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It's arguable that the worst thing Google has done is be the ultimate fruition of the ad model. Most people are so accustomed to "free" services from google, t

It's arguable that the worst thing Google has done is be the ultimate fruition of the ad model. Most people are so accustomed to "free" services from google, that they don't even see it as transactional, but rather as exploitive. "I'm trying to watch my youtube videos, and google keeps shoving these ads in my face. Google, please fuck off!" or "I'm trying to organize my business expenses but Google sheets won't load. Where is your god damn support!?!" Google put themselves in a position where they can only be evil, because the vast majority of people (the author here included), just will not be able to step back and see what google is, and weigh it against alternates. Google is bad for leeching off my right to a private gmail account, but they are not good for saving me $5/mo for email...e-mail is free. Everyone knows that. Even worse, if Google were to turn into a paid services company, they would be even more evil for cutting off the millions, sorry, billions of poor users who don't have the money to pay for all that google offers. The backlash against youtube red was immense (that was its unfortunate launch name) and even today people still see youtube premium as an evil thing. So sure, google does evil things, but it should be stated within the framework of their business model, rather than being unaware or ignoring it.

chetanvaity 1y ago
When we used to talk about the data-collection for various reasons - but primarily for ad-targetting and later personlization purposes, we always were quite concerned. The data-collection felt very wrong. But, we kinda collectively sighed and allowed it, thinking ads are a necessary evil. First of all, as engineers, this is a cop-out. Even if we grant ads as a necessary evil, this should always have been stop-gap to a better - a less evil - business model. As engineers, we again failed to stand up against this <i>continued</i> use - for decades now. But, nobody ever agreed for the data to be made available to the State. This is a breach of trust! If anyone says their hands were tied - I say they were tied with money.
- dismalaf 1y ago
  > made available to the State. Guess what? Apple, Microsoft, your credit card company, phone company, etc... all comply with government warrants. At least Google stands up to dictatorships like Russia and China, unlike the others who still do business with them.
  - chetanvaity 1y ago
    True. Its not just Google. And, as you say, its not just the traditional BigTech. Large companies and the State have been in complicit in power grabbing since a long time.
    - dismalaf 1y ago
      Has nothing to do with complicity. Has to do with the fact that countries' laws supercede personal privacy and always have. You can see it where companies like ProtonMail tout the country in which they're located as a competitive privacy advantage.
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  That's the thing though, there is no better business model. We have subscriptions, ads, and donations. 30 years into the internet, with the brightest minds of humanity trying to figure this out, no one has the better business model. The cop out is saying "there has to be a better way." What we really need is a reconciliation and recalibration of what it means to pay for something and why it needs to be done.
helph67 1y ago
> the worst thing Google has done is be the ultimate fruition of the ad model Of course they are ALWAYS tracking you... https://www.techradar.com/news/nearly-half-of-all-online-trackers-are-from-google https://www.techradar.com/news/nearly-half-of-all-online-tra...
terribleperson 1y ago
I've been thinking lately that the proliferation of ad-supported services, as well as venture capital supported services (free while they look for a way to monetize) is an overall bad thing. If big companies are giving stuff away for free for 5 years, or a decade, or more, it's hard for any business to develop selling that stuff. It's hard to even justify the idea of selling that stuff, or similar stuff, when someone else is giving it away for free. It's unlikely that any charity will develop, giving these things away for free, because no one recognizes that is even charity. It prevents governments from recognizing that there are niches for fundamental services that have developed that could reasonably be provided by the government or by a regulated utility. I don't know what to do about companies giving things away for free and people and even society becoming dependent on it. It doesn't seem like it's going to stop on it's own.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
  If you think it's bad now, imagine five years from now when people have lost the skill to do their job from scratch or read something longer than a bullet point. A lot of people will have no choice but to pay whatever price AI costs.
seec 1y ago
To be fair, email was not something that people really paid for, ever. It was bundled with your internet subscription service, at least in France, this is how the vast majority of people got their first email address (some still use it, some accounts being over 20 years old). What Google did was actually provide a better service at no added cost, so technically "free" competing with already "free" (you were paying for it in the internet subscription but since it is bundled, there was no way to offload the cost anyway). The reason I got my google account was bigger storage (1GB was a lot back then), bigger joint files support and just better webmail overall. To get your Gmail there was even a waiting list if I'm not wrong, it was just that much better! Nowadays things are a bit different since email has become something everybody relies on instead of just a new cheaper way to communicate, so the case could be made that it should be paid for. But at this point everybody would go back to their provider supplied address. The rest of Google stuff was built with ADS money but the thing is that they kind of stand on their own nowadays. Plenty of businesses use their suite and regular users having access for free is a nice side effect. I do agree that it's a kind of distorted competition since you can't really compete with all the "free" money Google is getting. But what are you going to do? I feel like most things in the world got there by not playing by the rules. I do wish it was a more even playing field, but at least Google is providing a lot of value unlike Apple that makes you pay for subpar stuff and still find a way to abuse the rules in a worse way. Some Google properties like Maps have no alternative that is on the same level and not even Apple with all its money has gotten close (today's Apple is seriously incompetent but that's another story). The problem is at the core of internet economics, the network/scaling effects are so huge that it feels like it should basically be a public utility. Not unlike a national train network, it would be wasteful to build multiple parallel tracks and have them compete. As for YouTube, I feel that's actually the thing that is the least legitimate. If it weren't "free", I wouldn't pay for much of the content on there, much of it being low quality entertainment and a lot of the good stuff competing for funding from other media businesses. The problem is that payment isn't really a solved problem on the internet, I can't buy a single video for say, 1€, as I would for a single baguette. So, the incentive is to bundle everything into a subscription indiscriminately. At least the deal is better for content producers than it is for music subscription services. It feels like much of the web is being held back by the lack of true innovation in the financial sector, that are really happy to take a cut from every subscription and thus have no real incentive to provide micro transactions that could support another type of economy for the web.

chetanvaity 1y ago

When we used to talk about the data-collection for various reasons - but primarily for ad-targetting and later personlization purposes, we always were quite concerned. The data-collection felt very wrong. But, we kinda collectively sighed and allowed it, thinking ads are a necessary evil. First of all, as engineers, this is a cop-out. Even if we grant ads as a necessary evil, this should always have been stop-gap to a better - a less evil - business model. As engineers, we again failed to stand up against this <i>continued</i> use - for decades now. But, nobody ever agreed for the data to be made available to the State. This is a breach of trust! If anyone says their hands were tied - I say they were tied with money.

dismalaf 1y ago
> made available to the State. Guess what? Apple, Microsoft, your credit card company, phone company, etc... all comply with government warrants. At least Google stands up to dictatorships like Russia and China, unlike the others who still do business with them.
- chetanvaity 1y ago
  True. Its not just Google. And, as you say, its not just the traditional BigTech. Large companies and the State have been in complicit in power grabbing since a long time.
  - dismalaf 1y ago
    Has nothing to do with complicity. Has to do with the fact that countries' laws supercede personal privacy and always have. You can see it where companies like ProtonMail tout the country in which they're located as a competitive privacy advantage.
Workaccount2 1y ago
That's the thing though, there is no better business model. We have subscriptions, ads, and donations. 30 years into the internet, with the brightest minds of humanity trying to figure this out, no one has the better business model. The cop out is saying "there has to be a better way." What we really need is a reconciliation and recalibration of what it means to pay for something and why it needs to be done.

helph67 1y ago

> the worst thing Google has done is be the ultimate fruition of the ad model Of course they are ALWAYS tracking you... https://www.techradar.com/news/nearly-half-of-all-online-trackers-are-from-google https://www.techradar.com/news/nearly-half-of-all-online-tra...

terribleperson 1y ago

I've been thinking lately that the proliferation of ad-supported services, as well as venture capital supported services (free while they look for a way to monetize) is an overall bad thing. If big companies are giving stuff away for free for 5 years, or a decade, or more, it's hard for any business to develop selling that stuff. It's hard to even justify the idea of selling that stuff, or similar stuff, when someone else is giving it away for free. It's unlikely that any charity will develop, giving these things away for free, because no one recognizes that is even charity. It prevents governments from recognizing that there are niches for fundamental services that have developed that could reasonably be provided by the government or by a regulated utility. I don't know what to do about companies giving things away for free and people and even society becoming dependent on it. It doesn't seem like it's going to stop on it's own.

add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
If you think it's bad now, imagine five years from now when people have lost the skill to do their job from scratch or read something longer than a bullet point. A lot of people will have no choice but to pay whatever price AI costs.

seec 1y ago

To be fair, email was not something that people really paid for, ever. It was bundled with your internet subscription service, at least in France, this is how the vast majority of people got their first email address (some still use it, some accounts being over 20 years old). What Google did was actually provide a better service at no added cost, so technically "free" competing with already "free" (you were paying for it in the internet subscription but since it is bundled, there was no way to offload the cost anyway). The reason I got my google account was bigger storage (1GB was a lot back then), bigger joint files support and just better webmail overall. To get your Gmail there was even a waiting list if I'm not wrong, it was just that much better! Nowadays things are a bit different since email has become something everybody relies on instead of just a new cheaper way to communicate, so the case could be made that it should be paid for. But at this point everybody would go back to their provider supplied address. The rest of Google stuff was built with ADS money but the thing is that they kind of stand on their own nowadays. Plenty of businesses use their suite and regular users having access for free is a nice side effect. I do agree that it's a kind of distorted competition since you can't really compete with all the "free" money Google is getting. But what are you going to do? I feel like most things in the world got there by not playing by the rules. I do wish it was a more even playing field, but at least Google is providing a lot of value unlike Apple that makes you pay for subpar stuff and still find a way to abuse the rules in a worse way. Some Google properties like Maps have no alternative that is on the same level and not even Apple with all its money has gotten close (today's Apple is seriously incompetent but that's another story). The problem is at the core of internet economics, the network/scaling effects are so huge that it feels like it should basically be a public utility. Not unlike a national train network, it would be wasteful to build multiple parallel tracks and have them compete. As for YouTube, I feel that's actually the thing that is the least legitimate. If it weren't "free", I wouldn't pay for much of the content on there, much of it being low quality entertainment and a lot of the good stuff competing for funding from other media businesses. The problem is that payment isn't really a solved problem on the internet, I can't buy a single video for say, 1€, as I would for a single baguette. So, the incentive is to bundle everything into a subscription indiscriminately. At least the deal is better for content producers than it is for music subscription services. It feels like much of the web is being held back by the lack of true innovation in the financial sector, that are really happy to take a cut from every subscription and thus have no real incentive to provide micro transactions that could support another type of economy for the web.