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I do understand your reasoning and points. But I think the reality is less black and white. Google's users might not be directly paying customers literally, but

I do understand your reasoning and points. But I think the reality is less black and white. Google's users might not be directly paying customers literally, but they are paying indirectly by buying goods and services. Part of that amount goes to Google via the payout of advertising services. Also, Google operates an eco system that offers value. A lot of users might have a sort of search or buy addiction, but they are not all addicts that can be / are treated as disposable resources.

pdonis 3y ago
> they are paying indirectly by buying goods and services. Part of that amount goes to Google via the payout of advertising services. By this logic everyone is a customer of everyone else, since we all buy goods and services part of the payment for which ends up going to all of us. That makes "customer" a useless term. It's much better to stick to the actual economic definition, which is the one I've been using. > Google operates an eco system that offers value. Sure, but that doesn't mean everyone who makes use of some of that value is Google's customer. That's a big part of what makes the ad supported business model so dysfunctional. > A lot of users might have a sort of search or buy addiction, but they are not all addicts that can be / are treated as disposable resources. Whether or not a particular user is an addict of Google products, as far as Google is concerned, they are a disposable resource. That's a necessary consequence of the ad-supported business model that Google has chosen. And while Google is not going to drop search as a service, Google has certainly discontinued plenty of other services in the past that were providing lots of value to users--but Google didn't care because those services weren't making enough ad revenues. So Google's actual behavior makes clear that, whether or not Google wants to admit it, its users are disposable resources.

pdonis 3y ago

> they are paying indirectly by buying goods and services. Part of that amount goes to Google via the payout of advertising services. By this logic everyone is a customer of everyone else, since we all buy goods and services part of the payment for which ends up going to all of us. That makes "customer" a useless term. It's much better to stick to the actual economic definition, which is the one I've been using. > Google operates an eco system that offers value. Sure, but that doesn't mean everyone who makes use of some of that value is Google's customer. That's a big part of what makes the ad supported business model so dysfunctional. > A lot of users might have a sort of search or buy addiction, but they are not all addicts that can be / are treated as disposable resources. Whether or not a particular user is an addict of Google products, as far as Google is concerned, they are a disposable resource. That's a necessary consequence of the ad-supported business model that Google has chosen. And while Google is not going to drop search as a service, Google has certainly discontinued plenty of other services in the past that were providing lots of value to users--but Google didn't care because those services weren't making enough ad revenues. So Google's actual behavior makes clear that, whether or not Google wants to admit it, its users are disposable resources.