My belongings are not a fucking corporate billboard.
Example:
https://andrewchen.com/this-is-what-free-ad-supported-uber-r...
They used to hide it, but because so much money is being made there's no point anymore.
remember, 20 years ago they wanted microtransactions to enable content production. this coule of course be done in a open way, but the idea that this is worse than the current landscape of abhorrent conspiracy fueled hate med8a parade is silly.
So we can forget about it ever being truly "free" (and free from ads) unless we simplify the web somehow. I also don't think we're going to go back in time and start cutting features out of browsers. So that isn't going to happen.
What might work is a browser funded by massive numbers of small user donations. That's the Firefox model. It kinda works? But Firefox still pushes things on their users and defaults to Google Search.
Another option is to pay for a browser. But there isn't enough interest in a paid browser to get one off the ground.
Probably shave a few gigawatts off the grid killing off electron apps.
..and then regret it afterwards :D
Well, last I checked, Safari didn't support 4k YouTube videos. Apple may have fixed it, but it's an example for your argument.
A lot of the web is really just distraction and ad peddling crap
That's not the Firefox model at all. Firefox development done by the Mozilla Corporation is primarily funded by search engine partnerships. Donations to the Mozilla Foundation (which owns the corporation) fund other initiatives instead, and are a much smaller amount.
https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_t...
https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ow9k0y/is_there_a_...
If it ever became a competitive issue Google could very easily close source Chrome. Then suddenly all these Chromium-based subscription browsers would be on the hook for all browser development, security updates included. And that would be enormously expensive. So their prices would have to go up. Would their business still be sustainable? It’s questionable at the very least.
Only today did I realize that most of Chromium (and WebKit) is BSD licensed. So closing the source would be much easier than I expected.
Firefox and Gecko are MPL licensed, which is like GPL but scoped to individual source files.
Despite the fact that only large corporate interests can maintain a browser, that monopoly exists because of a careful balance where developers contribute free labor to the project. Also Google's open-source initiatives still have some developer goodwill.
If Google close-sourced Chromium, they would definitely suffer repercussions. They would anger most programmers and hackers. Say goodbye to bug bounties. Say goodbye to free labor. Say hello to Microsoft taking the opportunity to fork Chromium and make Google look even worse.
Needless to say, it's that third browser I'm trying that interests me most.
The point is that base browser should be simple enough to be implemented by a single developer. And all those complex standards are just libraries, like Angular.
Gates understood that early on (that the browser would become the platform), hence giving Explorer away for free.
The alternative does exist: you can surf the text-only web with lynx, or by reading pure HTML. Even today, most content is available via RSS as well.
Nobody wants that because the modern web is better than it used to be.
Arguably, Google's interests have been aligned with web users' for the last decade or two. Because their #1 fear is/was "walled gardens, both of the Facebook variety as well as native apps. So they need(ed) the web platform to be just as good as native applications, which is how we got joystick and USB web APIs. This is a chance of this changing because they have their own walled garden in the form of Android, but I'm not seeing it yet.
Besides, all browsers are open-source, standards support is incredibly good today compared to the past, none of them try to lock you into their Windows-only ActiveX components, they don't intercept ads and resell them in the black market (except the self-proclaimed "brave" browser)... I really don't think browsers are epitome of corruption you consider the, to be.
Microsoft's attempts to upsell you aren't really evil, they are just tasteless. Seriously: one of the features of really high end products is that they don't quite need as many flashing lights to get your attention. Apple does earn a lot of money, and it likes nothing more than selling you more stuff. But they certainly have enough self-respect not to run banner ads for third parties in their software.
(The difference is (was?) most obvious with these insane stickers ("Intel Inside", "Windows Ready") every other manufacturer had to ruin their notebooks with. But, then again, I know enough people who never took them off to suspect they don't care. Or worse.)
It's the perfect place for security features, enforcing policies and productivity improvements. The Enterprise™ spends huge amounts of money on (often dubious) security products and productivity tools and their complexity sometimes even exceeds browsers. A paid browser that offers better security, supports policies such as restrictions or data loss prevention and productivity features (such as ad blocking, reader mode, an easy automation API) would definitely have customers.
Well, there has been a recent spike of interest in small protocols (Gemini, Gopher). It's mostly limited to esoteric tech enthusiasts though.
Just wait until Google has pushed everyone into encrypted DNS like they did with HTTP ...
Marginal cost of TV is $600, amortized business cost for projected sales is $400, expected average lifetime revenue from user data and ads is $60 ($15/"user"/yr for 5 years which is damn good for an ad network), throw in a 6.3% profit margin and we get TV priced at $999.99.
Throw away the ads and user data collection and up the profit to 10% to make it worth their while (since someone willing to pay more is on average worth more to advertisers and so decreases the value of their network) and we get a TV priced at $1099.99.
This seems totally fair to me.
The product would work just fine without all the extra monetization, that's how it worked for the longest time. Nobody asked for savings trough selling their privacy, that was very much forced on us, and now they force the upsell to "enterpise privacy edition" as the solution to a problem they themselves introduced.
How does that work? AFAIK there is always a root authority.
It's strongly tied to economic growth, and thus everybody's pensions are tied up in the success of advertising. It seems illogical it makes such an obscene amount of money, but collectively the advertising industry is bigger than even oil & gas.
Now I don't exactly enjoy ads, I accept a few, but every time they're implemented the pressures of the market just increase it over and over until it ruins the base product, like a cancer.
What's the alternative?
Consumers don't have enough money to pay for dozens and dozens of subscriptions. The ads industry is effectively a tax on every other industry, and thus makes more money than consumers would ever spend on content. I'm open to ban advertising entirely but that also seems like an opposite extreme and counterproductive.
I think it’s the interjection that really rubs me the wrong way. If the shop I was purchasing from offered me credit on their website during checkout, I wouldn’t mind—I’m entering a transaction with the shop. But why is Microsoft offering me credit? This is nothing to do with them.
Same goes for the ads on smart TVs. I’ve paid Samsung money for the TV. Why are they still here?
Not saying it's the same - it's not - but the motivations has some similarity.
I know some incredibly talented artists and writers putting all their effort into ads so they can make a living and it completely sucks.
Currently the status quo is that tech people like me just exclude themselves from it. We can block ads very effectively, download video content with the ads removed etc. I see so few ads now that it really surprises me when I do get one.
It works for me but it's not a solution for society as a whole. We can already see adblockers becoming less effective as more people adopt them and ads are being served in different ways by companies like AdDefend.
But personally I don't mind the status quo, it works for me. Fixing the problems of society as a whole is not my problem.
I say the solution is to move all ads to a dedicated space (ads.gov, say) and then when you have a problem as a consumer you can go there and search for a solution or a product.
Then it will become cheaper for the rest of us, and services will have to become more focused on consumers needs, not the needs of advertisers.
When I dreamed about joining the industry a decade ago I saw all these new companies offering useful & innovative products/services that actually solved real problems and legitimately made people's lives better. I wanted to be part of this world and get in on the action, making honest money in the process - I provide useful service, customer pays me money. Win-win, right?
Nowadays it seems like every tech company's goal is "engagement" and any problems they solve (or claim to solve) are only there to convince you to "engage" with the product. Even when you think you've actually found a company that has a real paid product that shouldn't (and doesn't - yet) rely on "engagement" you will always find some assholes on the inside (typically in marketing) that chase this "engagement" (and over time ruin the perfectly good product).
You could say it's capitalism's fault but I don't think so. There are other areas where completely unbounded capitalism would lead to terrible outcomes such as ponzi schemes, and yet we mostly avoid these because we have appropriate regulation to deter this behavior. The problem is that we have zero effective regulation (the GDPR doesn't count until it's enforced seriously) around misuse of personal data which powers this whole "engagement" crap.
Fortunately I think (hope) there is light at the end of the tunnel. "Engagement" only works if advertisers pay for those eyeballs which they'd only do if those ads worked and the prospective customer actually bought the advertised product. As we are already saturated in ads (and/or people deploy countermeasures such as ad-blockers) and the costs per click/impression keep dropping the bubble will hopefully pop and it will become more profitable to sell paid, premium & ad-free products like it should be.
When your customers are using your product as part of their job, your incentive is (often) clear: make them more efficient at their job, which means make your product faster and easier to use. The vendor and the customer are aligned.
In the b2c world your goal is often “engagement”. Get the customer to spend as much time as possible in the app. Get them to use your app more than other apps. In a way you have to make your app less useful (to the customer) to make it more valuable to the vendor.
You think they are, but they aren't.
If you have to agree to an End User License Agreement to use a thing then that thing isn't yours, not truly.
See this mini thread from a few days ago on the same topic -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29291166
I’m kidding of course (you should still do it if you can/want) ;)
I tend to think that online discussions are better when people can edit their posts, correcting mistakes, adding context or information, or even changing their position in light of new evidence or convincing arguments.
advertises ApplePay
advertises AppleCare
advertises AppleMusic
advertises Apple Fitness
Not too much in your face but honestly it does come off as tacky.
I'm not sure why they would want to destroy the positive brand reputation and goodwill that they've built over decades.
The same could be said of Fitness+, or any of their other services. Yes, it’s “advertising”, but sits pretty inoffensively on the spectrum.
Where is Jony Ive when we need him? ;-)
Just recently I was given an iPad during the pandemic, and noticed the native "books" app constantly pushing a "reading now" view advertising ebooks, etc. I switch it to the library. Restart the app a couple times, I'm back in the "reading now" view. Is there a setting I'm missing, short of airplane mode? Because if not, I don't know how you apple users deal with this money-grubbing bs.
This is insanely horrible - another flagstone on the road to hell.
I'm kind of shocked that the HI people at Apple would be OK with it.
Apple has built its entire business on user experience, so it doesn't seem wise to sacrifice that on the altar of marketing for services.
Mine doesn't, because I don't plug it into the intertoobs. (I use a Roku box.)
Even my Roku remote control has ads: the Netflix, Disney, Hulu, and Sling shortcut buttons that can’t be reprogrammed.