throw_awy_1

Okay, they complete on quality but they are "close" to use your term.

My point was that paying to be the default is not enough. A challenger needs to also overcome the brand preference has built. A one-time investment of $20B (or even $3B) would be wasted. A true competitor would have to be in this for the long haul and willing to outbid Google for many years. Additionally they'd need to invest in building their brand image against Google which would be expensive and risky.

> Samsung was considering switching to Bing

Great case in point. Samsung (not Bing) backed out of this "over concerns of how it could affect its relationship with Google and the market’s perception of the move" [https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/19/23730368/samsung-google-b...]

Demonstrates that its not just money that is required to compete with Google.

In this case we have two ad supported search engines that deliver a very similar experience. As you note the differentiation is not great and thus, defaults matter. So in this case they are no longer competing on product quality, but on distribution. A high barrier to entry ($20B is high) but at <10% of Google's revenue it's affordable to them but basically no one else.

There is also brand competition and Google has done a fantastic job building very strong brand preference. Honestly no one has even tried to build an alternative search brand for over a decade in any meaningful way (DDG and Bing combined is the closest we could probably come and that's like Fresca competing with Coke).

Google Chrome has ~63% market share and that's not up for auction. They pay for ~23% or so at the $20B discussed thus no one is going to be able to out-distribute Google any time soon.

Furthermore no one, including Microsoft, is going to risk $20B on overcoming Google's brand preference. It would take years and probably $100B or more to play this game for an uncertain outcome. Better to invest in OpenAI than take that bet.

Credit to Google; they have built a very strong business with a strong moat. But no, real competition is not a "click away."

And here's 20 Billion dollars that disagrees with you. If switching was just a "click away" why would Google pay Apple $20B per year to be the default search for iOS etc.

https://macdailynews.com/2023/02/21/google-pays-apple-20-bil...

How would you test the potential long term effects of these new vaccines in an accelerated fashion?

That may not maximize ad revenue however. For instance if the Going rate for placing guitar ads is low (not many people bidding to show guitar related ads) but mortgages is quite high google (or someone) would rather show the expensive mortgage ad than the cheap guitar ad.

Would agree Google Adsense is the giant but they still have competition. A quick search on duckduckgo revealed at least some to investigate.

Note - many of these are probably just as scummy or moreso than adsense but they, at a minimum, are not part of Google.

    Media.net
    PropellerAds
    Amazon Native Shopping Ads
    Adversal
    Sovrn //Commerce (Formerly VigLink)
    Skimlinks
    Monumetric
    InfoLinks
    ylliX
    Evadav
    PopCash
    PopAds
    RevContent
    Adsterra
    SHE Media
    AdRecover
    MadAds Media
    Bidvertiser
    Adbuff
    BuySellAds
    AdClickMedia

Another idea: also stop using Google to show ads on your web site (adsense).

As the article states, you get to decide how much tracking your visitors are subjected to.

Understood. My suggestion was that Facebook "target" based on the content of the post/article/website. Thus a needle ad is shown next to a kitting post. This can certainly be an artisan needle producer buying 1000 impressions...

Fully understand that Facebook is keep the PII close - that's their differentiation.

I'd imagine that the advertiser could only show needle ads next to content about sewing / knitting and be very effective at reaching the desired audience without resorting to collecting PII about that audience.

Any reason this wouldn't work?

It looks like Atlassian does take POs though. Is there something about the way they (or other SaaS) companies take POs?

How do I submit a Purchase Order (PO number) to Atlassian? (https://www.atlassian.com/licensing/purchase-licensing#order...)

To get started, complete our secure online Quote & Order Form. On the final confirmation page, check the PO number box to add your PO number. The PO number will appear on your quote or invoice (valid for 30-days). If you already have a quote or invoice, you can update the quote or invoice through my.atlassian.com via the Orders tab.

Atlassian is happy to reference a PO number on a quote or invoice for your internal tracking and record keeping. However, we do not accept purchase orders as a form of payment nor the terms and conditions commonly associated with purchase orders. We provide fully functional trial licenses for you to use while payment is being arranged. We are able to keep our prices low by offering standard product agreements to all our customers and do not offer commercial credit.

Just like minimum wage.

>Targeted advertising if done correctly can connect people who want to buy stuff with people who produce stuff with a minimum of waste.

What exactly is the waste? I'm assuming you're saying the advertiser doesn't "waste" money by advertising to folks he doesn't think will be receptive to his message. That may be true bit it's not necessarily a societal benefit. It's also most enriching the targeting companies, not saving the producers in this case. Google et al still collect the money that would have been spent on untargeted ads.

> People are able to waste less time and energy discovering what to buy and companies are able to waste less time and energy producing things that people don't want.

This seems a very generous and ad friendly interpretation that ignores other costs. Are there people who need Juul? Are there people who need fattening foods and soda? Is it possible that advertisers will prey on people's insecurities to sell them magic beauty creams?

>Targeted advertising can also enable companies to effectively communicate their value propositions more effectively to local communities, and will allow companies to resist the temptation to support efforts through laws/lobbying/etc. to 'flatten' culture; companies can now embrace rather than steamroll differences in communities.

Not sure what is being said here? If you don't by my product I'll lobby for laws you don't like in your jurisdiction?

At the same time we seem to be ignoring all the costs to targeted advertising including the main point of this suggestion, the adversarial collection of personal data but there are others side effects as well.

Agree. The suggestion was for a law that bans highly targeted advertising.

Some good points. I'll try to address a couple.

> But what is "personal data"? This is where I think current legislation goes awry. By going with a whitelist (e.g. age, gender, zip code) as the only allowed data for targeting ads we an avoid the debate of what is personal data.

> Ad-tech companies don't want "ample" profit. They want _all_ the profit. Agree that the online ad companies won't want this legislation. But they'll have a hard time arguing that this will put them out of business. I think the general population likes these companies and wants them to continue to operate and be successful (as do I) but within reasonable bounds.

True, though collecting personal data for legitimate business purposes is not really a problem in my estimation. The ban on targeted advertising would not effect this.

Banning targeted ads is a much more focused solution to try to limit the excessive and harmful collection of personal data.

Certainly agree on the process of gaining support but thought we should test the idea a bit first. Also interested in framing the conversation a bit differently.

Do you see any obvious issues with banning targeted advertising?

Kittyhawk has done some really interesting work in the eVTOL space and have shared some of their thoughts on the energy requirements vs. electric cars. The comparison has some gaps that make it seem less than apples to apples.

1. The comparison seems to only include energy use at cruising. There's no mention of ascent and decent which consumes the most energy. It may be interesting to look at the total energy consumed per-passenger for the average 16 mile commute the company claims.

2. The author carefully explains how they calculated the passenger-mile energy for a Nissan Leaf (energy per mile / average occupancy) or 275/1.6 = 171. Then claims that Heaviside uses only 120W per passenger-mile without explaining the average occupancy. So X/Y = 120. Perhaps they are only using a passenger occupancy of 1 (it only has one seat, for the pilot) but it's unclear.

3. How do things change when the aircraft must be larger & heavier to carry more passengers?

Very cool to see this technology progress. Will be interesting to track. China certainly has shown that it both can invest in and build public infrastructure at an amazing scale and pace.

It's a little concerning that this isn't really a sale - it's a joint venture. From the article:

"HyperloopTT will form a joint venture with the Tongren authorities, according to the Guizhou provincial government, though the company’s announcement didn’t say whether it would be expected to transfer technology."

Has to be taken with a bit of caution as we've seen how this worked out in high speed rail:

"China's early high-speed trains were imported or built under technology transfer agreements with foreign train-makers including Alstom, Siemens, Bombardier and Kawasaki Heavy Industries. Since the initial technological support, Chinese engineers have re-designed internal train components and built indigenous trains manufactured by the state-owned CRRC Corporation." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China]

You'll find that China now is battling for dominance in the global high speed rail market and the formerly leading European providers (Seimens, Altrom) and in trouble and may have to merge just to survive.

"European rivals unite as CRRC threatens to corner train market " [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-27/alstom-si...]

[https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/articles/news-and...]