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If they are using it to advertise to you, then it isn't "free" in my book.
by j_col 14y ago
If they are using it to advertise to you, then it isn't "free" in my book.
- petercooper 14y agoThough by that measure, HN isn't "free."
- j_col 14y agoHN is a website. Chrome is a browser. Not sure I get the comparison?
- EwanToo 14y agoWhat's wrong with the comparison? Both are services (Chrome's a lot more than use an executable, does sync'd data, etc), that you don't exchange money with in return for functionality.
- j_col 14y agoA web browser allows access to all websites (broad reach). HN is just one website on the web (narrow reach). Pretty clear to me why this is a bad comparison, just interested to know why the OP thought otherwise.
- anglebracket 14y agoI don't see what reach has to do with making HN "free" and Chrome "not free" if they both use space in their interfaces to deliver advertisements. Arguably, Chrome would be more "free" since HN displays its advertisements more prominently than Chrome's and they masquerade as user-generated content. Is there more to your metric?
- j_col 14y agoI never claimed that HN was free. I simply said that comparing it to Chrome was invalid.
- anglebracket 14y agoSorry, I should have read the parent post more carefully. However, I still think that's it's valid to compare Chrome and HN strictly on "freeness" regardless of whether or not they're the same kind of product. We're talking about advertisements and the advertisement's only one one page. The scope of the actual advertisement is roughly the same as it is on HN. The fact that an advertisement in the default tab of a browser is likely to have more viewers is irrelevant.
- KaoruAoiShiho 14y agoThey're both communication tools.
- msvan 14y agoOpen source shouldn't be considered free either. People put in countless man hours working on open source projects, and giving something back in return should be common etiquette. My point is, you always pay for something. In the case of Chrome, surely you don't believe that Google has no self-interest in building Chrome?
- j_col 14y ago> Open source shouldn't be considered free either. People put in countless man hours working on open source projects, and giving something back in return should be common etiquette. I have an open source project. I don't advertise on it. I give it away freely and happily, knowing I gain no revenue from it. > My point is, you always pay for something. In the case of Chrome, surely you don't believe that Google has no self-interest in building Chrome? It's clear that they have a self interest.