Hacker News Reader

Comment by moritonal | Hacker News Reader

Can't believe I'm on this side of the debate, but at what point are we asking too much for free?

Google provide Maps for free to an incredible accuracy and value. Unlike Apple, the user is welcome to use any other app, and yet chooses to use Google Maps.

You could maybe argue that Google Maps is part of a package you bought the phone for, but realistically I think the solution is Google are just open about the use of data (which they are really) and offers a paid solution that doesn't track you.

View on HN

Google is a large monopoly that subsidizes “free” products to burn a thousand mile clearing around their money engine.

If Google maps was not free, there would be more of a market for competing mapping products.

A mapping product has a natural intersection with advertisements - a non-negligible number of mapped trips are commercial in nature, and can thus catch consumers right before the moment of purchase. This might prove fertile ground for a new competitor.

So Google gives maps away, and anyone who wants to compete has to compete with free, and starts with a tremendous data disadvantage.

Through this lens, requiring you to disclose more data makes sense. They strengthen their data moat around the free product, which in turn protects their dominant position in ads.

I would like to see regulators crack down on this kind of anti-competitive behavior.

Makes me wonder, was the DoJ right that it was bad for Microsoft to bundle Internet Explorer for free? I know it sounds insane now to have an OS without a browser, but was this the “original sin” that permanently warped expectations for what amounts people should be willing to pay for software?

Even today, outside of gaming/entertainment, the consumer software market is basically a wasteland. But if you had to pay for a browser today (pick your favorite), how much would that be worth to you? (Netscape cost $50! Or $90 in today’s equivalent.) I can’t think of any other market where we expect so much in exchange for paying so little.

Most likely today’s end state was inevitable; if MSFT hadn’t bundled IE, someone else would have made a similar play and capitalized on the network effects.

you could make similar arguments for any integrated or bundled technology. even products like microsoft office which knocked out competition back in the day when there were competing spreadsheet packages.

where it gets philosophically interesting is how this integration can cut across dimensions. software can be bundled horizontally, and software+hardware+commerce+service can be bundled vertically.

integration often leads to smoother experiences for end users at reduced cost, but comes at the expense of winner take all economics in the marketplace.

finding the right balance across both dimensions will be the great challenge for 21st century technology regulation. it's unclear to me how much antitrust experience from the past will help with this (or if consolidation may actually be desirable, freeing up capacity for new problems)

Thank you :-) I wholeheartedly agree with you, and I'm sad not seeing it reported more often.

I consider that Google Maps being free stagnated the maps market, and stopped any innovation from happening. Often when I say this, I get "But OpenStreetMap". When only volunteers can compete, that's a definite proof something's wrong.

(though arguably Google Maps did improve a bit over time, while gmail really didn't at all)

It's worth pointing out that OpenStreetMap has Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Facebook and many other corporate contributors and they are contributing huge amounts of data, all the time, everywhere.

"Apple Maps, is by far the most prolific current corporate editor and was responsible for almost 80% of all edits to pre-existing roads in 2018."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-19/openstree... https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Jennings%20Anderson/diary...

Openstreetmap has never been volunteer only, but to be fair its only in the last decade that we've seen this change.

This bandwagon only happened because OSM gained traction, sometime in the 2010s. Sure, popularity breeds more popularity, afterwards. Even for all this, the biggest single event that boosted interest in OSM was, ironically, Google imposing far stricter gratis limits on its Maps, a few years back (2018, IIRC?)

I do btw, fully agree. If Google Search was forced to exist as an independent company it would radically affect (I believe for the better) the finance model of the rest of their products and help the market as a whole.

> Can't believe I'm on this side of the debate, but at what point are we asking too much for free?

You act like it's consumers moving the line. It's Google. Massively profitable for a long time now, Google. Your argument is that if we resist Google's ever-advancing march deeper into our privacy, that we consumers are the ones who are changing things, making things unfair to poor Google.

> at what point are we asking too much for free?

But isn't this reasoning sort of paradox? Google is asking for something here in exchange of allowing to use the navigation feature. That makes it by definition not free - it's just, there is no straight-forward monetary price to it.

You can redefine "free" as "any price other than money" - and lots of people in tech seem to do exactly that - but then, if done honestly, you'd have to allow people to reason about non-monetary prices in the same way as about monetary ones: Compare them, decide about fairness, etc.

What scares me is that frequently, this isn't done - on the contrary: A developer can make its users jump through all kinds of hoops and demand whatever they want - and all is ok because it's "free"!

> at what point are we asking too much for free?

I am a paying customer for a bunch of other Google products.

We’ve also seen with custom domain grandfathering out that they’re not out of options regarding their services terms.

They choose to make Maps free, and there is no option to pay for Maps outside of the API.

“Don’t complain it’s free.” is not a valid argument when it is a revenue making product from a for profit product company. It’s their choice, not ours.

"You could maybe argue that Google Maps is part of a package you bought the phone for"

Microsoft lost the case to be able to directly control the user's browser experience:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

They lost that case in 2001. I honestly doubt they'd lose it today.

Overturned at appeal and afterwards settled. So I wouldn't count it as a loss for Microsoft.

Google Maps doesn't make money using wifi data. It makes money the way it always does: through ads [0,1].

[0]: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7040605?hl=en

[1]: https://ads.google.com/hotels/

They can sell ads better if they know where you are. Wifi data is making that every easy and battery saving to track.

They already know where you are to a sufficiently high degree of precision with GPS. The battery matters to you, not to Google. Wifi ads next to nothing for Google.

Or more pedantically, Google knows where your device is to a sufficiently high degree of precision. They can't stop me from just leaving that shit home or in a faraday cage.

They also make a fair bit of money selling geofencing services to law enforcement agencies.

>Unlike Apple, the user is welcome to use any other app,

This part of your comment makes no sense to me - how do Apple users not have choice in maps apps...?

you can't set the default maps app in iOS. for example if you tap on an address in an iMessage you'll be directed to Apple maps

At the very least you can get asked which map app you want to use for sure, this is how my phone is set up.

That a service is offered for free *does not* mean that the service can request unnecessary privilege for its offering.

> at what point are we asking too much for free?

At the point that they should *STOP*, which is also free.

> Google are just open about the use of data

Will. Never. Happen. GLS is dystopian hellscape tracking masquerading under the fig leaf of "anonymity". Its technical details, pretty much a wet dream of the world's spy agencies, will never be revealed.

> and offers a paid solution that doesn't track you.

Really? Never heard of that. Can you elaborate?

At the point where Google's failures to release working, marketable, and financially successful projects are causing them to leech off freeware.

Remember openstreetmaps is also free. I fully support freeware being paywalled as that would decimate FAMANG's userbase.

If I ask Google Maps to provide my cycling directions, I get multiple options depending on destination. If I ask Apple Maps, I get an apology that directions are not available in my area. I don't think Googs is using openstreetmaps data

I don’t think Apple Maps use OSM correctly, otherwise they wouldn’t suggest me walking over a bridge that has been disused and partially disassembled a decade ago. OSMAnd doesn’t do that, for example.

Not been free for me, pre-installed on all the Android Phone I have bought, part of the purchased product.

They don't have to offer it for free. But I bet that if they stopped, someone else would.

If the business model Google themselves created will somehow fail if we don't continue to allow them to suck more and more private data out of us then so be it. They will have to change their business model. I am not interested in changing to accommodate them.

By the way, there is nothing free here. All of those advertising dollars come out of our pockets via increased products costs.

> Unlike Apple, the user is welcome to use any other app, and yet chooses to use Google Maps.

iPhones let you install Google Maps, you're not locked in to Apple Maps.

Fine, so give me a Google Maps subscription price that does not show me ads, does not save my location history. I pay for YouTube Premium to avoid ads, I would pay for a privacy-preserving and ad-free Google Maps. Maps and navigation is the only reason I have a smartphone. If they can't offer that, I'll buy a feature phone and a Garmin Drive or some other device for nav.

Genuine Question: Does paying for YouTube Premium prevent them from accessing your viewing data to better serve you ads elsewhere? I suspect it doesn't, but haven't really thought about it before

Yes you can use other mapping apps on iOS.

On the other hand, Google has often played hardball with manufacturers who wanted to include other location technology…

https://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-l...

Is it asking to get it for free, or is it regulating how you can monetize it? I don't think the argument is that Google maps has to be free, it's that they can't make you pay for it with your personal data.

This encourages a classist system where the affluent get to keep their data private and the poor working class' data is open season for companies to exploit and use for oppressive purposes.

It’s not free when you’re the product.

Great job regurgitating that line

Please tell me this comment was written by some Google AI..

Selling organs is illegal. Maybe selling your personal / environmental data is too.

Anyone can charge money for access to an app to compensate for value of data.

> and offers a paid solution that doesn't track you.

of Maps?

Hell let’s make selling anything about me illegal: my voice, my image, my ideas, my bodily fluids, especially my time and effort. Then I can finally live off the allowance our caring government will generously offer.

Here, how about a compromise.

They can have my data but they have to pay minimum wage for it.

I like that -- Guaranteed minimum income for anyone willing to sign up for big-tech free services. I think that is an experiment worth conducting.

Minimum price for something just makes it illegal to sell if it happens to be worth less.

If your data is worth that little, which it is, then yeah let's make it illegal for companies to coerce people into giving it up with boilerplate contracts. The impact is too high and the benefit too low.

This is not a slippery slope toward outlawing anything you could possibly sell.

I’ve been giving away "my data" for free stuff since the beginning of the Internet. Still waiting breathlessly for that high impact.

I’m guessing it’s more like being a frog in a stewpot as the temperature slowly rises.

Describe the boiling please.

Easy. The insidious infiltration of advertising and marketing in nearly every aspect of your life. Behind every purchase you make, there's money changing hands between the seller and the person who nudged your hand just a little bit to the left. You're not in control of where you spend your money. Don't notice it? That's the point.

Totally don’t mind it. Sure 99% of people don’t mind it either. I don’t see the actual damage done. Comparing it to "boiling the frog" is ridiculous.

But it surely was an awesome cause for politicians who took this non-issue and made a huge deal out of it. Actual damage done: my browsing UX destroyed and great free services I used every day now under jeopardy.

Congratulations on taking your personal choice and preference and imposing it on the great majority.

What even does "minimum wage" mean in this context? Like, all the time they possess it? The CPU time they spend on it? I'm not sure I understand the sense this makes.

I read it as meaning (minimum wage * full time job), i.e. 40 hours per week.

For this situation, it's easy, it's the entire time I'm driving.

They'd never go anywhere near the idea so I don't feel too much pressure to nail down how it would work for non-real-time data.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com