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Comment by gazrogers | Hacker News Reader

Customers? How much money have you paid Google for services this year?

This argument is such an annoying fallacy. People who use Google's services are Google's "customers" in the same way people who watch television are the network's "customers". You may not be the direct source of income, but if they lose all the "non-customers" that are using their services, they're going to lose all of their advertisers, which is their direct source of income. The audience is a crucial component in a business model that depends on advertisement.

Even if it wasn't, Google opens itself to criticism and review whether their service is free or not. We definitely shouldn't temper our ideas or give Google a pass because "it's free"; that might excuse some advanced features, but it definitely doesn't extend into basics like contact exporting. That's a fundamental, and something that many have blasted Facebook, also ostensibly a "free" service, for not supporting well.

Google is making money off of Gmail. If they weren't making money off of Gmail, they would have discontinued the service a long time ago. Even if the nominal costs exceed the direct profits gained from Google Apps licenses and the display of AdWords, etc., which I tend to doubt, the indirect benefits are obviously valuable.

Should we all feel a great gratitude to the for-profit corporation Google for pursuing their best interest? Certainly we all appreciate the free services, but Google is no charity and expecting an altruistic, anything-goes attitude to their products is silly. They are a serious company making serious money and competing in a serious space, there's no need to make up excuses for them, especially naive ones like, "Well it's free anyway so you shouldn't expect anything out of it".

Hmmm, no. They are a valuable audience, but they are not customers. A customer is someone who pays you for a service. That is the definition.

Why do TV networks continue interrupt their "customers" with ads even though their "customers" don't want ads? That's because their "customers" are not their customers. Their customers are the people paying for those ads and they get to interrupt the "customers" with ads.

It's very important to recognize distinction the between users (aka "customers") and customers if you want your company to survive. "Customers" are the product you sell.

A few grand, give or take. Why does that change anything?

Edit: Google charges for things like AdWords, of which I am a heavy user. So yes, people do in fact pay them money for things.

Cut the snark. We all know you haven't paid a few grand for gmail this year.

This has way too many upvotes. There are _lots_ of people who pay Google money for isolated, corporate installations of Gmail and the rest of the Google Apps suite.

And whether Gmail is paid for as an explicit line-item or not isn't what matters here; most of the money that funds Gmail comes from AdWords and Google's behavior with Gmail impresses upon AdWords customers. It's all done with Google's name and image and it all reflects back on Google collectively. It's perfectly fine to feel sad when a vendor does something you don't like with a "bonus product", even if you weren't billed specifically for your usage of that product.

This is a fair point. But surely you'll agree that the free and $10-per-month users vastly outnumber the corporate and Google Apps users. And I'd bet that the OP isn't one of those corporate customers (he's now edited his post to clarify).

In any case, we aren't really arguing about anything relevant to the discussion at hand.

I happen to think that the original comment was rather trollish given that he can still export his girlfriend's contact information from gmail. He just needs to click two more times now. I think the upvotes my comment got are reflective of a similar feeling about the whole thread from other HNers.

We - the customers - pay google with our attention. The transaction isn't as cut and dried as it is when money changes hands, and we don't have so much recourse to complain (and get an adequate response) but I do think we are definitely customers.

Nothing is truly 'free'.

Negation of this fact, provides companies who offer their services for 'free' with an excuse to treat their users badly.

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