Comment by fifticon
6 days ago
They are not paying $0. They are manipulated into believing they are paying $0. If people were offered the google suite for 'free','you just have to let us siphon 4 liters of blood from you every year', would people still claim the price was 'zero dollars'. Just because you extract the price from your users in a different denomination/method than ordinary dollars, doesn't mean it's 'free'. Precisely because they are not asking for dollars, indicates they are actually extracting value from their users. They are not giving, they are taking, and it is also clear they are taking more than they are giving, given their revenue and profits.
I could see a similar argument being made by plantation owners in the past "we are lodging these guests from africa for FREE", they don't even have to PAY to live in the houses we offer them! There is only the small detail of the activities they will have to do in OUR fields, which will kill them off in 10-15 years, but that is another matter which should not be confused".
"Deals" of the kind google and facebook offer are not to the consumer's advantage. Insisting on not having a facebook account is akin to choosing not to use the paved asphalt roads the society makes available to you. I could "choose" not to have a facebook account, but it would lock me out of effectively both my friends group and my family's daily communication.
> Just because you extract the price from your users in a different denomination/method than ordinary dollars, doesn't mean it's 'free'
That is, in fact, what it means. "Free" (in the transaction sense) means you didn't pay money for it. Just because Krispy Kreme hopes you buy some donuts while you're in the store doesn't make the loss leader donut not free. Just because Google gets something other than money from the deal doesn't mean that the product isn't free.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre
I know you specified in the transaction sense but it's almost never a one-off interaction. The ecosystem and repeated interactions shape things.
> I could see a similar argument being made by plantation owners in the past "we are lodging these guests from africa for FREE", they don't even have to PAY to live in the houses we offer them! There is only the small detail of the activities they will have to do in OUR fields, which will kill them off in 10-15 years, but that is another matter which should not be confused".
Seriously?
> "Deals" of the kind google and facebook offer are not to the consumer's advantage.
Again -- explain how "splitting up" the "monopoly" would realistically get you out of this situation? Pointing to something and saying it's bad doesn't imply your solution would solve the problem.
Not OP, but the idea is that when split from their massive parents, these products would be much more vulnerable to competition in a way they are very safe from it today. It's not an insurmountable task to create, say, a video-sharing site, or a chat program. Better versions of YouTube and MS Teams could be made with 20 developers in 18 months. However, those would be suicidal uses of capital today, since who's going to actually buy "CorpChat" when Microsoft bundles Teams, and Salesforce bundles Slack? Who's going to want to host their content on a new video sharing site if Google can easily make sure YouTube will always outrank it in Search, and could even ensure the videos don't play right in Chrome?
All products which lose money and are propped up by money firehoses from other parts of their dominant owners, are products that enjoy an unfair advantage in the market leaving less marketshare (often strikingly less) for anyone who might be better.
> All products which lose money and are propped up by money firehoses from other parts of their dominant owners, are products that enjoy an unfair advantage in the market leaving less marketshare (often strikingly less) for anyone who might be better.
Is it your opinion that every product is monetizable, and should be if that would make it self-sufficient? Do you not feel some would just get killed entirely if they couldn't be subsidized through other products?
2 replies →