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"If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold." For me personally, this is the most stupid statement since the "war on
by bookwormAT 14y ago
"If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold."
For me personally, this is the most stupid statement since the "war on terror" nonesense from a few years ago. The reason this is so stupid is because there are almost zero services that you do not pay for in order to use them, and Google makes none of these services.
I pay Google with ad impressions so I can use their search engine. Google can turn these ad impressions into money, so it is as good as dollars to them.
In order for me keep paying Google, they have to make sure I want to keep using the product. Just like any other subscription model.
It is also wrong that if you pay through ad impressions, you can expect less quality or service than if you pay money. There is no evidence that this is the case, and it makes no sense at all. There are plenty of cases where a company does not support an application after users payed for it, or customers complaining about bad support for products they spent money on.
Finally, you are never the "product being sold". First, that would be slavery and a crime. Second, I'm sitting here writing this with my free will, so obvisously nobody has sold me yet.
Google's first priority is still to get users to use their products and be happy with them. Just like it is with any other paid service out there.
- dotborg 14y agothat's very cool story, but I did not see anything like that in google terms of use: "we provide search, you click ads" actually it's more like: "we provide search, all informations about you belong to us!" so "customer" is not the most appropiate word here, how about "slave"?
- dreamdu5t 14y agoHow about "person who consciously chooses to use Google's website." You don't have to use Google. You don't "own" information you freely give to people.
- rjbond3rd 14y agoOkay, but you're addressing only the ideal scenario of beneficially matching buyer and seller, where the product user is buffered by (honest broker) Google and thus not yet revealed to the advertiser. But once you cross over (via clicking), whatever fraction of your digital identity is effectively sold to third parties who keep packaging your identity further upstream, in very durable ways. Now you exist in many data warehouses, who are eventually integrating the various fractional identities into a good picture. And it is no longer hypothetical to have those identities connected to your real identity. I do believe Google is an honest broker but we have no reason to trust third parties.
- opinali 14y agoInspired by your reply: https://plus.google.com/115308028547191805295/posts/TSpjqpVYW8s https://plus.google.com/115308028547191805295/posts/TSpjqpVY...