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The Digital Advertising Duopoly

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Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#61

Post by dreamfactored »

alexryan wrote: post #30
nerdponx wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the role of governments in a healthy economy? To step in when markets fail?

This is where all corruption originates. One group seeks to use the state to impose their will on another group. The victimized group, in turn, seeks to defend itself by bribing the enforcers. Instead of capital flowing to those who are best able to convert it into the most happiness for the most people, it flows to those seeking to enrich themselves by pitting people against each other in order to extract ever large…

Instead of 'the market', think of government as a union representing the collective interests of citizens and empowered to intervene when those interests are threatened by forces of nature (which I would say very much includes 'the market')

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#62

Post by dreamfactored »

brucephillips wrote: post #60
dreamfactored wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that China has reproduced to a large extent and in some areas exceeded these services within a few years precisely through massive government intervention

What does it mean to "exceed" a service?

Wechat vs Whatsapp

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#63

Post by alexryan »

arrosenberg wrote: post #36
alexryan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where all corruption originates. One group seeks to use the state to impose their will on another group. The victimized group, in turn, seeks to defend itself by bribing the enforcers. Instead of capital flowing to those who are best able to convert it into the most happiness for the most people, it flows to those seeking to enrich themselves by pitting people against each other in order to extract ever large…

What you call "imposing their will" might be called "balancing the scales" by others. In any organized society, government necessarily creates economic rules and incentives one way or the other, through action or inaction. The debate must be over which rules provide the proper incentives to maximize utility for the most number of people, not whether rules should be made at all.

Fair. "Balancing the scales" is a laudable goal. I merely wish to point out that suggested mechanism of balancing carries a significant downside and we might want to consider alternative means of achieving the goal.

Innovation would be my preference. The more corrupt a monopoly becomes, the more motivated the best engineers are to join a startup with a "Don't be evil" mission to take them down. ;)

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#66

Post by jacksmith21006 »

mgraczyk wrote: post #15
weeksie wrote: post #5

Being against government intervention is naive. If the US did what the EU has done with allowing people to avoid being tracked the big tech companies would be nudged toward developing smarter business models. Maybe it's not necessary but it's foolish to dismiss government out of hand. Allowing your largest companies to compete over hijacking your public's attention is precisely the sort of thing that reeks of governm…

If the US did what the EU has done, I would probably have to wait another 50 years for products I use every day like - Google Maps - Google Speech Recognition - Google Photos Search - Google Home I'm thankful that my government has allowed innovation to continue. I'm glad they have represented my interests as a consumer by favoring technological growth over protection I neither want nor need.

Exactly. Last thing we want is the EU type of heavy handed influence on free markets.

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#68

Post by CaptSpify »

brucephillips wrote: post #40
CaptSpify wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you not consider people being openly lied to and manipulated on a daily basis anything other than a failure?

I never said I did. What on earth are you talking about?

That is what advertising is in it's current state. You said you don't see that as a failure

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#69

Post by NicoJuicy »

blfr wrote: post #54
pimmen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever used Skype? Spotify? Trivago? Those are EU tech products many people use everyday, just goes to show that intervening from time to time doesn't necessarily mean that we live in some socialist, repressive regime. You're welcome, by the way.

Google offers plenty of minor services but Maps is in a completely different league than Skype or even Spotify. YouTube is closer to Spotify but would probably still be impossible without Google's massive investment. Dailymotion is pretty far behind.

Open street map then ;)

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#70

Post by manigandham »

herodotus wrote: post #29

The problem with subscriptions is not the cost, its the sheer number of them - and some come up almost accidentally. I pay a lot to my ISP every month. I would like to see a company that charges me monthly to eliminate all adware by micro-paying the participating websites for my actual page visits. In fact, if my ISP added such a service for a fee, I would sign up.

We tried this - there's a lot of political and business issues that basically mean you can't pull it off unless you're a major player (like Verizon or Google) already. Selling the data (of which one of the uses is advertising) is more lucrative than letting users pay direct, and that's before overcoming the hurdle of most consumers who think that they already pay for "the internet" including all the content.

Google's has the Google Contributor option [1], but that only applies for ads via their ad network and not other potential sources. There's also Flattr which is not as automated but it's now owned by AdBlockPlus crew and has raised rates so it's not such a transparent and clean system anymore.

1. https://contributor.google.com/v/beta

2. https://flattr.com/

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