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Of course it has ads. Running an AI in the cloud costs money.
by g232089 3y ago
Of course it has ads. Running an AI in the cloud costs money.
- techdragon 3y agoIt’s completely impossible to get users to pay for it, the users that would pay can’t possibly justify our investment in this amazing technology… /sarcasm
- Teever 3y agoWhen did advertisements become the universal currency?
- doublerabbit 3y agoSince 1999.
- almatabata 3y agoYou cannot have both a gigantic user base and a paid product. If you charge for your product you will always have people who do not value your product at the price you need to charge. If you make it free you will always get more people to use your products. This helps a lot in getting funding in case of startups. Look at our user base if each user paid 1 dollar we would make billions. Of course you can never turn 100% of your user base into a paying customer. If you want to keep your massive user base you have to resort to ads. If you switch to a paid plan your user numbers will decline and investors will complain. If you do not show ads you will continue to bleed money and make no return on investment. At some point in time having a small paying customer base became unsexy to a lot of investors who wanted to chase after the next potential unicorn.
- anonymousab 3y ago> You cannot have both a gigantic user base and a paid product The obvious counter example to this is Windows itself. Or... iOS?
- tredre3 3y agoUsers pay indirectly for those, they don't see it as a standalone paid product.
- almatabata 3y agoBoth of these get bundled with the Hardware so people do not really consciously chose them. And for windows it seems the microsoft actually started to go the ads route by putting them in windows 10 and 11. And you do not have to pay for the OS anymore to use it as you do not have to activate the license.
- jjulius 3y ago>The obvious counter example to this is Windows itself. Or... iOS? Or hardware, even. Just look at the iPhone...
- almatabata 3y agoEven hardware can become victim to this look at Alexa: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-colossal-failure-on-pace-to-lose-10-billion-this-year/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-co... https://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/2023/08/20/jim-rossman-why-is-alexa-suddenly-playing-ads-between-songs/ https://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/2023/08/20/ji...
- jjulius 3y agoOne example surrounded by many other pieces of hardware that don't do this doesn't do much to solidify your "cannot" absolute. Edit: Your second link makes it pretty clear that it's not Alexa's lack of profitability that seems to be the issue with regards to ads playing between songs. Apple Music has a free, ad-supported tier - meaning that on whatever device you use it on, you'll hear ads. If your Alexa is set to access your ad-supported Apple Music account, then of course you're going to hear ads.
- Teever 3y agoOr coca-cola, or baby formula, or the myriad of construciton materials that we all consume but are produced by a few obscure, giant entities.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago> You cannot have both a gigantic user base and a paid product. That really depends on how we define "gigantic user base", but I think Adobe, Valve, and Autodesk all disprove it. > If you charge for your product you will always have people who do not value your product at the price you need to charge. It doesn't matter how many non-customers you get, only how many customers you get. In general, I think you do have something of a point in that it is easier to get more users with a nominal price of $0, and it might be a way to get enough users that the small $/user from ads works out. That doesn't mean that ads are always going to work or that other models can't work, though.
- g232089 3y agoThis wasn't invented by the internet either. Free newspapers or TV are examples of services funded by advertisements.
- akomtu 3y agoAds is theft (of our attention and of our data) and theft is committed without consent of the victim. It is for this reason ads can "pay" for things that money cannot. Similarly, if the law allowed extortion or blackmail, corporations that embrace it would outcompete those who don't.
- 90-00-09 3y agoIf I am not mistaken, when Marc Andreessen was building the Mosaic browser (1993-ish) he and his co-founders contemplated the monetization model for the web. Since micropayments were not possible, the only obvious choice was ads. In this sense, reliance on advertisement as the primary way to monetize online businesses is as old as www.
- sumtechguy 3y agoI think it goes further back than that. You can find early radio broadcasts where the story was brought to you buy some brand. They would even work the brands into the stories sometimes.
- landhar 3y agoIndeed: > The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored by soap manufacturers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_opera https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_opera
- lelanthran 3y agoYeah. I believe that's where the term "soapies" originated. Shows originally brought to you by washing powder manufacturers.
- KMag 3y agoG'day, mate? (I've never heard the term "soapies". Is it Australian slang? Having lived a decade in Hong Kong, I got exposure to a fair amount of Australian slang, and this fits the character.)
- lelanthran 3y agoSouth African ... Although I was under the impression that soapies was an American word.
- 3y ago
- xnx 3y agoAttention is the currency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy
- hot_gril 3y agoDuring the golden age of software piracy.
- TRiG_Ireland 3y agoEarly newspapers, even paid ones, often had an entire front page of only ads. And then more ads within.
- vkou 3y agoThey aren't a universal currency, they are just something that you can always add to a product that already makes $X, to make $X + $Y, instead. Most firms seem to prefer to make $X + $Y, over making $X.