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Between Google Search decreasing in usability and accuracy for pretty much everyone I know in service of more Ads, Netflix Ad tier causing an exodus and now App

Between Google Search decreasing in usability and accuracy for pretty much everyone I know in service of more Ads, Netflix Ad tier causing an exodus and now Apple poisoning what was their premium brand to squeeze ad revenue I can't help but think these businesses are starting to cannibalize their core value to their users in service to their shareholders. Companies with Ads are like Rats in that experiment with the button and a wire going to their pleasure center. Tap the button all day but they won't actually do anything useful and everything else wastes away. For a while I've been thinking about the public markets and each time I arrive at the conclusion that the public markets can be really bad for consumers and bad for the businesses themselves. In the end the pursuit of higher stock value for share holders in the short term puts a company at odds with it's customers and it's own initial value proposition. Obviously an IPO is a desirable goal for founders, and maybe (very obviously?) more so their investors because it's a liquidity event and everyone get's paid, but I think for any one running a successful company thinking about what you shackle you and your company to by going public should be a long and hard think, because you're going to wind up making choices at the expense of literally every value and use your business purported to represent. This is also why when choosing to make a startup, as defined by a high growth company designed to quickly arrive at a liquidity event (IPO and publicly traded obviously included) you should really understand if you want exactly that. I've watched at least one founder realize she didn't want that and that she did want to run a business for the customers and the value they were being provided and try to get off the train and it basically wrecked the business. When I read stuff like this I'm always reminded of the line in Aesop Rock's song "None Shall Pass": "Fine, sign of the swine in the swarm when a king is a whore who comply and conform" I guess this was a really long winded way of saying, know the game you're playing before you choose to play it and know who's actually calling the shots.

pixl97 4y ago
I think ad driven markets are a trap in themselves, even outside the public market itself. You have a large portion of end users themselves that will never pay for the product but gladly use the product 'for free'. You have users that would pay for the product, but again, why would they pay for the product if it's "free"? This leaves the only viable products in the market as free products. The only model I know for free service is ad and data collection driven. The business world won't be able to escape this trap themselves, it will be driven by consumer protections and data privacy making targeted advertising via data collection more risky at a legal/compliance level.

pixl97 4y ago

I think ad driven markets are a trap in themselves, even outside the public market itself. You have a large portion of end users themselves that will never pay for the product but gladly use the product 'for free'. You have users that would pay for the product, but again, why would they pay for the product if it's "free"? This leaves the only viable products in the market as free products. The only model I know for free service is ad and data collection driven. The business world won't be able to escape this trap themselves, it will be driven by consumer protections and data privacy making targeted advertising via data collection more risky at a legal/compliance level.