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A comment on EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants. Parent comment

Re:EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech... by onion2k on Friday February 12, 2021 @11:20AM (#26115254)
And when effectively no users opt in to advertising, how does the search engine stay in business?

A few years ago my response to this would be that I'd gladly pay Google $10/year for access to Search without adverts, but over the past couple of years that's changed. Google have become so utterly terrible at handling customers that I no longer would. I'll only use Google services if they're free. The idea that Google might just kill my account without notice leaving me with no access to search would be catastrophic.

I would gladly pay a different search engine company for access to a good search service though.

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Re:EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech... by GradientAssent on Friday February 12, 2021 @11:23AM (#26115303)
Google's revenue per user is unfortunately much higher than $10/year.
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Re:EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech... by simias on Friday February 12, 2021 @11:31AM (#26115394)
Do you have exact numbers? The estimates I've seen are about $60 per user per annum, so about $5 per month. That's for all services, not just search.

So for less than a Netflix subscription you have Youtube, Gmail, Search, Drive, Translate, Calendar, Maps, Photos, Hangouts and more. Services that many people use regularly.

It wouldn't be hard to argue that any of these products is worth a lot more than $10 a year, but convincing users at large to go down that route will be a challenge, undoubtedly.

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Re:EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech... by JumpCrisscross on Friday February 12, 2021 @11:52AM (#26115616)
Google's ARPU for American users was reported at $256 in 2019 [1]. So for ~$25 a month, you might get them to consider switching business models.

[1] https://mondaynote.com/the-arpus-of-the-big-four-dwarf-every...

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Re:EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech... by ISL on Friday February 12, 2021 @11:44AM (#26115528)
It is less than a Netflix subscription but essentially everyone on the planet subscribes and can't cancel.

(Also, many users would agree on the value but balk at redirecting funds from an existing allocation to continue service on something they've already gotten for free.)

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Re:EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech... by jayparth on Friday February 12, 2021 @11:32AM (#26115407)
It's not that much higher though. Back of napkin tells me that it's like 60$
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Re:EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech... by username90 on Friday February 12, 2021 @11:53AM (#26115631)
It is much higher for US users.
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