3 ms·

Marketing is a natural occurrence. All companies/people/groups market themselves in one way or another. Your not exactly forced to buy into whats being sold. Wh

Marketing is a natural occurrence. All companies/people/groups market themselves in one way or another. Your not exactly forced to buy into whats being sold. Why is everyone so stuck on google core being a marketing company? I think its the least of evil profit motivations since hell I might actually be interested in what google has figured out I may want... Vs being locked out without any options and force into dealing with a certain player.

fauigerzigerk 13y ago
For me the issue isn't marketing itself. It's that in order to show me personalized ads they need to know a lot about me. They have to compile and store a personal profile that can be stolen or subpoenaed by anyone who is sufficiently capable or powerful. But I agree that there is a dilemma. The alternative to ad based business models is to make a payment via a credit card, which identifies me even more directly and is subject to even tighter regulation and potential censorship. In the extreme, I have to deal with companies like Apple enforcing their broken moral standards on my phone. There are no simple solutions to this I'm afraid.
- gaius 13y ago
  Microsoft and Apple make money by selling actual products. Google makes money by selling you.
  - fauigerzigerk 13y ago
    Google isn't selling me. They're selling a service based on information they get from me in exchange for a product they make for me. It's just another form of payment. Every form of payment comes with it's own benefits and drawbacks. (I didn't downvote you by the way. I never downvote)
    - gaius 13y ago
      Except it's not as simple as "don't use GMail and you're safe" - they have their finger in every pie via their ad system. You can very, very easily opt-out of using MS or Apple products.
  - fpgeek 13y ago
    Do you really think Microsoft and Apple don't sell "you" too? They have (admittedly less-successful) advertising businesses that they show no signs of abandoning, they boast about the number of accounts and/or the number of credit cards they have for developers and partners and so on. To a first approximation "everybody" wants your money and "everybody" sells you. Generalizations don't work. You need to look at the bundles that come with products/ecosystems on a case-by-case basis.
- vdaniuk 13y ago
  I am quite happy to be served personalized ads from Google and even Facebook. I regularly get ads for services that interest me greatly, like digitalocean, heroku, cloud66, newrelic, edx, codeschool, teamtreehouse. Thanks, personalized ads!

fauigerzigerk 13y ago

For me the issue isn't marketing itself. It's that in order to show me personalized ads they need to know a lot about me. They have to compile and store a personal profile that can be stolen or subpoenaed by anyone who is sufficiently capable or powerful. But I agree that there is a dilemma. The alternative to ad based business models is to make a payment via a credit card, which identifies me even more directly and is subject to even tighter regulation and potential censorship. In the extreme, I have to deal with companies like Apple enforcing their broken moral standards on my phone. There are no simple solutions to this I'm afraid.

gaius 13y ago
Microsoft and Apple make money by selling actual products. Google makes money by selling you.
- fauigerzigerk 13y ago
  Google isn't selling me. They're selling a service based on information they get from me in exchange for a product they make for me. It's just another form of payment. Every form of payment comes with it's own benefits and drawbacks. (I didn't downvote you by the way. I never downvote)
  - gaius 13y ago
    Except it's not as simple as "don't use GMail and you're safe" - they have their finger in every pie via their ad system. You can very, very easily opt-out of using MS or Apple products.
- fpgeek 13y ago
  Do you really think Microsoft and Apple don't sell "you" too? They have (admittedly less-successful) advertising businesses that they show no signs of abandoning, they boast about the number of accounts and/or the number of credit cards they have for developers and partners and so on. To a first approximation "everybody" wants your money and "everybody" sells you. Generalizations don't work. You need to look at the bundles that come with products/ecosystems on a case-by-case basis.
vdaniuk 13y ago
I am quite happy to be served personalized ads from Google and even Facebook. I regularly get ads for services that interest me greatly, like digitalocean, heroku, cloud66, newrelic, edx, codeschool, teamtreehouse. Thanks, personalized ads!