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Google actually offered something along those lines for a few years, called Google Contributor, though I don’t think it applied to video ads like YouTube’s. I

Google actually offered something along those lines for a few years, called Google Contributor, though I don’t think it applied to video ads like YouTube’s. I have no inside info on why it didn’t survive even though I worked for Google when it initially launched (not on Contributor), but the fact remains it didn’t survive. As pure personal speculation, I suspect it didn’t receive enough user uptake for Google to decide that it was worthwhile. To avoid any confusion: I don’t work for Google now and am certainly not speaking for them in this comment.

silisili 1y ago
You worked there and don't really know much about it. How in the world would Google expect anyone else to have known about it? I personally don't remember such a thing ever existing. So assuming they did try it, I'd say it died from lack of awareness rather than people just didn't want it.
- jkaplowitz 1y ago
  I knew a bit about it at the time (nothing confidential that I remember now), and saw both internal discussions and external media reports about it at the time. Wikipedia continues to document that it did exist. But sure, I don’t think it was very well publicized. I will say that Google has generally been bad at product decisions and execution, such as genuinely understanding what their customers and users want or need and effectively giving that to them in a logistically and commercially viable way, more often than they’ve been good at product decisions and execution. (Engineering quality and technical innovation are completely separate questions, and ones at which Google has historically been excellent.) It’s very possible that better product decisions or better execution could have made Contributor a success.
hedora 1y ago
I’d pay to get them to stop tracking me. There’s no way to implement that without tracking me, so I just go with anyone but Google whenever possible. The fact that Google has been intentionally making their products worse to enable price gouging (as proven in court) has made it easy for competitors to outperform all of Google’s offerings (except, arguably, YouTube, but that seems pretty moatless / prone to piracy).
- ranger_danger 1y ago
  > There’s no way to implement that without tracking me Monero.
  - immibis 1y ago
    maximum transactions per second?
Dylan16807 1y ago
The version that outbid ads was unreliable and not how I want an ad-replacement to work, and then the later version worked on a tiny tiny list of sites. So even when it existed, I just lamented it didn't work like youtube red. And that's in addition to them not telling people about it.

silisili 1y ago

You worked there and don't really know much about it. How in the world would Google expect anyone else to have known about it? I personally don't remember such a thing ever existing. So assuming they did try it, I'd say it died from lack of awareness rather than people just didn't want it.

jkaplowitz 1y ago
I knew a bit about it at the time (nothing confidential that I remember now), and saw both internal discussions and external media reports about it at the time. Wikipedia continues to document that it did exist. But sure, I don’t think it was very well publicized. I will say that Google has generally been bad at product decisions and execution, such as genuinely understanding what their customers and users want or need and effectively giving that to them in a logistically and commercially viable way, more often than they’ve been good at product decisions and execution. (Engineering quality and technical innovation are completely separate questions, and ones at which Google has historically been excellent.) It’s very possible that better product decisions or better execution could have made Contributor a success.

hedora 1y ago

I’d pay to get them to stop tracking me. There’s no way to implement that without tracking me, so I just go with anyone but Google whenever possible. The fact that Google has been intentionally making their products worse to enable price gouging (as proven in court) has made it easy for competitors to outperform all of Google’s offerings (except, arguably, YouTube, but that seems pretty moatless / prone to piracy).

ranger_danger 1y ago
> There’s no way to implement that without tracking me Monero.
- immibis 1y ago
  maximum transactions per second?

Dylan16807 1y ago

The version that outbid ads was unreliable and not how I want an ad-replacement to work, and then the later version worked on a tiny tiny list of sites. So even when it existed, I just lamented it didn't work like youtube red. And that's in addition to them not telling people about it.