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This seems to be how Uber's pulling it off: the costs of a worldwide Uber-dominated oligopoly are far away and intangible while the costs of the current atomize
by hoopd 11y ago
This seems to be how Uber's pulling it off: the costs of a worldwide Uber-dominated oligopoly are far away and intangible while the costs of the current atomized regulated oligoplies are present and clear.
When Google was picking up steam back in the early 2000's it seemed wonderful because there were so many immediate benefits. Now, 10-15 years later it's clear how much power we gave them and what opportunities we lost in doing so. Instead of "free" stuff we could have worked towards a model of privacy and reasonable subscription fees where user-tracking and advertising weren't the default business model of the internet. But we didn't look ahead, we just said "Give us that shiny new thing!"
I hope I'm wrong but Uber looks the same to me, it's that nagging feeling of somebody's gonna have to pay the piper.
- blfr 11y agoWhat opportunities have we lost to Google? And how can you implement subscription without tracking? A subscription-based search engine, or a video hosting website, would need to connect your searches and watching habits with a credit card.
- hoopd 11y agoIn the ad-based business model all the people who use Google's services aren't Google's customers, they're Google's product. Google's customers are the companies who pay for advertising. We lost the opportunity of not building the web this way. The tracking necessary to process payments is reasonable as-is but you could also pay cash for gift-cards that work just like credit cards. Either way that's nothing like the tracking that happens for targeted advertising.
- icebraining 11y agoGoogle didn't bring the ad-based business model, it was here long before they created Adwords. Yahoo!, Altavista, all had banners and sponsored links.
- tedunangst 11y agoNo, a subscription service need only connect the presence of your login cookie with a credit card.
- venomsnake 11y agoYou are free to create google analog. No one is prohibiting you. And with the way google results have gone downhill in the last 5 years - it is way past due. The page rank is not the only possible strategy for effective search.
- icebraining 11y agoGoogle hasn't used PageRank exclusively for years. Nowadays it's just one factor among many.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago>You are free to create google analog. No one is prohibiting you Google's massive patent arsenal disagrees with you. I imagine many common and obvious search methods have a government granted monopoly due to our corrupt patent system. Even Microsoft, with a massive patent arsenal itself, couldnt work out deals with Google and gets sued now and again: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2240889/microsoft-gets-sued-over-patents-related-to-bing http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2240889/microsoft-g... How can Joe Startup compete in this space?
- venomsnake 11y agoIgnore the lawyers. Break the law. Opensource the search code. Create a chain of companies and burn each one when hit with a lawsuit. Don't try to win lawsuits - just use every possible tactic to delay them and so on. Create the company in a country where there are no software patents.