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Comment by someluccc | Hacker News Reader

A) Do you pay them? - No: then yes it is free

“But my data” Have your ever sold your data? Would the value you could ever possibly receive for your data ever equate to the value you get from the free services?

Likely No and No.

Is the free ad supported city newspaper free? Yes it is in fact free, just like FM radio is free, and broadcast television is free, and sidewalks next to billboards are free

Someone creating something appealing and giving it away for free in order to make up for it through ads in front of eyeballs does not in any way mean that the free thing isn’t free

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> Have your ever sold your data?

My data has been sold, yes. By me, no, because I don't have the means. But by others and especially by nefarious actors, absolutely.

So indeed, it's not free. Just because data isn't liquid at the individual level doesn't mean it has no value.

All of these examples are probably in part or fully paid for with some sort of taxes. So it is less "no payments" and more "deferred payments".

I would argue that the question of "Is it free?" should not be restricted to monetary payments. If I offer you dinner for an hour of yardwork - are you receiving the food for free? If I would offer you that same dinner in exchange for letting me watch you use your computer for a while, is it free?

I think ads do incur a cost on you: In usability of a service, in your attention span / desensitization and your ability to focus, in the money you would not have spent were it not for ads.

Googles services are free in the sense, that you don't spend cold hard cash on them, but I would still argue, that you pay for them. That 2 Trillion Dollar valuation has to come from somewhere... :(

#1. Would I have used the computer at the same time/place/duration? Then yes it is free. It literally cost me nothing.

#2. You can pay? Also is the argument somehow that the free thing isn’t free because the ad in it makes the UX worse?

Also curious to know how many ads exactly do you get while using google workspace? drive? android? maps?

Finally: You can literally use Chrome, Workspace, Drive, Android and Maps without seeing a single ad, without an ad blocker, without EVER using google search, for free.

There are costs other than monetary associated with doing things. Just because you are not giving someone cash directly does not mean it is "free".

Those semantics aside:

- Maps has ads in the form of sponsored results all over the map.

- Android is only a decently functional platform with Play services installed, which includes ads. I don't have an Android phone handy but I'm pretty sure there's up-sells included in quite a few places, I just can't name any right now.

- Chrome is a browser you cannot use for its primary purpose without seeing ads.

- Workspace is a directly paid-for product.

Google is an ad company. Essentially all of its products are supported by advertising, and it's slightly odd to suggest they are not.

You're describing the difference between highly diffuse costs (taxes -> sidewalks) and transactional costs (price of a hamburger -> hamburger).

I would like private businesses to offer transactional costs. I do not want businesses leveraging diffuse costs; I'd prefer that only my governments use diffuse costs and that private businesses have limited ability to use diffuse costs. At least with government I get a vote.

> A) Do you pay them? - No: then yes it is free

And here we see the ostrich. When faced with the horrors of reality, sticks its head in the sand. It’s simpler in there.

Your data is worthless. Please do tell me how much you could sell your “data” for right now.

My data, sure, but the data of my entire age/racial/economic group is worth a lot to marketing firms. There’s a ton of that information in emails.

That’s literally google’s business model.

You think Gmail is free bc Google is nice?

Come on…

So in this transaction you’re exchanging something that is individually worthless for something that is individually valuable.

Which is a bad thing and should stop. Right now!

Ps: it’s also not like you’re paying so little that you could say you’re getting it for…… free

It’s really hard for me to take you seriously. You’re just poorly playing semantics to white knight for Google.

Very weird.

It’s a good deal for the individual, that’s why Gmail is popular.

Trading something of low value for something of moderate value is not what “free” means…

Say the data from me or any of my peers was worth 1/100th of a cent and we give that away… that means I am trading something of minor value for something else…

It's not worthless to companies who want to use it against me.

I don't want to sell my data. I want companies to stop collecting it.

In fact, I don't think I've seen anyone here wishing they could sell their data.

The data of an individual may be worth something like $0.001 which is not that much to an individual.

However the value is not nothing, and if you are a company with multiple billion users, that value of data can get pretty big pretty fast

There are companies like Nielsen that will pay you directly for you to provide personal data. But regardless of that, there are plenty of things that we do for free, like babysitting our own kids or answering our own phones, that if provided to someone else we would get paid for. So if your data is worthless to you, that doesn't mean it's not valuable to someone else. And we know for a fact that data is valuable, so why are you even raising this point, except to be argumentative for its own sake?

If I build a movie theater and give away the tickets knowing that I can make money on ads before a movie that does not mean that 5 minutes of your eyesight is now worth something

> that does not mean that 5 minutes of your eyesight is now worth something

The advertisers paying to get their ads placed in front of those eyes disagree.

And ye, since another comment questions this, data or "eye-time are similar - they can be broken down to the individual.

The advertisers pay some price expecting a certain number of people to see the ad, and even if data about people is sold in bulk (too) there is a price per individual. It's a simple division to see the price they pay per person to view that cinema ad, or for one person's data, even if they always purchase those in bulk.

After all, they get to the bulk price by multiplying how much they are willing to pay for one individual with the expected (or in the case of data packages known) number of individuals.

You can literally use Chrome, Workspace, Drive, Android and Maps without seeing a single ad, without an ad blocker, without EVER using google search, for free.

Google Maps is full of local search ads and Workspaces isn't free.

Also Chrome exists primarily to ensure their ads business remains healthy i.e. they have massively watered down privacy restrictions.

Uhmm.... I have to admit that I fail to see any connection whatsoever between your original comment that I replied to (included in the reply) and your reply...

Do you realise that as soon as you go to any of those websites, your details are scraped and sold? The second you put any data in drive or worksdpace, that is scraped into LLMs and sold?

Theres a reason that you have to log into a Google account to use those services, which means agreeing to their rather large TOS.

Buying something doesnt necessarily mean you have to pay money for it. Your time and information is worth something too.

I don’t think they realize just how large the google data collection operation is…

> Do you realise that as soon as you go to any of those websites, your details are scraped and sold?

I've never heard of Google doing this. Google sells access to and the attention of their audience. They do not sell personal data.

Movie theater is an interesting analogy because they make zero money on ticket sales. Usually ticket revenue pays for the cost of the movie (theaters pay the studio for the movie). The way the theaters make money is on concessions, hence why they're crazy expensive.

> that does not mean that 5 minutes of your eyesight is now worth something

It literally means exactly that, because you're deriving some real value (money) from 5 minutes of your eyesight. So therefore it has value.

That’s literally what that means…

You, the theater owner, are selling the time people are sitting in your theater in view of a large screen to advertisers. That time is literally worth something.

If there were no people in the theater, the advertisers wouldn’t pay for the time.

You just really don’t understand how advertising works.

You’re effectively saying something like “just because people would pay for something, doesn’t mean it has any value”

I have to believe that you’re an extremely skilled troll, because otherwise idk what’s going on in your head.

if you aren't considering the fact that your data is what enabled these companies to become such massive giants in the first place, you may be living outside of the EU.

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