18 ms·

Free works

262 points by mh_ 14y ago

yawn 14y ago
"Our best option is to avoid supporting and using proprietary monocultures." Like the App Store?
- roc 14y ago
  And this is really where I have an issue with people posing the proprietary nature of Facebook, Google+, Twitter, et al as "A Problem". People throw their content into these services, time and again. Often doing so as they're suffering whatever pain we hypothesize is implicit in leaving a prior service. (However much pain it did or did not cause, to have everyone's stuff locked up in a MySpace silo, it did not stop anyone from putting all their stuff right back into Facebook's silo.) And they do this in other contexts: no-one much frets about proprietary saved-game file formats. Or the release of new console platforms that end support for entire libraries of games. So clearly there's a line. And it seems a reasonable one to draw. Because who really cares about their old saved games, or a game they hadn't played, or mobile app they hadn't so much as launched, in months? It's certainly nice as things approach the open/internet ideal. But there's clearly an entire class of computing where people do cost/benefit considerations with an emphasis on immediate entertainment value, rather than long-term computing value. And people have repeatedly demonstrated a desire to treat social networks more like consoles than even mobile platforms, let alone PC computing platforms. So why do geeks persist in seeing "A Problem" here? Let alone a problem that, if solved, would garner any attention for having presented a solution?
blndcat 14y ago
Not sure why there isn't more of a discussion going on, given the uproar over Reader, I found the whole article insightful but especially the end. The concluding 3 paragraphs are like the twist at the end of The Sixth Sense.
- cbs 14y ago
  The concluding 3 paragraphs are like the twist at the end of The Sixth Sense. Yup. This guy did a fantastic job articulating what many others have just given up on trying to. Those of us who voice trepidation are usually marginalized as jealous and/or haters. See: http://xkcd.com/743/ http://xkcd.com/743/
mustpax 14y ago
The analogy to predatory pricing doesn't work because in the brick and mortar world, you drive out your competitors so that you may raise your prices. So the price is said to be artificially lowered. In the software world, free software products stay free even after they have become the dominant platform. The price is not artificially lowered to zero; at scale the cost of operating a free service is lower than the advertising revenue generated by it. This is actually the "natural" price for the product.
- wmf 14y ago
  Facebook effectively raised prices via promoted posts. Google Apps is no longer free. These may be exceptions, though.
tolmasky 14y ago
I see no difference between Google Reader shutting down and Apple abandoning the Mac Pro. This has nothing to do with free: it has to do with a failed product like any other, plain and simple. People don't see Google Reader as a failed product because they like it and "a lot of people use it". But that "a lot" is in absolute terms, not relative ones. The reality is that not enough people use RSS for it to matter at Google scale. Even if everyone currently using it were to start paying for it tomorrow, it would be a drop in the bucket of Google profits. Reader had it's chance, and it failed to get enough traction, period. The "free" part is just a distraction in this conversation, Reader makes no sense as a product for Google at any (reasonable) price. This story would have gone down exactly the same had Google offered reader at a price that matched the other competitors at the time: they probably still would have won, and still would have ended up shutting it down. This is exactly the same as how having the Mac Pro line would be incredibly lucrative for you or me, but it just doesn't matter for Apple. The margins are through the roof on that thing, and in a lot of ways its quite possibly the perfect product: a 3 year old machine that commands the same price it did 3 years ago. But again, not enough people want it for it to matter at Apple scale. If Apple could double the price and maintain the same sale numbers of the Mac Pro, it still wouldn't be worth it for them. If anything, we should see this as a really healthy market correction. Its good for Google to realize that this isn't worth their time so they can focus their resources on things only they can do (like cars that drive themselves and whatnot) and leave these tasks for the rest of us where these user numbers and profits are meaningful.
- youngerdryas 14y ago
  You can still buy a Mac Pro. Google could have had Reader live on because they are, you know, "open". Except they want everyone to use Google+.
  - tolmasky 14y ago
    What does this have to do with anything? Google is a business like any other. Google is not dropping Reader because they are secretly closed and nefarious, they are dropping it because no one uses it (again, relatively speaking). If people actually used RSS then they'd feel compelled to keep it, whether priced or not, because it would be make business sense to keep it around. I guarantee you that if RSS had Facebook's user count, they'd be banging that RSS drum like crazy. But it doesn't, and Google is not a charity. Whether you believe them to be "open" or not (meaningless statement), being "open" certainly does not commit you to supporting arbitrary protocols indefinitely for the good of the world, especially ones that most people don't use. RSS had its shot, it just can't compete in today's web. And we'll see for just how long you can still buy the Mac Pro.
kurtvarner 14y ago
Some solid points here, but I gotta disagree with this one... If a product grows huge quickly, which almost always requires it to be free, it will probably be acquired for a lot of money. Free products that don’t grow quickly enough can usually die with an “acquihire”, which lets everyone save face and ensures that the investors get something out of the deal. I think this way of thinking is the product of a very frothy market over the last few years. Now, I'm not one to scream series A crunch from the mountain tops, but it's unrealistic to think that thousands of these startups that "don't grow quickly enough" will be acquihired. In 2012 Google and Facebook combined to make 21 acquisitions. That doesn't put much of a dent in the number of failing startups. And with the Formspring shutdown announcement last week, it seems that even companies that have achieved impressive scale (30M users in since 2010) cannot rely on being bought.
- niggler 14y ago
  "Now, I'm not one to scream series A crunch from the mountain tops" People _are_ screaming it from mountain view
- pflats 14y ago
  I don't know enough about how things went to agree or disagree. I'm still amazed at how many "aqui-hires" there are in the industry. How many companies that have made it to a solid Series A round have fallen flat on their face? Formspring seems like a red herring to me; everything I heard about it in the real world (as a high-school teacher) was toxic. Of all the online bullying issues I had to deal with, more involved Formspring than even Facebook. The anonymous thing was a double-edged sword.
pbreit 14y ago
OP is trying to make it seem like offering web services for free is rule-breaking or even borderline illegal. This is not so. It is not predatory pricing to price something at its marginal cost (which for web services is near-zero). The OP also seems to be unaware of TV, radio, etc.
- lmm 14y ago
  It's predatory to price something below the level that's possible for a viable independent business. It's bad for customers in tech for exactly the same reasons as in any other industry. /used to work for a business that had to compete with twilio.
  - pbreit 14y ago
    That's a definition that suits your view but is not commonly shared. The item typically needs to be sold below cost and there needs to be intent to drive out competitors. Neither is true here.
    - recoiledsnake 14y ago
      >The item typically needs to be sold below cost and there needs to be intent to drive out competitors. Neither is true here. Neither? If Google Reader was spun off as an independent company, how would it pay for the hosting and bandwidth costs?
      - pbreit 14y ago
        I'm not sure the point of your hypothetical.
      - pbreit 14y ago
        I'm not sure the point of your hypothetical since it's irrelevant.
    - pinaceae 14y ago
      ? if you give something away that a loss because it actually costs money to produce/provide, like Google did with the Reader service - it doesn't fit the definition? what a crazy piece of logic. google destroyed the market for smaller RSS-app vendors by providing a service for free, at a loss. was it on purpose? or just stupidity? what exactly does it change? the ecosystem around RSS has been ruined, maybe beyond repair. because open and don't be evil and blah.
elomarns 14y ago
The golden rule is there's no golden rules. Everything can work, and everything has its advantages and flaws. You just need to know where you're, and have a strategy to succeed based on your business model.
orangethirty 14y ago
Writing software is not cheap, or even close to free. Even if you can host it for a low price, there are still other associated costs that people ever talk about. Mostly the time spent trying to win the freemium lottery (and getting acquihired).
angryasian 14y ago
I think author fails to recognize paid services that eventually fail because of the barrier is never able to become a sustainable business. Wouldn't it be worse by paying for something then losing it ? There are plenty of free offerings that are able to become sustainable businesses through various business models. I think the distinction is rather the choices of the founder + acceleration of growth vs paid / free model. edit: Every business that deals with some sort of digital goods today has to compete with free.. music, movies, games, etc. So maybe we should all just sit around and say how unfair it is rather than to figure out how to compete. Its a completely ridiculous argument
deleted 14y ago
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MatthewPhillips 14y ago
I don't usually upvote Marco.org articles but this one was very good. Before Reader there was a vibrant (niche, but vibrant) market for RSS readers. Reader decimated that market and arguably killed innovation in RSS altogether. I remember when PubSubHubBub and RSS Cloud came out and wondered why anyone would bother implementing them for feeds when all that mattered was if Google Reader was fetching your stuff fast enough (it was). It's going to be interesting to see how things develop in the wake of the shutdown. There's already a mad rush to provide alternatives, and a bunch of open source readers are in heavy development (I'm using Selfoss personally: https://github.com/SSilence/selfoss https://github.com/SSilence/selfoss). It might turn out that Reader shutting down is the best thing that could have happened.
tunesmith 14y ago
I think this argument is disorganized. It reads as if he's arguing for free in favor of paid (which I don't really agree with), but I think he's actually arguing for open in favor of closed (which I do agree with). The predatory pricing thing is a problem for a lot of people. I've most recently come across it with a friend trying to start his graphic-design business who was upset about discovering that "99 designs" website. Before that it was a bass player for our band that was strenuously principled that we should never accept a gig "for exposure", and should also not play with musicians that had a history of accepting free gigs, since it was "disrespectful" to the players that were trying to make a living at it. While I do agree that there are moderating counterpoints to both, they do bring up relevant concerns. Meanwhile, you have Radiohead and Nine-Inch-Nails, both of whom experimented with releasing their music for free way back when. When it "worked", everyone championed how it was the way forward for the music industry - how music was a "service", how the recordings should be loss-leader marketing expenses for the paid service of live performances. Overlooking the people who were more focused on the recording side of things, and the fact that those two bands had built-in fanbases. Years later, both bands are moving on from the "free" model, while so many people are misguidedly releasing their tracks for free that indie songwriters are paying money to even get their signed-up fans to listen to their new tracks. I'm not so sure that the conclusion is that free works, as it is accepting that free works by being predatory and that there can be consequences that hurt others. And it isn't exactly ethical to accept a negative consequence on behalf of someone else. This is not to say that going free is wrong - sometimes there is a bigger picture that might make it worthwhile for all (for instance, many open source techs that have created new marketplaces that have enabled many people to make a living). But the argument does not reduce down to something as simple as free works, therefore free is good.
- roc 14y ago
  > "I think this argument is disorganized. It reads as if he's arguing for free in favor of paid (which I don't really agree with), but I think he's actually arguing for open in favor of closed (which I do agree with)." That was my thought. He opened by talking about Free, because Reader closing and Mailbox being acquired stirred up a lot of the usual anti-Free-Service backlash. And he discusses free, I think, just to underline that it does work. But I think he went into the weeds (and clearly lost much of the readership there) in discussing why. Which is strange, as I don't think even the anti-Free crowd takes issue with whether Free works and they certainly seem to all understand that it does work. And, ultimately, the "why" part is irrelevant to where he winds up, which is simply that open protocols should be preferred to proprietary ones.
ender7 14y ago
All right, so I have a slight bone to pick with Marco. This is actually a fairly well-written article and I'm glad that people are engaging with it elsewhere in the comments, but I'm just a bit confused that he's choosing to write it now, and about Google Reader than about, say, Reading List. Remember? That product that Apple released for free and that was a direct competitor to Instapaper? Or iCloud, that product that Apple released for free and that was a direct competitor to Dropbox? Or Ping, that product that Apple released for free and then shitcanned after not enough people used it? Marco's response to Reading List (and its integration into not only OS X but iOS) wasn't "this is predatory pricing! Regulate!" but instead "this might be good for my product" [1]. So, I don't really know. I didn't use Reader, but I understand that people are upset that it's getting cancelled. That does suck. Of course, this is apparently what everyone deserves for daring to use a free product? But actually it's okay because we'll all be better off because of the great RSS reader renaissance that is upon us? Oh god I can't keep this straight any more. Go find a new RSS reader. RSS appears to have weathered the predation of Facebook, Twitter, and G+ admirably so far; I doubt that its days are numbered. [1] http://www.marco.org/2011/06/06/safari-reader-and-instapaper http://www.marco.org/2011/06/06/safari-reader-and-instapaper
- npsimons 14y ago
  I agree with you in that I have a hunch Marco may be an Apple fanboi; still, as you said, it's a well written article, and one point in particular stands out to me: the fact that people are trying to kill RSS and leave the only options as proprietary-sell-your-personal-information ghettos that could be shut down at a moments notice, and much more effectively. The Internet wasn't built on AOL or IE, and it shouldn't be forced to ad hoc proprietary standards, especially if you have to give up privacy to communicate with people. I'm eternally grateful that Facebook and Google+ haven't supplanted email in my social circles and I can still run my own web and email server.
  - simonh 14y ago
    Who's being forced to anything?
- wonderzombie 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
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mikemoka 14y ago
Lower costs in this market are also something that makes open source possible, I just found two opensource projects inspired by Google Reader and hosted on Google Code, what do you think of them? http://selfoss.aditu.de/ http://selfoss.aditu.de/ http://gobblerss.pommepause.com/screenshot.html http://gobblerss.pommepause.com/screenshot.html
dreamdu5t 14y ago
An entrepreneur is sent to jail for selling widgets. Upon arrival he meets two other businessmen who are locked-up. He asks them, "Why are you here?" The first guy responds, "I sold widgets for more than anyone else, and they jailed me for excessive profits." The second guy responds, "I sold widgets at the same price as everyone else, and they jailed me for price collusion." They ask him, "What'd you do?" The entrepeneur responds, "I sold widgets for lower than anyone else, so they jailed me for predatory pricing!"
- shadowfox 14y ago
  I must confess that this went over my head :( What were you implying, if you would care to explain?
  - dreamdu5t 14y ago
    The article accuses Google of "predatory pricing" and my story is meant to illustrate that any price can be seen as monopolist, collusive, or predatory, and that laws against such things are misguided and reactionary. I might be paraphrasing the story wrong. It's a folk story amongst economists about the absurdity of antitrust regulation. I'm not sure who originated it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing#Criticism
ruswick 14y ago
Rarely if ever do I find myself in agreement with Marco, but he articulates a valid point quite well. Monopolies and effective monopolies are obviously quite detrimental to the web, especially when they fail. But, there is little that can be done about the tendency for monopolies to emerge within the web ecosystem, only to fail. If companies were to charge or advertise heavily from day one, it would effectively preclude any sort of viral, meteoric rise, because the overwhelming number of prospective users would turn their nose up at it. Most companies would never achieve widespread success. On the other hand, a lack of an organized business strategy leaves companies scrambling to devise revenue sources, as is happening with Facebook and their absurd gift card thing. Either one can try to make money and be relegated to obscurity, or one can become popular and end up exasperated at their inability to make money. There is very little opportunity to become both wildly successful and fiscally viable; that is why most companies fail. As a user, I would prefer a lack of business model to a lack of a business: better to have an RSS reader (or social network, or mail client/to-do app) that lacks substancial income for 8 years than one with a direct business model that never gets off the ground.
tlogan 14y ago
And, after WebDav and RSS, IMAP support for Gmail will become "insufficient to support great new features" so it will be decommissioned in favor of a great new API. Just wait...
nickswan 14y ago
Apps like Feedly and NewsBlur were managing to survive before the Google Reader announcement. If you build something good, and market it well, with niche like features - enough people will be happy to pay for it to keep you and the product going.
icebraining 14y ago
It's because of people like Marco Arment, offering their written content for predatory pricing, that the newspaper industry is going bankrupt. Let's illegalize free blogs!
- wmf 14y ago
  That really gave me a laugh, considering that Arment runs The Magazine.
benackles 14y ago
Free works, but for whom? Certainly a lot of companies are doing well by giving away everything, but how long will the acquihire exit strategy remain open? Furthermore, the user is getting absolutely screwed. There have been a lot of notable services that have popped up over the last few years and then some big company came in to pick up the talent and dumped the product and subsequently its users. I've been fortunate to only get screwed twice, first with Gowalla and now with Google Reader. Although I used Google Reader for longer and much more frequently than Gowalla, in a way I feel less screwed (if at all) by Google. Google Reader is a very portable product by its natural connection to RSS. Google has also taken a few important steps towards making data portable for it's millions of users. It took less than a minute to transfer to another service. I'm testing out Feedly for now, but I would rather host my own RSS reader and take control myself. If a consumer product provides adequate data portability the idea of hosting my content for me is something I feel perfectly comfortable doing. My point is its less concerning that everything is free, but more how anti-competitive these services are with my data. If I can at any moment retain control and back up everything or move it over to a competing service, I'm okay with investing time in adopting a free service. However, moving your data between services as they inevitably shutdown does seem like a short term fix. I think Marco's idea for a mirror of the reader API is a great long term solution[1]. For the average user, people would probably opt for a popular host. For people who want to host it themselves (probably a minority), they could do so with ease. [1] http://www.marco.org/2013/03/14/baby-steps-replacing-google-reader http://www.marco.org/2013/03/14/baby-steps-replacing-google-...
downrightmike 14y ago
Stop bitching about reader please.
cromwellian 14y ago
I agree with the article in many respects, but I find there's a giant blind spot that needs addressing given the author. I don't understand how Marco can't view Apple as a proprietary monoculture, and one that is somewhat worse in the sense that you can't clone the features of it without being sued (what if Reader had patents covering it and sued if you tried to create a clone?) Apple frequently force upgrades users and develoeprs, some would say by planned obsolescence. For example, early on in IOS, people built apps that allowed in-app purchases and subscriptions, because Apple had no API for them, so we had a federated, open system for that feature. Then Apple changed their T&C and mandate use of Apple infrastructure to do this, and people now have to resort to hacks (remember Dropbox getting banned because of a link to sign up?) Slowly, the apps were forced onto Apple monoculture services. Basically, when Apple introduces monoculture, it is viewed as a good. It simplifies user experience, etc. But for everyone else, it's somehow bad and evil.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  Apple wants a cut of the money you make. That's it. Dropbox could have a sign up link if they agreed to pay the 30% fee. I do think it's a bit shortsighted, but they don't block open protocols or monopolize services.
  - cromwellian 14y ago
    They don't? Apple early on blocked alternative Mail clients and Google Voice or other apps which "duplicate" functionality builtin apps provide. They relaxed those rules now, but under the original rules, Google Maps would have been banned.
    - rimantas 14y ago
      And you couldn't have any third party apps on an original iPhone. So?
- chipotle_coyote 14y ago
  I'd argue that a lot of us in the "Apple fan community," including Marco, understand that there are negatives to Apple's approach to, well, nearly everything. It's apparently very easy for people to pick up on the approval we give Apple while glossing over the criticism, I suspect in part because we don't tend to see iOS's locked-down nature as the existential crisis that, well, Hacker News readers tend to sometimes see -- and because we don't see a problem with something that they see as a deal-breaker, then, well, we must never say anything bad about Apple. In fact, we often do. Having said that, there's at least a practical difference in the kind of "monoculture" that the iOS App Store represents and the kind of monoculture that Google Reader represented: while Apple may change the terms, it's highly unlikely they'd ever make the App Store just go away. I'm not sure there are any commercial products that were in the App Store and were then removed because of a change in Apple's TOS rather than for a violation that they should have been aware of when they submitted it. There are some high-profile cases of stupid rejections, to be sure, but that's not the same thing. And, it's at least worth noting that a major difference there is that Apple derives revenue from their services. Say what you will about them, but that's a pretty good incentive to not just take their ball and go home. Google Reader didn't bring in any revenue, and that's what ultimately doomed it. (as in beer) does work, but not indefinitely.
caycep 14y ago
the one thing that i haven't seen mentioned, in all this chatter about how "RSS is dead" - RSS feeds are free in both beer and speech, and were likely authored (or co-authored) by Aaron Swartz to be that way. The Google Pluses of the world, not so much...
niklas_a00 14y ago
"Our best option is to avoid supporting and using proprietary monocultures." Said the man who makes a magazine that only works on iPads and loves developing for a platform controlled by one single company in California that is prone to suppressing political content or apps that might compete with its own. Nice.
- glasshead969 14y ago
  Minor correction : Magazine now works on web too if you have a subscription.
- rimantas 14y ago
  As opposed to Google operating in China.
niklas_a00 14y ago
"Our best option is to avoid supporting and using proprietary monocultures." Said the man who makes a magazine that only works on iPads and loves developing for a platform controlled by one single company in California that is prone to suppressing political content or apps that might compete with its own. Nice.
eloisant 14y ago
Sparrow. Not free, acqui-hire, shut down. Again, as a user paying for a service doesn't protect you from having it shut down.

Free works

262 points by mh_ 14y ago

yawn 14y ago

"Our best option is to avoid supporting and using proprietary monocultures." Like the App Store?

roc 14y ago
And this is really where I have an issue with people posing the proprietary nature of Facebook, Google+, Twitter, et al as "A Problem". People throw their content into these services, time and again. Often doing so as they're suffering whatever pain we hypothesize is implicit in leaving a prior service. (However much pain it did or did not cause, to have everyone's stuff locked up in a MySpace silo, it did not stop anyone from putting all their stuff right back into Facebook's silo.) And they do this in other contexts: no-one much frets about proprietary saved-game file formats. Or the release of new console platforms that end support for entire libraries of games. So clearly there's a line. And it seems a reasonable one to draw. Because who really cares about their old saved games, or a game they hadn't played, or mobile app they hadn't so much as launched, in months? It's certainly nice as things approach the open/internet ideal. But there's clearly an entire class of computing where people do cost/benefit considerations with an emphasis on immediate entertainment value, rather than long-term computing value. And people have repeatedly demonstrated a desire to treat social networks more like consoles than even mobile platforms, let alone PC computing platforms. So why do geeks persist in seeing "A Problem" here? Let alone a problem that, if solved, would garner any attention for having presented a solution?

blndcat 14y ago

Not sure why there isn't more of a discussion going on, given the uproar over Reader, I found the whole article insightful but especially the end. The concluding 3 paragraphs are like the twist at the end of The Sixth Sense.

cbs 14y ago
The concluding 3 paragraphs are like the twist at the end of The Sixth Sense. Yup. This guy did a fantastic job articulating what many others have just given up on trying to. Those of us who voice trepidation are usually marginalized as jealous and/or haters. See: http://xkcd.com/743/ http://xkcd.com/743/

mustpax 14y ago

The analogy to predatory pricing doesn't work because in the brick and mortar world, you drive out your competitors so that you may raise your prices. So the price is said to be artificially lowered. In the software world, free software products stay free even after they have become the dominant platform. The price is not artificially lowered to zero; at scale the cost of operating a free service is lower than the advertising revenue generated by it. This is actually the "natural" price for the product.

wmf 14y ago
Facebook effectively raised prices via promoted posts. Google Apps is no longer free. These may be exceptions, though.

tolmasky 14y ago

I see no difference between Google Reader shutting down and Apple abandoning the Mac Pro. This has nothing to do with free: it has to do with a failed product like any other, plain and simple. People don't see Google Reader as a failed product because they like it and "a lot of people use it". But that "a lot" is in absolute terms, not relative ones. The reality is that not enough people use RSS for it to matter at Google scale. Even if everyone currently using it were to start paying for it tomorrow, it would be a drop in the bucket of Google profits. Reader had it's chance, and it failed to get enough traction, period. The "free" part is just a distraction in this conversation, Reader makes no sense as a product for Google at any (reasonable) price. This story would have gone down exactly the same had Google offered reader at a price that matched the other competitors at the time: they probably still would have won, and still would have ended up shutting it down. This is exactly the same as how having the Mac Pro line would be incredibly lucrative for you or me, but it just doesn't matter for Apple. The margins are through the roof on that thing, and in a lot of ways its quite possibly the perfect product: a 3 year old machine that commands the same price it did 3 years ago. But again, not enough people want it for it to matter at Apple scale. If Apple could double the price and maintain the same sale numbers of the Mac Pro, it still wouldn't be worth it for them. If anything, we should see this as a really healthy market correction. Its good for Google to realize that this isn't worth their time so they can focus their resources on things only they can do (like cars that drive themselves and whatnot) and leave these tasks for the rest of us where these user numbers and profits are meaningful.

youngerdryas 14y ago
You can still buy a Mac Pro. Google could have had Reader live on because they are, you know, "open". Except they want everyone to use Google+.
- tolmasky 14y ago
  What does this have to do with anything? Google is a business like any other. Google is not dropping Reader because they are secretly closed and nefarious, they are dropping it because no one uses it (again, relatively speaking). If people actually used RSS then they'd feel compelled to keep it, whether priced or not, because it would be make business sense to keep it around. I guarantee you that if RSS had Facebook's user count, they'd be banging that RSS drum like crazy. But it doesn't, and Google is not a charity. Whether you believe them to be "open" or not (meaningless statement), being "open" certainly does not commit you to supporting arbitrary protocols indefinitely for the good of the world, especially ones that most people don't use. RSS had its shot, it just can't compete in today's web. And we'll see for just how long you can still buy the Mac Pro.

kurtvarner 14y ago

Some solid points here, but I gotta disagree with this one... If a product grows huge quickly, which almost always requires it to be free, it will probably be acquired for a lot of money. Free products that don’t grow quickly enough can usually die with an “acquihire”, which lets everyone save face and ensures that the investors get something out of the deal. I think this way of thinking is the product of a very frothy market over the last few years. Now, I'm not one to scream series A crunch from the mountain tops, but it's unrealistic to think that thousands of these startups that "don't grow quickly enough" will be acquihired. In 2012 Google and Facebook combined to make 21 acquisitions. That doesn't put much of a dent in the number of failing startups. And with the Formspring shutdown announcement last week, it seems that even companies that have achieved impressive scale (30M users in since 2010) cannot rely on being bought.

niggler 14y ago
"Now, I'm not one to scream series A crunch from the mountain tops" People _are_ screaming it from mountain view
pflats 14y ago
I don't know enough about how things went to agree or disagree. I'm still amazed at how many "aqui-hires" there are in the industry. How many companies that have made it to a solid Series A round have fallen flat on their face? Formspring seems like a red herring to me; everything I heard about it in the real world (as a high-school teacher) was toxic. Of all the online bullying issues I had to deal with, more involved Formspring than even Facebook. The anonymous thing was a double-edged sword.

pbreit 14y ago

OP is trying to make it seem like offering web services for free is rule-breaking or even borderline illegal. This is not so. It is not predatory pricing to price something at its marginal cost (which for web services is near-zero). The OP also seems to be unaware of TV, radio, etc.

lmm 14y ago
It's predatory to price something below the level that's possible for a viable independent business. It's bad for customers in tech for exactly the same reasons as in any other industry. /used to work for a business that had to compete with twilio.
- pbreit 14y ago
  That's a definition that suits your view but is not commonly shared. The item typically needs to be sold below cost and there needs to be intent to drive out competitors. Neither is true here.
  - recoiledsnake 14y ago
    >The item typically needs to be sold below cost and there needs to be intent to drive out competitors. Neither is true here. Neither? If Google Reader was spun off as an independent company, how would it pay for the hosting and bandwidth costs?
    - pbreit 14y ago
      I'm not sure the point of your hypothetical.
    - pbreit 14y ago
      I'm not sure the point of your hypothetical since it's irrelevant.
  - pinaceae 14y ago
    ? if you give something away that a loss because it actually costs money to produce/provide, like Google did with the Reader service - it doesn't fit the definition? what a crazy piece of logic. google destroyed the market for smaller RSS-app vendors by providing a service for free, at a loss. was it on purpose? or just stupidity? what exactly does it change? the ecosystem around RSS has been ruined, maybe beyond repair. because open and don't be evil and blah.

elomarns 14y ago

The golden rule is there's no golden rules. Everything can work, and everything has its advantages and flaws. You just need to know where you're, and have a strategy to succeed based on your business model.

orangethirty 14y ago

Writing software is not cheap, or even close to free. Even if you can host it for a low price, there are still other associated costs that people ever talk about. Mostly the time spent trying to win the freemium lottery (and getting acquihired).

angryasian 14y ago

I think author fails to recognize paid services that eventually fail because of the barrier is never able to become a sustainable business. Wouldn't it be worse by paying for something then losing it ? There are plenty of free offerings that are able to become sustainable businesses through various business models. I think the distinction is rather the choices of the founder + acceleration of growth vs paid / free model. edit: Every business that deals with some sort of digital goods today has to compete with free.. music, movies, games, etc. So maybe we should all just sit around and say how unfair it is rather than to figure out how to compete. Its a completely ridiculous argument

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MatthewPhillips 14y ago

I don't usually upvote Marco.org articles but this one was very good. Before Reader there was a vibrant (niche, but vibrant) market for RSS readers. Reader decimated that market and arguably killed innovation in RSS altogether. I remember when PubSubHubBub and RSS Cloud came out and wondered why anyone would bother implementing them for feeds when all that mattered was if Google Reader was fetching your stuff fast enough (it was). It's going to be interesting to see how things develop in the wake of the shutdown. There's already a mad rush to provide alternatives, and a bunch of open source readers are in heavy development (I'm using Selfoss personally: https://github.com/SSilence/selfoss https://github.com/SSilence/selfoss). It might turn out that Reader shutting down is the best thing that could have happened.

tunesmith 14y ago

I think this argument is disorganized. It reads as if he's arguing for free in favor of paid (which I don't really agree with), but I think he's actually arguing for open in favor of closed (which I do agree with). The predatory pricing thing is a problem for a lot of people. I've most recently come across it with a friend trying to start his graphic-design business who was upset about discovering that "99 designs" website. Before that it was a bass player for our band that was strenuously principled that we should never accept a gig "for exposure", and should also not play with musicians that had a history of accepting free gigs, since it was "disrespectful" to the players that were trying to make a living at it. While I do agree that there are moderating counterpoints to both, they do bring up relevant concerns. Meanwhile, you have Radiohead and Nine-Inch-Nails, both of whom experimented with releasing their music for free way back when. When it "worked", everyone championed how it was the way forward for the music industry - how music was a "service", how the recordings should be loss-leader marketing expenses for the paid service of live performances. Overlooking the people who were more focused on the recording side of things, and the fact that those two bands had built-in fanbases. Years later, both bands are moving on from the "free" model, while so many people are misguidedly releasing their tracks for free that indie songwriters are paying money to even get their signed-up fans to listen to their new tracks. I'm not so sure that the conclusion is that free works, as it is accepting that free works by being predatory and that there can be consequences that hurt others. And it isn't exactly ethical to accept a negative consequence on behalf of someone else. This is not to say that going free is wrong - sometimes there is a bigger picture that might make it worthwhile for all (for instance, many open source techs that have created new marketplaces that have enabled many people to make a living). But the argument does not reduce down to something as simple as free works, therefore free is good.

roc 14y ago
> "I think this argument is disorganized. It reads as if he's arguing for free in favor of paid (which I don't really agree with), but I think he's actually arguing for open in favor of closed (which I do agree with)." That was my thought. He opened by talking about Free, because Reader closing and Mailbox being acquired stirred up a lot of the usual anti-Free-Service backlash. And he discusses free, I think, just to underline that it does work. But I think he went into the weeds (and clearly lost much of the readership there) in discussing why. Which is strange, as I don't think even the anti-Free crowd takes issue with whether Free works and they certainly seem to all understand that it does work. And, ultimately, the "why" part is irrelevant to where he winds up, which is simply that open protocols should be preferred to proprietary ones.

ender7 14y ago

All right, so I have a slight bone to pick with Marco. This is actually a fairly well-written article and I'm glad that people are engaging with it elsewhere in the comments, but I'm just a bit confused that he's choosing to write it now, and about Google Reader than about, say, Reading List. Remember? That product that Apple released for free and that was a direct competitor to Instapaper? Or iCloud, that product that Apple released for free and that was a direct competitor to Dropbox? Or Ping, that product that Apple released for free and then shitcanned after not enough people used it? Marco's response to Reading List (and its integration into not only OS X but iOS) wasn't "this is predatory pricing! Regulate!" but instead "this might be good for my product" [1]. So, I don't really know. I didn't use Reader, but I understand that people are upset that it's getting cancelled. That does suck. Of course, this is apparently what everyone deserves for daring to use a free product? But actually it's okay because we'll all be better off because of the great RSS reader renaissance that is upon us? Oh god I can't keep this straight any more. Go find a new RSS reader. RSS appears to have weathered the predation of Facebook, Twitter, and G+ admirably so far; I doubt that its days are numbered. [1] http://www.marco.org/2011/06/06/safari-reader-and-instapaper http://www.marco.org/2011/06/06/safari-reader-and-instapaper

npsimons 14y ago
I agree with you in that I have a hunch Marco may be an Apple fanboi; still, as you said, it's a well written article, and one point in particular stands out to me: the fact that people are trying to kill RSS and leave the only options as proprietary-sell-your-personal-information ghettos that could be shut down at a moments notice, and much more effectively. The Internet wasn't built on AOL or IE, and it shouldn't be forced to ad hoc proprietary standards, especially if you have to give up privacy to communicate with people. I'm eternally grateful that Facebook and Google+ haven't supplanted email in my social circles and I can still run my own web and email server.
- simonh 14y ago
  Who's being forced to anything?
wonderzombie 14y ago

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mikemoka 14y ago

Lower costs in this market are also something that makes open source possible, I just found two opensource projects inspired by Google Reader and hosted on Google Code, what do you think of them? http://selfoss.aditu.de/ http://selfoss.aditu.de/ http://gobblerss.pommepause.com/screenshot.html http://gobblerss.pommepause.com/screenshot.html

dreamdu5t 14y ago

An entrepreneur is sent to jail for selling widgets. Upon arrival he meets two other businessmen who are locked-up. He asks them, "Why are you here?" The first guy responds, "I sold widgets for more than anyone else, and they jailed me for excessive profits." The second guy responds, "I sold widgets at the same price as everyone else, and they jailed me for price collusion." They ask him, "What'd you do?" The entrepeneur responds, "I sold widgets for lower than anyone else, so they jailed me for predatory pricing!"

shadowfox 14y ago
I must confess that this went over my head :( What were you implying, if you would care to explain?
- dreamdu5t 14y ago
  The article accuses Google of "predatory pricing" and my story is meant to illustrate that any price can be seen as monopolist, collusive, or predatory, and that laws against such things are misguided and reactionary. I might be paraphrasing the story wrong. It's a folk story amongst economists about the absurdity of antitrust regulation. I'm not sure who originated it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing#Criticism

ruswick 14y ago

Rarely if ever do I find myself in agreement with Marco, but he articulates a valid point quite well. Monopolies and effective monopolies are obviously quite detrimental to the web, especially when they fail. But, there is little that can be done about the tendency for monopolies to emerge within the web ecosystem, only to fail. If companies were to charge or advertise heavily from day one, it would effectively preclude any sort of viral, meteoric rise, because the overwhelming number of prospective users would turn their nose up at it. Most companies would never achieve widespread success. On the other hand, a lack of an organized business strategy leaves companies scrambling to devise revenue sources, as is happening with Facebook and their absurd gift card thing. Either one can try to make money and be relegated to obscurity, or one can become popular and end up exasperated at their inability to make money. There is very little opportunity to become both wildly successful and fiscally viable; that is why most companies fail. As a user, I would prefer a lack of business model to a lack of a business: better to have an RSS reader (or social network, or mail client/to-do app) that lacks substancial income for 8 years than one with a direct business model that never gets off the ground.

tlogan 14y ago

And, after WebDav and RSS, IMAP support for Gmail will become "insufficient to support great new features" so it will be decommissioned in favor of a great new API. Just wait...

nickswan 14y ago

Apps like Feedly and NewsBlur were managing to survive before the Google Reader announcement. If you build something good, and market it well, with niche like features - enough people will be happy to pay for it to keep you and the product going.

icebraining 14y ago

It's because of people like Marco Arment, offering their written content for predatory pricing, that the newspaper industry is going bankrupt. Let's illegalize free blogs!

wmf 14y ago
That really gave me a laugh, considering that Arment runs The Magazine.

benackles 14y ago

Free works, but for whom? Certainly a lot of companies are doing well by giving away everything, but how long will the acquihire exit strategy remain open? Furthermore, the user is getting absolutely screwed. There have been a lot of notable services that have popped up over the last few years and then some big company came in to pick up the talent and dumped the product and subsequently its users. I've been fortunate to only get screwed twice, first with Gowalla and now with Google Reader. Although I used Google Reader for longer and much more frequently than Gowalla, in a way I feel less screwed (if at all) by Google. Google Reader is a very portable product by its natural connection to RSS. Google has also taken a few important steps towards making data portable for it's millions of users. It took less than a minute to transfer to another service. I'm testing out Feedly for now, but I would rather host my own RSS reader and take control myself. If a consumer product provides adequate data portability the idea of hosting my content for me is something I feel perfectly comfortable doing. My point is its less concerning that everything is free, but more how anti-competitive these services are with my data. If I can at any moment retain control and back up everything or move it over to a competing service, I'm okay with investing time in adopting a free service. However, moving your data between services as they inevitably shutdown does seem like a short term fix. I think Marco's idea for a mirror of the reader API is a great long term solution[1]. For the average user, people would probably opt for a popular host. For people who want to host it themselves (probably a minority), they could do so with ease. [1] http://www.marco.org/2013/03/14/baby-steps-replacing-google-reader http://www.marco.org/2013/03/14/baby-steps-replacing-google-...

downrightmike 14y ago

Stop bitching about reader please.

cromwellian 14y ago

I agree with the article in many respects, but I find there's a giant blind spot that needs addressing given the author. I don't understand how Marco can't view Apple as a proprietary monoculture, and one that is somewhat worse in the sense that you can't clone the features of it without being sued (what if Reader had patents covering it and sued if you tried to create a clone?) Apple frequently force upgrades users and develoeprs, some would say by planned obsolescence. For example, early on in IOS, people built apps that allowed in-app purchases and subscriptions, because Apple had no API for them, so we had a federated, open system for that feature. Then Apple changed their T&C and mandate use of Apple infrastructure to do this, and people now have to resort to hacks (remember Dropbox getting banned because of a link to sign up?) Slowly, the apps were forced onto Apple monoculture services. Basically, when Apple introduces monoculture, it is viewed as a good. It simplifies user experience, etc. But for everyone else, it's somehow bad and evil.

ricardobeat 14y ago
Apple wants a cut of the money you make. That's it. Dropbox could have a sign up link if they agreed to pay the 30% fee. I do think it's a bit shortsighted, but they don't block open protocols or monopolize services.
- cromwellian 14y ago
  They don't? Apple early on blocked alternative Mail clients and Google Voice or other apps which "duplicate" functionality builtin apps provide. They relaxed those rules now, but under the original rules, Google Maps would have been banned.
  - rimantas 14y ago
    And you couldn't have any third party apps on an original iPhone. So?
chipotle_coyote 14y ago
I'd argue that a lot of us in the "Apple fan community," including Marco, understand that there are negatives to Apple's approach to, well, nearly everything. It's apparently very easy for people to pick up on the approval we give Apple while glossing over the criticism, I suspect in part because we don't tend to see iOS's locked-down nature as the existential crisis that, well, Hacker News readers tend to sometimes see -- and because we don't see a problem with something that they see as a deal-breaker, then, well, we must never say anything bad about Apple. In fact, we often do. Having said that, there's at least a practical difference in the kind of "monoculture" that the iOS App Store represents and the kind of monoculture that Google Reader represented: while Apple may change the terms, it's highly unlikely they'd ever make the App Store just go away. I'm not sure there are any commercial products that were in the App Store and were then removed because of a change in Apple's TOS rather than for a violation that they should have been aware of when they submitted it. There are some high-profile cases of stupid rejections, to be sure, but that's not the same thing. And, it's at least worth noting that a major difference there is that Apple derives revenue from their services. Say what you will about them, but that's a pretty good incentive to not just take their ball and go home. Google Reader didn't bring in any revenue, and that's what ultimately doomed it. (as in beer) does work, but not indefinitely.

caycep 14y ago

the one thing that i haven't seen mentioned, in all this chatter about how "RSS is dead" - RSS feeds are free in both beer and speech, and were likely authored (or co-authored) by Aaron Swartz to be that way. The Google Pluses of the world, not so much...

niklas_a00 14y ago

"Our best option is to avoid supporting and using proprietary monocultures." Said the man who makes a magazine that only works on iPads and loves developing for a platform controlled by one single company in California that is prone to suppressing political content or apps that might compete with its own. Nice.

glasshead969 14y ago
Minor correction : Magazine now works on web too if you have a subscription.
rimantas 14y ago
As opposed to Google operating in China.

niklas_a00 14y ago

eloisant 14y ago

Sparrow. Not free, acqui-hire, shut down. Again, as a user paying for a service doesn't protect you from having it shut down.