5 ms·

Many people would not have found this cleaner without Googling, reading reviews, etc. While that may not be an ad directly, it's part of the marketing budget. S

by m0rde 1y ago

Many people would not have found this cleaner without Googling, reading reviews, etc. While that may not be an ad directly, it's part of the marketing budget. So what needs to change?

t_mann 1y ago
We've had markets for all sorts of domestic help for centuries before we had computers. Perhaps more relatable, think about how your parents might have found such help.
- accrual 1y ago
  Yep. And sometimes a nearby independant contractor who advertises once or twice a week on Facebook or in the local newspaper is going to provide a better service experience than the one blasting TV commercials on the local channels.
  - Swizec 1y ago
    The nearby contractor who gets all their work through referrals is by definition better than the one who needs to blast TV ads. The best people are basically never on the market.
    - bee_rider 1y ago
      Not really by definition necessarily. But yes, it does seem very likely that referrals are the stronger signal. In some sparser places there might also only be a couple contractors working anyway. Might be able to get suggestions just by asking around wherever you get permits.
- hedora 1y ago
  Craigslist briefly filled this role. Before that, there were classified ads in papers. Those were lightly vetted by the local newspaper. Also, with a warrant, the police could generally track down the person that placed the ad, which broke a lot of bullshit scams. (Like house sitters that don’t exist, but are instead getting lists of people that will be out of town.)
- Dlanv 1y ago
  Why does that matter? You can still do that. Nothing is stopping you from finding a local cleaner and negotiating the price, like our parents did. People just don't want to do that
  - califool 1y ago
    You get it. A couple phrases I live by (taught to me by the haggling parents generation); "you never know unless you ask" and "the worst they can say is, NO" These don't need to just apply to goods and services either. They have lead to very interesting and life altering experiences that wouldn't have happened if I didn't ask a one sentence question.
  - johannes1234321 1y ago
    No, I can't do it that way anymore: my local paper doesn't have classified ads anymore. There are only different online versions, which are a lot cheaper and globally accessible, thus have a lot more fraud.
- wat10000 1y ago
  That tells me that modern advertising isn’t making things more expensive, otherwise companies that spend money on it would be crushed by companies that stick with the old ways and can undercut them.
washmyelbows 1y ago
I mean, the person is looking for a cleaner in their area. If all of the cleaning businesses in the area slash their marketing budget to 0, the author is not going to fail to find a cleaner. All the marketing budget is doing is funneling people who want cleaning to one cleaning company over another.
- gruez 1y ago
  >If all of the cleaning businesses in the area slash their marketing budget to 0, the author is not going to fail to find a cleaner. You're right, they'll find whatever incumbent cleaner instead. A marketing ban is something that all incumbents would love, because they don't need to attract more customers whereas marketing is basically the only way that upstarts can get a foothold.
  - owisd 1y ago
    When Google has the monopoly on marketing of cleaning companies in your area, from a consumer standpoint it’s effectively the same as if one cleaning company has the local monopoly. The way to win is to pay Google a bigger cut than your competitors, so Google just takes the incumbency premium as its marketing fee instead of the cleaning company.
- accrual 1y ago
  > All the marketing budget is doing is funneling people who want cleaning to one cleaning company over another. Yes, and anecdotally I've heard of better experiences using services that do not appear on the top search results. The reason being that the top results have already captured the local market and so are less incentivized to respond quickly, accept the job or task, or offer a better rate. They already have their business and may not need yours.
- hedora 1y ago
  You’d be surprised how hard it is to find reliable help in our area. Reputation based platforms are pretty much the only way to go around here. (Yelp barely counts at this point.)
ocdtrekkie 1y ago
The problem is that Google operates both the buy side and the sell side of the monopoly-scale ad platform. They're the only party in the transaction who sees what both parties are willing to pay (imagine on eBay knowing what everyone's max bid was), and sets the algorithm to maximize their take from all parties. They've already lost the case with this, and are currently trying to prevent what needs to change: Google must be forced to divest large portions of its ad business to reintroduce competition in the marketing space.
- gruez 1y ago
  >They're the only party in the transaction who sees what both parties are willing to pay (imagine on eBay knowing what everyone's max bid was), and sets the algorithm to maximize their take from all parties. Is there any evidence of them abusing that knowledge? Or was the lawsuit over them having a monopoly and/or anticompetitive practices?
  - ocdtrekkie 1y ago
    I mean, the fact they abused that was illegal and anticompetive, yes. This is not a "they are big" problem, it's a "they're big and doing illegal price fixing with it". Also, note that Google was caught intentionally deleting evidence they were ordered by the court to retain.
    - gruez 1y ago
      >I mean, the fact they abused that was illegal and anticompetive, yes. This is not a "they are big" problem, it's a "they're big and doing illegal price fixing with it". Which case is this?
      - ocdtrekkie 1y ago
        This is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2023) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_... in particular. (Note the separate case which determined Google is running an illegally anticompetitive operation in Search was a separate case which can be referred to as "United States v. Google LLC (2020)" and there is a third case they lost recently, Epic Games Inc. v. Google LLC, which determined Google operates an illegal monopoly with Android as well.)
__MatrixMan__ 1y ago
If a buyer has access to the stored knowledge of trusted peers--peers who have knowledge of trustworthy sellers--supply can meet demand without involving an arms race between predatory middlemen. The modern web was designed by predatory middlemen who want a cut of transactions they otherwise have no business being involved in. It's a textbook case of rentier capitalism. So what needs to change is that we need to identify the design decisions made by those middlemen, rip them out root and branch, and fix the gaps with something that takes as an input the trust graph of the users so that the only way the middlemen can stay relevant is to personally gain the trust of each user whose transaction they've gotten in the middle of, and we need to publish the result as a protocol, not a platform, so it can be used without us (the authors of the protocol) being at risk of becoming the problem we're trying to solve.
- gruez 1y ago
  >It's a textbook case of rentier capitalism. I don't get it, is google blocking people from making or requesting word of mouth referrals? Or are people switching to google ads because it's more convenient? It just sounds like you're using "rentier capitalism" to describe companies you don't like.
  - __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
    Well yes, that is my main reason for disliking companies. And yes, google weighs in on browser standards in myriad ways which gives themseves and companies like them the ability to elevate the preferences of their customers above the preferences of their users. It would be nice to block them from doing so, but the real fix is to give those users something better to use. Not much has gone into using technology to amplify the innate peer-to-peer trust/distrust mechanisms that we've spent millenia evolving such that they scale to the demands of our times, and quite a lot (thanks to google and friends) has gone into suppressing them.
    - gruez 1y ago
      >Well yes, that is my main reason for disliking companies. And yes, google weighs in on browser standards in myriad ways which gives themseves and companies like them the ability to elevate the preferences of their customers above the preferences of their users. What does google's control over web standards have to do with the death of word of mouth referrals? You might not like FLoC or webusb but those aren't the reasons why everyone doesn't bother with word of mouth referrals to hire cleaners.
jghn 1y ago
I live in an urban area. Most people I know have a cleaner. Most of those people, including myself, found their cleaner via word of mouth. No services, no googling, no ads.

by m0rde 1y ago

Many people would not have found this cleaner without Googling, reading reviews, etc. While that may not be an ad directly, it's part of the marketing budget. So what needs to change?

t_mann 1y ago

We've had markets for all sorts of domestic help for centuries before we had computers. Perhaps more relatable, think about how your parents might have found such help.

accrual 1y ago
Yep. And sometimes a nearby independant contractor who advertises once or twice a week on Facebook or in the local newspaper is going to provide a better service experience than the one blasting TV commercials on the local channels.
- Swizec 1y ago
  The nearby contractor who gets all their work through referrals is by definition better than the one who needs to blast TV ads. The best people are basically never on the market.
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    Not really by definition necessarily. But yes, it does seem very likely that referrals are the stronger signal. In some sparser places there might also only be a couple contractors working anyway. Might be able to get suggestions just by asking around wherever you get permits.
hedora 1y ago
Craigslist briefly filled this role. Before that, there were classified ads in papers. Those were lightly vetted by the local newspaper. Also, with a warrant, the police could generally track down the person that placed the ad, which broke a lot of bullshit scams. (Like house sitters that don’t exist, but are instead getting lists of people that will be out of town.)
Dlanv 1y ago
Why does that matter? You can still do that. Nothing is stopping you from finding a local cleaner and negotiating the price, like our parents did. People just don't want to do that
- califool 1y ago
  You get it. A couple phrases I live by (taught to me by the haggling parents generation); "you never know unless you ask" and "the worst they can say is, NO" These don't need to just apply to goods and services either. They have lead to very interesting and life altering experiences that wouldn't have happened if I didn't ask a one sentence question.
- johannes1234321 1y ago
  No, I can't do it that way anymore: my local paper doesn't have classified ads anymore. There are only different online versions, which are a lot cheaper and globally accessible, thus have a lot more fraud.
wat10000 1y ago
That tells me that modern advertising isn’t making things more expensive, otherwise companies that spend money on it would be crushed by companies that stick with the old ways and can undercut them.

washmyelbows 1y ago

I mean, the person is looking for a cleaner in their area. If all of the cleaning businesses in the area slash their marketing budget to 0, the author is not going to fail to find a cleaner. All the marketing budget is doing is funneling people who want cleaning to one cleaning company over another.

gruez 1y ago
>If all of the cleaning businesses in the area slash their marketing budget to 0, the author is not going to fail to find a cleaner. You're right, they'll find whatever incumbent cleaner instead. A marketing ban is something that all incumbents would love, because they don't need to attract more customers whereas marketing is basically the only way that upstarts can get a foothold.
- owisd 1y ago
  When Google has the monopoly on marketing of cleaning companies in your area, from a consumer standpoint it’s effectively the same as if one cleaning company has the local monopoly. The way to win is to pay Google a bigger cut than your competitors, so Google just takes the incumbency premium as its marketing fee instead of the cleaning company.
accrual 1y ago
> All the marketing budget is doing is funneling people who want cleaning to one cleaning company over another. Yes, and anecdotally I've heard of better experiences using services that do not appear on the top search results. The reason being that the top results have already captured the local market and so are less incentivized to respond quickly, accept the job or task, or offer a better rate. They already have their business and may not need yours.
hedora 1y ago
You’d be surprised how hard it is to find reliable help in our area. Reputation based platforms are pretty much the only way to go around here. (Yelp barely counts at this point.)

ocdtrekkie 1y ago

The problem is that Google operates both the buy side and the sell side of the monopoly-scale ad platform. They're the only party in the transaction who sees what both parties are willing to pay (imagine on eBay knowing what everyone's max bid was), and sets the algorithm to maximize their take from all parties. They've already lost the case with this, and are currently trying to prevent what needs to change: Google must be forced to divest large portions of its ad business to reintroduce competition in the marketing space.

gruez 1y ago
>They're the only party in the transaction who sees what both parties are willing to pay (imagine on eBay knowing what everyone's max bid was), and sets the algorithm to maximize their take from all parties. Is there any evidence of them abusing that knowledge? Or was the lawsuit over them having a monopoly and/or anticompetitive practices?
- ocdtrekkie 1y ago
  I mean, the fact they abused that was illegal and anticompetive, yes. This is not a "they are big" problem, it's a "they're big and doing illegal price fixing with it". Also, note that Google was caught intentionally deleting evidence they were ordered by the court to retain.
  - gruez 1y ago
    >I mean, the fact they abused that was illegal and anticompetive, yes. This is not a "they are big" problem, it's a "they're big and doing illegal price fixing with it". Which case is this?
    - ocdtrekkie 1y ago
      This is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2023) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_... in particular. (Note the separate case which determined Google is running an illegally anticompetitive operation in Search was a separate case which can be referred to as "United States v. Google LLC (2020)" and there is a third case they lost recently, Epic Games Inc. v. Google LLC, which determined Google operates an illegal monopoly with Android as well.)

__MatrixMan__ 1y ago

If a buyer has access to the stored knowledge of trusted peers--peers who have knowledge of trustworthy sellers--supply can meet demand without involving an arms race between predatory middlemen. The modern web was designed by predatory middlemen who want a cut of transactions they otherwise have no business being involved in. It's a textbook case of rentier capitalism. So what needs to change is that we need to identify the design decisions made by those middlemen, rip them out root and branch, and fix the gaps with something that takes as an input the trust graph of the users so that the only way the middlemen can stay relevant is to personally gain the trust of each user whose transaction they've gotten in the middle of, and we need to publish the result as a protocol, not a platform, so it can be used without us (the authors of the protocol) being at risk of becoming the problem we're trying to solve.

gruez 1y ago
>It's a textbook case of rentier capitalism. I don't get it, is google blocking people from making or requesting word of mouth referrals? Or are people switching to google ads because it's more convenient? It just sounds like you're using "rentier capitalism" to describe companies you don't like.
- __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
  Well yes, that is my main reason for disliking companies. And yes, google weighs in on browser standards in myriad ways which gives themseves and companies like them the ability to elevate the preferences of their customers above the preferences of their users. It would be nice to block them from doing so, but the real fix is to give those users something better to use. Not much has gone into using technology to amplify the innate peer-to-peer trust/distrust mechanisms that we've spent millenia evolving such that they scale to the demands of our times, and quite a lot (thanks to google and friends) has gone into suppressing them.
  - gruez 1y ago
    >Well yes, that is my main reason for disliking companies. And yes, google weighs in on browser standards in myriad ways which gives themseves and companies like them the ability to elevate the preferences of their customers above the preferences of their users. What does google's control over web standards have to do with the death of word of mouth referrals? You might not like FLoC or webusb but those aren't the reasons why everyone doesn't bother with word of mouth referrals to hire cleaners.

jghn 1y ago

I live in an urban area. Most people I know have a cleaner. Most of those people, including myself, found their cleaner via word of mouth. No services, no googling, no ads.