Perhaps it’s partly a rational defensive move in case the GDPR wreaks havok with the ad-based web ecosystem?
I’m looking forward to reading whatever Ben Thompson (stratechery.com) has to say on the undelying business model implications
I’m looking forward to reading whatever Ben Thompson (stratechery.com) has to say on the undelying business model implications
You can already pay for that for Gmail. You have been able to for years.
"we never collect or use data from G Suite services for any advertising purposes" https://gsuite.google.com/security/
I am not convinced this can happen. It seems that ads is the only form of micro payment that really works at scale.
However, I love Google Products. Photos is awesome. Inbox makes my mail manageable, etc.
I am sadly probably in a minority, but I would pay a good price to have all these products without any ad targeting.
Ad revenue at Google / Facebook scale is a magic money box. In that they can tell Wall Street (and deliver) ever increasing monetization per user.
Once they start directly charging users, they can't increase that invisibly via "better" ad tech anymore. Any increase is directly passed on to the consumer. AND ceiling just became users * subscription fee.
The market's a lot smaller, but it looks a lot like the same information asymmetry that led to more and more complicated instruments being created and sold (in what was at its base a game of trying to push leverage).
I would be curious to know how many people are subscribed to this service.