Comment by selectodude
16 hours ago
My wife got upset with me when I dns-blocked all the ads.
It sounds totally insane but we’re the minority here. That’s why Google is a $4.5 trillion company.
16 hours ago
My wife got upset with me when I dns-blocked all the ads.
It sounds totally insane but we’re the minority here. That’s why Google is a $4.5 trillion company.
I had a similar reaction from in-law family members. The main reason was that they wanted to be able to see the ads that unlocked more gameplay time on their free game.
Just feels crazy to me, but I guess that's what addiction looks like.
In their case it may rather be accepting the subsidies, trading precious time for pennies.
Purchasing upon ads is the opposite. Trading dollars (and freewill) for time (along with painkiller to having to have personal taste)
We are in the minority, but don't think the majority is the opposite and like this kind of thing. The majority just don't care at all about it.
It's really not uncommon for me to speak to someone who actively doesn't want any sort of adblock on their computer. I would say maybe 5% of people, anecdotally, just don't want it, even when you're in front of their computer at that very moment, and offer, and insist that it would take 30 seconds to install. It's not a majority, but I found it surprising.
On the spot. A lot of replies in this thread which outline "useful" AI features fail to acknowledge the same: this is hackernews, and it's a very specific and non representative slice of the population.
This is Hacker News, where corporate loyalists line up to write screeds about how the population loves being screwed over by big tech.
EDRi is in the minority, the EFF is in the minority, and so on. But someone has got to fight the corps, they can’t be the only ones dictating what’s socially acceptable.
By that logic though wouldn’t Google have wildly successful products instead of a long line of failures? Googles product strategy is akin to throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
Sure some stuff sticks but most falls off the wall and is axed barely half way into the product life cycle.
You're on HN, you should be aware of the idea of not needing every product to succeed. They only need 1 in 10, or 1 in 20, or however many moonshots to succeed. You can not like that strategy, but it's basically the entire tech industry.
No one around me cared about Google Reader / their RSS Reader.
Pepole around me don't even know what google is doing besides search and probably maps.
I'm the person with an adblocker, the others are not.
Who is Googles target audiance? Its not me. I might only be a target for when i run some IT Platform in my work as an architect.
>> Who is Googles target audiance?
I think this is an easy question to answer: 1. what's your monthly ad spend? 2. how many ads did you view lasy week? You're probably not their target.
Pretty much all companies have a long line of failed products, only the ones we heard have successful ones. Google is definitely one of the most successful companies ever existed
> Sure some stuff sticks but most falls off the wall and is axed barely half way into the product life cycle.
If you're not failing often, you're not an innovative company.
Those failures are funded by a wildly successful product.
People need to understand Google. They have a long line of failures, because they are an innovative company. Their whole goal is to scale products to billions of users. So if they release a product, and they see no path to billions of users they cut it and move on.
This has always been the way Google has worked. This is why they are literally the most successful company in the history of the world.
But they do have wildly successful products.
They also have failures, then again most companies have failures as well at all points in the product cycle.
> By that logic though wouldn’t Google have wildly successful products instead of a long line of failures?
Failures like YouTube, GMail and Android?
Two out of those were bought by Google.
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so you're saying Google DOESN'T have wildly successful products? That's definitely a hot take.
This. This is why "sync your files and cast your apps with 0 installs" are even being sold as features.
Normies HATE customizing their devices. Children will literall reach for AI instead of search engines when they just want to change a background image.
Jailbreak is a slur for "Installation" that tech companies want to keep that way.
This is also true.Normies in no situation will customize their device anyhow.
Ditto. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she was clicking on the damned things, but then I’d never thought to ask “hey, how did you find out about this useless Chinese plastic crap that lives in a drawer and is never used”.
Sometimes you've got to protect people against themselves...
Okay, I just have to pry here: why? Does she like ads?
I don’t block ads. I like buying things. I go to work and make money. I’m going to spend some of it on stuff that looks nice and seems fun. Ads are a good way (not the only good way) to find out about new things to buy.
I feel as if you're exactly the opposite of me. This feels, to me, like such an upside down, back-to-front position.
If I need to buy something new in order feel like I'm having 'fun', then I try to ask 'why' as many times as necessary to work out what hole I'm actually trying to fill, or what scratch I'm trying to itch. There are a couple of second hand items I want to buy off Gumtree, but I have no immediate need for them, they'd be for some future situation that's more likely than not to be only theoretical. Knowing that they are there, available, makes me want them, rather than some actual existing purpose.
> to find out about new things to buy.
I would interpret this as "to find out why I should feel unhappy and empty that I don't own these things".
On things that look nice, yes, I've got some nice art, but there's a limited amount of space in which to put up nice looking things, and if you're buying them frequently then you're either throwing out a lot or you're having to store a lot. Additionally, I don't think I've ever seen anything that looks remotely nice advertised on the Internet; or at least looks nice and isn't, in actuality, mass-produced shit that's been polished up.
Having said that, if I had more money to throw away I'd do up my study like an old-school English manor-house library, full matching bookshelves, wainscoting, desk and chair. That's purely 'looks nice' and I would throw away the patchwork that currently furnishes my study. I'll say that's been advertised to me through (un)intentional 'product placement' in movies and TV shows, rather than Internet advertising though.
I am a basic human being, however.
Exactly. Good ads are a service to me that inform me of things I want to buy. They aren't tricking me into buying stuff. Sometimes I see an ad and immediately believe the product would improve my life and it does.
I think the problem with HN/Engineer types is they basically never see ads designed to appeal to them because they aren't a large enough audience.
Are you okay with google tracking everything you do to serve you more specific ads?
To me that's like living in a transparent house where your landlord can always watch you but it's fine because you really like the nice showerhead.
It's kind of amusing to me how such an obvious statement like this is getting downvoted so much. I suspect most people feel this way about ads and HN readers are more bothered by them than most people.
(I hate ads too, but I think I understand the alternative perspective).
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My wife also got upset with me over this.
let's be clear: Google is a titan because they successfully sold ads to people who sold to you. We were never the target market beyond building a monopoly on eyeballs, and it's questionable if their ad empire continues. Outside of that they've had very few successes, and while traditionally the hardware is high quality, the bundled services and level of enshitification now is a no-go for my family. If you're buying into the single vendor for the rest of your life, the choice is currently Apple IMO, because they're "least bad".