3 ms·

Whie Google makes their money from advertising, that doesn't mean literally every action they make is for the purposes of furthering their advertising directly.

by err4nt 13y ago

Whie Google makes their money from advertising, that doesn't mean literally every action they make is for the purposes of furthering their advertising directly. Consider this - the two reasons I originally signed up with Gmail were because of the large mailbox (a feature) and the much more capable spam filtering (a feature). At the time I owned my own domains and had my own choice of web mailboxes on my own site, but there was VALUE to me to pipe all of my mail through Gmail to benefit from these features and then check it there. One problem I have seen lately is the volume or automated mailings from websites that I gave my email address to _years_ ago has been increasing, and if you ever gave consent for one newsletter in 2005 it feels like you're now subscribed to their weekly update, their monthly update, special deals, hot news items, personalised suggestions, and notifications and you can only seem to unsubscribe from one _mailing_ at a time. You simply can't keep up unsubscribing from all of the people abusing your consent out there. This is a problem with Gmail addresses and non-Gmails alike today. To me is sounds like Gmail is aware of the problem and trying to solve it in a creative way -> Ubsubscribe using your mailbox, not using their settings :) To me it sounds like another feature that will keep people coming back and choosing Gmail over other mailboxes, and if that's the case then they make more money from ads in the long run :D

DannyBee 13y ago
"Whie Google makes their money from advertising, that doesn't mean literally every action they make is for the purposes of furthering their advertising directly. " Don't be silly. This is hacker news. People are even cynical about self driving cars ("Now they can show ads while you drive!"). For example, I'm pretty sure the hacker news view of Calico is: "Google execs got together in a room and were talking, and realized they had a problem - people keep dying, and they can't show ads to dead people. They needed options, hence they formed a company to fight aging" Maybe that's not cynical enough, maybe it's "Google is looking for the ultimate incentive to join G+. For every G+ post you make, they extend your life by a month". In any case, Google essentially can't win. Past a certain point, you do enough stuff that some people don't like it. While you can focus on the user, and slow down how long it takes, you can't please people forever, and once they become cynical, they tend to stay that way.
- danieldk 13y ago
  Maybe that's not cynical enough, maybe it's "Google is looking for the ultimate incentive to join G+. For every G+ post you make, they extend your life by a month". :) Don't be silly. This is hacker news. I am not cynical. I have always wondered why they haven't been more aggressive with respect to such lists. They are potential competition. And, while it would be unethical to filter such mailings, it is in their and in the user's interest to make it easy to unsubscribe from such lists. For users, so that they don't have to go through some annoying steps to unsubscribe, for them to improve their spam filter and to increase the value of GMail ads. By the way, let's not pretend that many of their choices are made to maximise ad revenue, since that is currently their main source of income. And I think it's perfectly fine. The vast majority wants free services and ads are a good way to monetise them. If you don't want ads and/or data mining, there are good alternatives for a few dollars a month.
- phillmv 13y ago
  Honestly, it's no so much cynicism as it is skepticism. By the stage in the game, we have more than enough cause to abandon the image of a softer, gentler capitalism that we thought tech companies were going to be in the late 90s to early aughts and look at then with the same critical lens we shine on other immense, oligarchic organizations. I really love Twitch Plays Pokémon, because to my mind it illustrates so well both the beauty and the peril of any sufficiently large corpus of humans. Although at any given point in time it is moving at random, over bigger time scales it is clearly moving with some kind of intentionality. We can't say what Red is doing any given instant in time, but over the past 10 days it is clearly bent on progressing through all the goals in the game. Anyhow, Google is an advertising company. It moves ads. That is the life blood of the organization. Most big decisions are made directly by the executive team, whose intent you can ascertain directly, but lots of smaller decisions are made by thousands of other people lower on the chain. Clearly, over the long term, Google is going to optimize towards showing you more and better ads, and I think this move is oriented in that direction. As a rule of thumb, I think Google has a tendency to punish or discourage all forms of non Google advertising. On the plus side, this right now is clearly a net win for consumers. Sometimes things aren't as crappy as they seem.
  - 13y ago

by err4nt 13y ago

DannyBee 13y ago

"Whie Google makes their money from advertising, that doesn't mean literally every action they make is for the purposes of furthering their advertising directly. " Don't be silly. This is hacker news. People are even cynical about self driving cars ("Now they can show ads while you drive!"). For example, I'm pretty sure the hacker news view of Calico is: "Google execs got together in a room and were talking, and realized they had a problem - people keep dying, and they can't show ads to dead people. They needed options, hence they formed a company to fight aging" Maybe that's not cynical enough, maybe it's "Google is looking for the ultimate incentive to join G+. For every G+ post you make, they extend your life by a month". In any case, Google essentially can't win. Past a certain point, you do enough stuff that some people don't like it. While you can focus on the user, and slow down how long it takes, you can't please people forever, and once they become cynical, they tend to stay that way.

danieldk 13y ago
Maybe that's not cynical enough, maybe it's "Google is looking for the ultimate incentive to join G+. For every G+ post you make, they extend your life by a month". :) Don't be silly. This is hacker news. I am not cynical. I have always wondered why they haven't been more aggressive with respect to such lists. They are potential competition. And, while it would be unethical to filter such mailings, it is in their and in the user's interest to make it easy to unsubscribe from such lists. For users, so that they don't have to go through some annoying steps to unsubscribe, for them to improve their spam filter and to increase the value of GMail ads. By the way, let's not pretend that many of their choices are made to maximise ad revenue, since that is currently their main source of income. And I think it's perfectly fine. The vast majority wants free services and ads are a good way to monetise them. If you don't want ads and/or data mining, there are good alternatives for a few dollars a month.
phillmv 13y ago
Honestly, it's no so much cynicism as it is skepticism. By the stage in the game, we have more than enough cause to abandon the image of a softer, gentler capitalism that we thought tech companies were going to be in the late 90s to early aughts and look at then with the same critical lens we shine on other immense, oligarchic organizations. I really love Twitch Plays Pokémon, because to my mind it illustrates so well both the beauty and the peril of any sufficiently large corpus of humans. Although at any given point in time it is moving at random, over bigger time scales it is clearly moving with some kind of intentionality. We can't say what Red is doing any given instant in time, but over the past 10 days it is clearly bent on progressing through all the goals in the game. Anyhow, Google is an advertising company. It moves ads. That is the life blood of the organization. Most big decisions are made directly by the executive team, whose intent you can ascertain directly, but lots of smaller decisions are made by thousands of other people lower on the chain. Clearly, over the long term, Google is going to optimize towards showing you more and better ads, and I think this move is oriented in that direction. As a rule of thumb, I think Google has a tendency to punish or discourage all forms of non Google advertising. On the plus side, this right now is clearly a net win for consumers. Sometimes things aren't as crappy as they seem.
- 13y ago