>but you know how much easier this would be for everyone if Google offered an option for users to be paid for volunteering your information to them?

Have you not seen their Opinion Rewards app for Android? They do precisely that.

That's a wholly different context. In that context, you're not selling usage data, you're selling conscious opinions/preferences. More than anything, all that does is confirm the assumptions Google is already making about your tastes based on your usage.

This is about valuing the usage data itself that's passively collected on the Android platform.

Is it ? Google provides free functionality, like a (pretty nice) mail client in the cloud in trade for mail usage data.

Those things go, outside of Google, for 2$/month minimum, and more often 10$ per month ...

Similar things go for Google's index of the web, phone operating system, ...

The real indicator of how outsized the value is compared to the perception of such is the revenue inflow.

There's no reason for the suppliers of raw materials here not to raise their prices (from zero). If anyone wants to provide it for less, so be it, but given that Google wants insight into everyone marketable, there's no reason for people not to raise their own prices for the data they supply.

The main reason why this won't work is that majority of public simply prefers free ad-infested services over paid ad-free ones. Case in point - YouTube Red and it's abysmal adoption rate.

One might reasonable argue that YT Red just removes ads, but doesn't do anything for privacy / data collection. But I have two questions for them: 1. what makes you think people would gladly pay for privacy (any glaring example)? , 2. even if Google were to offer such an option, would you trust it?

> The main reason why this won't work is that majority of public simply prefers free ad-infested services over paid ad-free ones.

Counterpoint: Apple, one of the most profitable companies.

People have been giving their money to Apple before they even flaunted a strong pro-privacy stance, and I have yet to see an ad from Apple that I did not opt in for (although their recent Apple Pay emails have been slightly annoying, given that I'm in a country where I cannot use Apple Pay but there's no option to opt-out from only Apple Pay related emails while still receiving offers for other Apple services.)

Hence the phrase: "majority of public"

Rich people with lots of disposable income would, not surprisingly, prefer quality for a higher price. But that is not the business model of Google, nor is it applicable for everyone.

Please, people don’t buy apple stuff because apple cares for privacy. People buy apple because its products are top notch quality wise.

I don’t buy Apple products because of privacy. I buy Apple products because the alternative in the consumer market -Windows and Android feel like a flea market where Im constantly being advertise to. I like Apple’s business model. I give them money and they give me stuff. Too many other companies sell hardware subsidized by ad sales. For instance, I would gladly pay more for my Roku devices to avoid advertising on the home screen and paid for placement on the remote. I have three Roku TVs but I still use my attached AppleTV devices more often than the Roku apps for just that reason.

I’ve got a better idea. Google could always ship a product that people are willing to pay enough for where it is a sustainable business without being as supported.

Google is a consumer software company. Consumers aren't willing to pay for software.

The article is not about standalone software. It is about an operating system that will be used to sell hardware. Apple is proof that consumers are willing to pay enough for hardware to keep a company profitable.

They could and it would make them a few million dollars, not billions of dollars.

Selling hardware products that people want without advertising or collecting user data unnecessarily seems to be making Apple slightly more than a “few million”.....

> I’ve got a better idea.

Except that is an awful idea.

Since when was it an awful idea to sell something that the market valued enough for a company to make a profit without subsidizing the product with ads?

There are many such companies you can go to. For instance, go here: www.microsoft.com, but also www.apple.com, and so on.

Attempting to out-compete those companies has not historically been a very successful tactic. I think that's what's meant.

We aren’t talking about a little unknown poorly funded startup. We are talking about Google.

Even on the other end of the scale,I subscribe to Backblaze and Evernote.

What would be better is the ability to pay for Google not to sell your data. However, the new problem would be making sure they aren't selling your data, anyway.

Google Contributor: https://contributor.google.com/v/marketing

That does not include Google's services and only includes a handful of sites.

I also see nothing about not still collecting information about you. It appears to just remove showing you some ads.

'allow us to track you across the web, so we can stop showing you ads on publishers that are in our network, once you pay for this privilege'

Google doesn't sell your data. Advertisers pay Google to deliver their ads to the demographic they want to target.

Right. They don’t sell our data, they rent us out to the highest bidder.

Much better.

It is much better, considering there are companies that do actually sell our data.

"rent us out to the highest bidder" is the perfect description of Google and FB's business model. It's hard to imagine how either company could change course at this point, even if they wanted to.

Exactly, people lovw to give a negative spin to 'rent','bid'. I see it as an exchange of value. Data, money both serve same purpose: we give them vakue,they give back. My data helps them improve their systems, make recommendation engine etc. and they give me services in return. Making sense of vast troves of data is their main competency or of any internet service. Would YouTube be relevant without recommendations? Just open incognito mode in YouTube and find out! One thing they could do in future is maybe allow users to store their data somewhere locally,and which gets updated with new recommendations,profilinf info; but that'll involve losts of code changes, engineering challenges i suppose.

I think part of the issue is inequity. I don't have the requisite skills to even begin to do the calculations, but I expect that Google is getting way more (monetary) value out of me than I am getting out of their recommendations. Especially when their recommendations have often been for videos that they know I've already recently watched.

Even if there is nothing wrong with the business model, the "prices" can still be unfair. A lot of the values of these things are inherently difficult, if not impossible, to calculate (at least seemingly).

How is that not better?

Well, at least they don't let governments have free unfettered access to their users data.

It would be too expensive. Google is making $40 every time someone clicks on many categories of ads. They probably have users generating them thousands of dollars a year.

People willing to accept money for their data are useless as advertising targets, because they have already proven that something is wrong about them, and that they have less money than others.

They already do this-it's called Google Opinion Rewards and it's how I feed my Clash Royale habit.

> Immediate hit to Google's revenue stream

but maybe only a temporary one. after knifing the babies (i mean honestly outcompeting the startups), Google could discontinue that option and stop all the payments.

at least for a while, until a fresh crop of foolhardy competitors boldly entered that market again.

Isn't the competition already mostly eradicated, except for Facebook? The other ad companies are orders of magnitude smaller.