into a monthly fee-based service now that literally billions of people can't live without identity management integrated into it. This trend in software-based services is upsetting in many ways people don't realize until it's too late... Netflix pushing ads on paying customers (as another example).

peri 4y ago

So many Google engineers have asked this question and run into the same answer: the org chart prevents real action towards unifying services across Alphabet’s holdings. Sometimes that’s a bad thing, but in many cases I would expect regulatory compliance in local areas to trump other kinds of safety concerns. Note: I am a Xoogler and was far more concerned about the state of the organization in early 2016 than in any year since I was “hired” as an L3 Engineer in Network Software Engineering and Testing in Google’s Cloud division. While I do not expect that to mean anything, it does mean that politics and workplace safety matter more to me than most people. Google paid me less in total compensation over that time than anywhere else I have worked internationally. Alphabet Women decided to walk out separate from issues with Maven, Dragonfly, TCP, BBR, BBRv2, Stadia, and other “magic” features that clearly risked lives long before Waymo admitted that even DeepMind can’t “solve” self-diving cars any better than ReCaptcha’s success rate.

gjvnq 4y ago

I think removing ads from Google Search is pointless for most users. However, giving extra search features for paying costumers might work. E.g. letting you write complex queries or using operator like AROUND or page types (e.g. querying "3d printing pagetype:academic" or "3d printing pagetype:tutorial") or all the other query features that they deprecated over the years (see https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/ https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/) or reverse citations (e.g. querying "cites:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Thing" and getting all pages that link to Crazy Thing on Wikipedia)