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I'd love for Google to work out how much money they make from me in a year, and then to offer to go ad-free for 50% more than that. At least then I could make

I'd love for Google to work out how much money they make from me in a year, and then to offer to go ad-free for 50% more than that. At least then I could make an informed decision.

Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
If the internet has taught us anything (other than that there are many people with way too much free time) it's that a vast majority of people would rather not pay for stuff and as a result the number of people willing to pay will be so small that it's not really worth their while. Outlook.com does have this option for $20 a year - would be interesting to know what the uptake is.
igul222 13y ago
The problem is if Google were to do that, the value of their ads would plummet since the kind of people who would pay to opt out of ads are the same people who would be most likely to pay for things in ads. Not 100% sure but I think this is is the same reason TV companies don't want to offer their content for streaming online, and Hulu can't remove ads for its premium users.
- davidw 13y ago
  Maybe. I sometimes don't even notice there are ads there because I ignore them so completely. I think you'd have to study the matter further.
- bulatb 13y ago
  Why are people who hate ads more likely to be influenced by them?
  - derefr 13y ago
    People who can't tune out ads are most likely to be both influenced by, and aggravated by, them. People with "banner blindness" might not complain about your ad, but they're not worth a penny to the advertisers.
  - k-mcgrady 13y ago
    I think op means people with enough money to pay to turn ads off. People with money are the people advertisers want to target. Even if the person doesn't like ads the right one could still catch their eye.
    - lostlogin 13y ago
      If I find an advert song to be catchy or memorable I go out my way to avoid that product to such a severe extent that it really irritates me if something I use or like is advertised. It has me wondering how I'll ever manage without X.
- tomp 13y ago
  I'd say it's exactly the reverse. The people who are most bothered by ads are the people to whom the ads provide the lowest value, and are thus the least likely to click them. For example, me.
  - igul222 13y ago
    Whether you pay to opt out of ads is a function of how much you hate ads and how willing you are to spend money in general. I think the latter factor is more significant.
    - ronaldx 13y ago
      Your premise is at least partially fallacious - whether or not I am willing to spend money anyway, is not the same as whether or not I am influenced by advertising. If I spend money in the same way as I would have spent anyway, then the advertising has been a waste of time.
  - ryan-allen 13y ago
    I tend to agree with this. I rarely, if ever, click on ads because they seem interesting. I mostly see an ad and say "oh that is interesting, I was searching for cars before and now I'm being advertised cars on a music site, how completely useless". The truth is I think Google's adsense business has never had any real true value to customers (except for perhaps their 'first page at the top' paid ads, I use them a lot, mostly because I figure companies willing to pay for ads usually are a likely 'proper solid business'). Most of the adsense these days is 'trick next buttons', where people put them at the bottom of a page that appears to be the 'next page' button, and it's not. I spend absolute craptonnes of money of stuff I don't need. Internet advertisements I am exposed to contribute almost zero impact to my purchasing habits. Except for Belroy wallets. I have no idea how they figured to target me ('hipster' programmer?), but I did end up buying a wallet from them when their ads followed me around for a while. And their products are nice :) But that is it! I couldn't care less if they are giving backdoors to the NSA to all my email including all company crap that is confidential and all. If they put ads into my email I will look elsewhere unless there is a paid option.
- kolinko 13y ago
  Wow, never thought of it this way..
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- dalore 13y ago
  By offering to pay you've identified as someone who pays for things making you more valuable to google, thereby increasing what you should pay to Google if you want to go ad free. Then google could offer a bidding war to advertisers to pay more than what your paying to get ads back. Then you have to pay more than that. Until an equilibrium is reached.
- losvedir 13y ago
  Presumably Google would consider that when calculating the OP's comment of "how much money they make from me".
ksk 13y ago
Or even better, just sell their email software system so people can purchase it and install it on whichever server they want.
pilif 13y ago
Just sign up for paid google apps. No ads there what so ever. It's $50 per year.
- AndrewDucker 13y ago
  $50 per year per person. As I run a Google Apps domain for my family, that would be several hundred dollars per year.
  - random42 13y ago
    Well, that is the rate.
    - AndrewDucker 13y ago
      But sadly, not a rate that individuals can opt in to, when on Apps for Domains. Shame really!
    - nly 13y ago
      Because it's aimed at business, not families. Fastmail have a family service that is much more flexible imho. The problem is trying to get family to actually pay for email.
  - pilif 13y ago
    You said: >I'd love for Google to work out how much money they make from me in a year, and then to offer to go ad-free for 50% more than that. How do you know that the $50 per user per year isn't exactly calculated that way? I'm actually inclined to guess that the value Google gets out of you by showing ads might be significantly higher than the $33 your calculation would allow them to earn from you.
    - AndrewDucker 13y ago
      If I could pay for just me, I'd be tempted. But with a domain it's all or nothing, and I'm not paying for my brothers, parents, etc.
sksksk 13y ago
The risk is that it becomes too popular causing google's ad inventory to plummet.
belorn 13y ago
If they ever did, they would have to admit that the "free" service is actually just an sale where the user pays for the service with data and ad-watching. Doing that, it would both be bad PR, and would catch the rage of tax officers as only "free" services are tax-free when given to customers.
maxer 13y ago
i have been waiting for this on youtube for years- i do not want to see the same video pre-roll i have already clicked skip on 30 or 40 times. Being a technology company who are seen as leaders in personalised adverts you think they would over come this terrible user experience
- workbench 13y ago
  The "terrible user experience" which adds numbers to their impressions statistic each time you encounter it?
- aestra 13y ago
  Adblock Plus blocks those YouTube ads, it skips over them seamlessly, so you aren't aware they are there.
georgebarnett 13y ago
Google as an organisation is primarily setup for bucketing users into groups for ads. It's a core assumption thats part of everything they do. Therefor, it's not about how much money they make from you but rather that it's really hard for them organisationally to separate users who want to pay to opt out from the rest who are their product. The cost there isn't what they make from you in ads, even if you're willing to pay double - it's the effort for them to switch their engineering to making money off two types of users - those pay not to be tracked and those who don't care.
ganeumann 13y ago
Google has $31 billion of advertising revenue on their own sites (says their 2012 annual report.) They have about 1 billion unique users per month (from Comscore.) So they have about $31 per user per year of ad revenue on their own sites. My guess is that most of this is search. Although it may be possible to figure out how much revenue per user Gmail makes, my guess is that it is between $10 and $15 per year. I think FastMail is significantly cheaper ($5/yr for a personal account, says their website at https://www.fastmail.fm https://www.fastmail.fm).
math0ne 13y ago
Based on the little I know about this I would guess the $ amount would be more than most would be comfortable with.

I'd love for Google to work out how much money they make from me in a year, and then to offer to go ad-free for 50% more than that. At least then I could make an informed decision.

Tyrannosaurs 13y ago

If the internet has taught us anything (other than that there are many people with way too much free time) it's that a vast majority of people would rather not pay for stuff and as a result the number of people willing to pay will be so small that it's not really worth their while. Outlook.com does have this option for $20 a year - would be interesting to know what the uptake is.

igul222 13y ago

The problem is if Google were to do that, the value of their ads would plummet since the kind of people who would pay to opt out of ads are the same people who would be most likely to pay for things in ads. Not 100% sure but I think this is is the same reason TV companies don't want to offer their content for streaming online, and Hulu can't remove ads for its premium users.

davidw 13y ago
Maybe. I sometimes don't even notice there are ads there because I ignore them so completely. I think you'd have to study the matter further.
bulatb 13y ago
Why are people who hate ads more likely to be influenced by them?
- derefr 13y ago
  People who can't tune out ads are most likely to be both influenced by, and aggravated by, them. People with "banner blindness" might not complain about your ad, but they're not worth a penny to the advertisers.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  I think op means people with enough money to pay to turn ads off. People with money are the people advertisers want to target. Even if the person doesn't like ads the right one could still catch their eye.
  - lostlogin 13y ago
    If I find an advert song to be catchy or memorable I go out my way to avoid that product to such a severe extent that it really irritates me if something I use or like is advertised. It has me wondering how I'll ever manage without X.
tomp 13y ago
I'd say it's exactly the reverse. The people who are most bothered by ads are the people to whom the ads provide the lowest value, and are thus the least likely to click them. For example, me.
- igul222 13y ago
  Whether you pay to opt out of ads is a function of how much you hate ads and how willing you are to spend money in general. I think the latter factor is more significant.
  - ronaldx 13y ago
    Your premise is at least partially fallacious - whether or not I am willing to spend money anyway, is not the same as whether or not I am influenced by advertising. If I spend money in the same way as I would have spent anyway, then the advertising has been a waste of time.
- ryan-allen 13y ago
  I tend to agree with this. I rarely, if ever, click on ads because they seem interesting. I mostly see an ad and say "oh that is interesting, I was searching for cars before and now I'm being advertised cars on a music site, how completely useless". The truth is I think Google's adsense business has never had any real true value to customers (except for perhaps their 'first page at the top' paid ads, I use them a lot, mostly because I figure companies willing to pay for ads usually are a likely 'proper solid business'). Most of the adsense these days is 'trick next buttons', where people put them at the bottom of a page that appears to be the 'next page' button, and it's not. I spend absolute craptonnes of money of stuff I don't need. Internet advertisements I am exposed to contribute almost zero impact to my purchasing habits. Except for Belroy wallets. I have no idea how they figured to target me ('hipster' programmer?), but I did end up buying a wallet from them when their ads followed me around for a while. And their products are nice :) But that is it! I couldn't care less if they are giving backdoors to the NSA to all my email including all company crap that is confidential and all. If they put ads into my email I will look elsewhere unless there is a paid option.
kolinko 13y ago
Wow, never thought of it this way..
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
dalore 13y ago
By offering to pay you've identified as someone who pays for things making you more valuable to google, thereby increasing what you should pay to Google if you want to go ad free. Then google could offer a bidding war to advertisers to pay more than what your paying to get ads back. Then you have to pay more than that. Until an equilibrium is reached.
losvedir 13y ago
Presumably Google would consider that when calculating the OP's comment of "how much money they make from me".

ksk 13y ago

Or even better, just sell their email software system so people can purchase it and install it on whichever server they want.

pilif 13y ago

Just sign up for paid google apps. No ads there what so ever. It's $50 per year.

AndrewDucker 13y ago
$50 per year per person. As I run a Google Apps domain for my family, that would be several hundred dollars per year.
- random42 13y ago
  Well, that is the rate.
  - AndrewDucker 13y ago
    But sadly, not a rate that individuals can opt in to, when on Apps for Domains. Shame really!
  - nly 13y ago
    Because it's aimed at business, not families. Fastmail have a family service that is much more flexible imho. The problem is trying to get family to actually pay for email.
- pilif 13y ago
  You said: >I'd love for Google to work out how much money they make from me in a year, and then to offer to go ad-free for 50% more than that. How do you know that the $50 per user per year isn't exactly calculated that way? I'm actually inclined to guess that the value Google gets out of you by showing ads might be significantly higher than the $33 your calculation would allow them to earn from you.
  - AndrewDucker 13y ago
    If I could pay for just me, I'd be tempted. But with a domain it's all or nothing, and I'm not paying for my brothers, parents, etc.

sksksk 13y ago

The risk is that it becomes too popular causing google's ad inventory to plummet.

belorn 13y ago

If they ever did, they would have to admit that the "free" service is actually just an sale where the user pays for the service with data and ad-watching. Doing that, it would both be bad PR, and would catch the rage of tax officers as only "free" services are tax-free when given to customers.

maxer 13y ago

i have been waiting for this on youtube for years- i do not want to see the same video pre-roll i have already clicked skip on 30 or 40 times. Being a technology company who are seen as leaders in personalised adverts you think they would over come this terrible user experience

workbench 13y ago
The "terrible user experience" which adds numbers to their impressions statistic each time you encounter it?
aestra 13y ago
Adblock Plus blocks those YouTube ads, it skips over them seamlessly, so you aren't aware they are there.

georgebarnett 13y ago

Google as an organisation is primarily setup for bucketing users into groups for ads. It's a core assumption thats part of everything they do. Therefor, it's not about how much money they make from you but rather that it's really hard for them organisationally to separate users who want to pay to opt out from the rest who are their product. The cost there isn't what they make from you in ads, even if you're willing to pay double - it's the effort for them to switch their engineering to making money off two types of users - those pay not to be tracked and those who don't care.

ganeumann 13y ago

Google has $31 billion of advertising revenue on their own sites (says their 2012 annual report.) They have about 1 billion unique users per month (from Comscore.) So they have about $31 per user per year of ad revenue on their own sites. My guess is that most of this is search. Although it may be possible to figure out how much revenue per user Gmail makes, my guess is that it is between $10 and $15 per year. I think FastMail is significantly cheaper ($5/yr for a personal account, says their website at https://www.fastmail.fm https://www.fastmail.fm).

math0ne 13y ago

Based on the little I know about this I would guess the $ amount would be more than most would be comfortable with.