Plus, ads try to target users with money, so presumably their value is proportional to your value. That's probably also a key reason why you don't see this anywhere: it's a blatantly classist practice.
If this is a serious effort it's incredibly disappointing.
> Publishers don't like it (I don't know why), and I think I recall consumers not wanting to pay enough.
Not wanting to pay enough for what? To even justify giving us a choice? Inexcusable.
This was the second attempt, after a previous one (in 2015?) also failed.
> Not wanting to pay enough for what? To even justify giving us a choice? Inexcusable.
To justify providing a service. Unfortunately Google isn't a charity. To clarify, my recollection is that contributor leads to less revenue because consumers are unwilling to pay as much as advertisements provide for the same site. That means that either
1. You as a consumer have to pay more than you're willing (and maybe you're willing to pay more, but not enough people are)
2. Google subsidizes contributor users
3. Publishers take less money.
It appears you're suggesting that its inexcusable that a corporation doesn't want to subsidize your preferences.
This might be the best take I've heard yet. What constitutes choice in method of payment. Since it appears you consider "forcing users to pay with data" to be anti-consumer, is "forcing users to pay with dollars" equally anti-consumer? Does that make, like, restaurants that don't let you pay with personal info anti-consumer? What about companies that take data and don't offer anything in return (Equifax et. al, ISPs, etc.)