Ads are irritating, and Google is not supplying these services out of the goodness of their heart, but I think there's no question that the world is a better place with these ad-supported services in it.
I would rather have all google products be paid, and lessen the incentive for business to spend a large share of their revenue on advertisement.
I don't follow, sorry. By "you", do you mean the end-user, sitting in front of their browser? I'd agree that that person is paying Google with their attention (hopefully in exchange for other valuable content nearby in time or space). But it's the companies trying to advertise stuff that pay Google cash (in exchange for that attention). Google then pays a cut to the site hosting the ad.
>I would rather have all google products be paid, and lessen the incentive for business to spend a large share of their revenue on advertisement.
I don't think Google would have ever gotten off the ground if you had to pay cash to search for stuff -- do you?
How many people do you know who watch YouTube?
How many of them have YouTube Premium?
> I don't think Google would have ever gotten off the ground if you had to pay cash to search for stuff -- do you?
If online advertisement became illegal, Google or somebody else would have gotten off by selling search as a service.
I am not saying that this move would have made Google more successful, they are already successful. But I do not believe that this success is reaching us, consumers.
You talk as though this has already happened, but that's not the case. Companies pay Google with money they hope to recoup from you via your purchases, but whether or not you choose to buy the thing advertised is completely up to you. Advertising is an investment with uncertain returns, like any other.
>If online advertisement became illegal, Google or somebody else would have gotten off by selling search as a service.
It's possible, but I just don't think there's enough of an appetite to pay small amounts of cash for this. It will be interesting to see what happens with Kagi (though I acknowledge that if it fails, that would not be definitive, since it has to compete with ad-supported services, and massive, entrenched ones at that).
It has already happened. Things you buy have an online/google advertisement markup whether you use youtube premium or not. You pay for the ads no matter if you watch them or not.
Free services aren't actually free, on a large scale they affect how much everything should cost.
> It's possible, but I just don't think there's enough of an appetite to pay small amounts of cash for this. It will be interesting to see what happens with Kagi (though I acknowledge that if it fails, that would not be definitive, since it has to compete with ad-supported services, and massive, entrenched ones at that).
This is because free services are a trap. People do not want to pay for search BECAUSE there are """free""" alternatives. If every services become paid people wouldn't be as reluctant.
Free services also create wrong expectations and change the way we should use the service. Take youtube, it is free so everybody expect everyone to be able to access the platform, and so people tend to only upload to youtube because "why would you be anywhere else". And now, when youtube obviously change its term you have a wave an angry people seeing youtube as a platform that must remain convenient or their world will collapse.
If video platforms were all paid, people wouldn't have the same expectations. Uploaded videos could only target users who also paid for the platform, and would instinctively understand that this is a temporary platform.
Have also woken up to an ad that was hours long.
Not quite sure what the incentive is but maybe it works for some cases, sometimes I wonder if they're scam setups - sitting through a super long ad is a pre filter. Weirder things have been known for Internet scale.
I use Apple Maps and not Google maps
I forget how bad Google Search is until I get a new computer/phone without ad blocking enabled