Whatever goes up, that’s what we do • Hacker News Board

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#201

Post by steven777400 » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 2:43 PM UTC

crazychrome wrote: post #198

eevilspock wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly everyone has bought into the utter bullshit that advertising makes the web free. This delusion buries not only the fact that we have made a deal with the devil, but also that the deal really sucks. What we traded our souls for we don’t even get. The web would be both cheaper and better if we just paid for what we use straight up. And more importantly, society would be better. I'll explain all of these. IT'S NO…

Advertising is not the worst. In-App purchasing is. It turns the whole thing into endless ad stream. Every purchase confirms the success of previous efforts as ad, then what to do next? hit the f*cking user harder!

Yesterday I was sitting with a friend's young boy who was showing me some math games on a tablet. These are games designed to teach simple addition, subtraction, etc to young children.

What amazed me was how intense the push for in-app purchasing was! Every one of the several games had a popup after each level or activity that would offered some in-game "power-up" for just $0.99 or various amounts. It wasn't just that you could make an in-app purchase, but that the app was very aggressively pushing it. He told me, "my mom says I can't do that", but the "no" button was much smaller and harder to press than the yes button, visually.

His mom indicated that he had made such purchases before, and so far she hadn't found a way (on this particular tablet) to disable in-app purchases.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#202

Post by pbhjpbhj » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 2:53 PM UTC

pyrocat wrote: post #82

res0nat0r wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to have a sense of mission or purpose when your company goes out of business and you can't pay the bills.

You're right, there's absolutely zero middleground.

/s

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#203

Post by aianus » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 3:05 PM UTC

eevilspock wrote: post #176

steven2012 wrote: post #79

This is essentially what happened in my group when I was at Yahoo. Our group spent several months on a redesign that made it significantly more modern and easier to use. After it went live, though, this decreased the number of ad clicks by a significant number, and the people in charge hurriedly reverted all the changes back, since they needed to make their revenue numbers in order to make their bonus. When you are s…

Nearly everyone has bought into the utter bullshit that advertising makes the web free. This delusion buries not only the fact that we have made a deal with the devil, but also that the deal really sucks. What we traded our souls for we don’t even get. The web would be both cheaper and better if we just paid for what we use straight up. And more importantly, society would be better. I'll explain all of these. IT'S NO…

There was no way for me to buy anything online until I turned eighteen (no longer true now that Canada got with the program and started issuing visa debit cards). I'm very grateful for the opportunity I had to use the Internet to learn and communicate for free.

And it's not just children. How would people in poor countries afford to pay the same amount as a Westerner for access to StackOverflow or a motorcycle repair forum or whatever?

I don't think it's such a clear win to make the Internet for-pay.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#204

Post by prostoalex » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 3:34 PM UTC

wisty wrote: post #189

mehwoot wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hows that working for Yahoo now? Pretty well, considering they are still around more than a decade after they stopped being "cool". They're not trendy in tech circles, they are just a business that makes money. Yahoo and Facebook are time-wasters... Time-wasters are basically unprofitable Yeah, unprofitable to the tune of $600 million a year. That's Yahoo's net profit last year. I swear to god, the blindness of peopl…

When I last heard, Yahoo seemed to have a net value of less than zero ( http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-17/is-yahoo-s-... ), once you exclude their minority stakes in alibaba and Yahoo Japan. That could just be investors / analysts being stupid (either the ones valuing alibaba too highly, or valuing Yahoo too low). But Yahoo doesn't make a ton of money off its core business. It's still quite possible fo…

Since Alibaba doesn't pay them dividends, owning a share of it has no effect on profit & loss.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#205

Post by spyder » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 3:42 PM UTC

aianus wrote: post #203

eevilspock wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly everyone has bought into the utter bullshit that advertising makes the web free. This delusion buries not only the fact that we have made a deal with the devil, but also that the deal really sucks. What we traded our souls for we don’t even get. The web would be both cheaper and better if we just paid for what we use straight up. And more importantly, society would be better. I'll explain all of these. IT'S NO…

There was no way for me to buy anything online until I turned eighteen (no longer true now that Canada got with the program and started issuing visa debit cards). I'm very grateful for the opportunity I had to use the Internet to learn and communicate for free. And it's not just children. How would people in poor countries afford to pay the same amount as a Westerner for access to StackOverflow or a motorcycle repair…

Ads already paying less for users from poorer countries, so a pay-for system should be priced also by country.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#206

Post by tanzam75 » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 3:45 PM UTC

zimpenfish wrote: post #195

mehwoot wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hows that working for Yahoo now? Pretty well, considering they are still around more than a decade after they stopped being "cool". They're not trendy in tech circles, they are just a business that makes money. Yahoo and Facebook are time-wasters... Time-wasters are basically unprofitable Yeah, unprofitable to the tune of $600 million a year. That's Yahoo's net profit last year. I swear to god, the blindness of peopl…

I can't find any links ("Yahoo finance 2013" is exceedingly useless) but wasn't that $600M partially/mostly from them selling off stakes in things like AliBaba and not from the core business?

No. None of that $590 million came from the sale of Alibaba shares, as the Alibaba sale took place in 2012, not in 2013.

In addition, $590 million is not Yahoo's net income, but their pretax income from operations. In other words, excluding Alibaba.

Here's the breakdown for 2013, in thousands:

    Income from operations         589,926
    Other income, net               43,357
   -----------------------------------------
    Provision for income taxes    (153,392)
    Earnings in equity interests   896,675
   =========================================
    Net income                   1,376,566

"Earnings in equity interests" is Alibaba.

See 10-K at Yahoo's investor relations site: http://investor.yahoo.net/sec.cfm

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#207

Post by pshin45 » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 3:45 PM UTC

kenko wrote: post #135

ignostic wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually faced a similar situation, and let me tell you it was hard . Companies like Yahoo exist to make money - or, at least, they must continue to make money in order to continue existing. Like Dustin said, > "This is truly a nightmare scenario for any CEO: do you take the risk and proceed with the better user experience/product at the expense of short term numbers–with no promise that the better design will a…

There's a lot of room between "exist to make money" and "must make money in order to exist". Like, a staggering amount of room.

Exactly, reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

"We survive by breathing but we can't say we live to breathe. Likewise, making money is very important for a business to survive, but money alone cannot be the reason for business to exist."

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#208

Post by vidarh » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 4:13 PM UTC

hrjet wrote: post #166

mehwoot wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hows that working for Yahoo now? Pretty well, considering they are still around more than a decade after they stopped being "cool". They're not trendy in tech circles, they are just a business that makes money. Yahoo and Facebook are time-wasters... Time-wasters are basically unprofitable Yeah, unprofitable to the tune of $600 million a year. That's Yahoo's net profit last year. I swear to god, the blindness of peopl…

IIRC, they were the top destination 15 years back. They were the default homepage in most browsers. From that spot to "just a business that makes money" is perhaps not the best thing to happen to them. At the same time, I don't think Yahoo is purely money-minded. From what I read, they were the only company which challenged the FISA orders last year (even before the Snowden leaks).

How many others of the top destinations from that era are still around?

Look at Lycos. Excite. Altavista. Even the nominal survivors like AOL are largely shadows of their old selves. Frankly, it's fairly impressive that they've held out. Consider their starting point: Just a directory.

The bubble in retrospect makes them look faded and tired, because they're "only" $36bn today. But $36bn is $36bn...

And being "the default homepage" with an audience so much smaller was a much less impressive position to be in than their current reach.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#209

Post by buckmower » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 4:13 PM UTC

Beyond, Beside or Within The following in response to Facebook’s Newsfeed Redesign: Why do what makes everyone else do what you want them to do if doing so isn’t right? If we all can determine what’s right and what’s wrong as a community of equals then doing what’s right is a matter of doing what everyone else, for the most part, wants you to do. As is the case with Facebook and most other companies that offer products to consumers, when it comes to offering their product they aren’t exactly equal with the rest of us; because, they have control over the products we so willingly consume; thus, they are faced with the conundrum of what to do about product design and consumer retention. Dustin seems to be saying that Facebook does what makes Facebook users do what Facebook wants its users to do. The numbers that go up and down, it seems, are numbers related to people spending time on other people’s pages rather than just on the news feed. What’s wrong with that?

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#210

Post by eevilspock » Fri, Mar 28, 2014, 4:33 PM UTC

aianus wrote: post #203

eevilspock wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly everyone has bought into the utter bullshit that advertising makes the web free. This delusion buries not only the fact that we have made a deal with the devil, but also that the deal really sucks. What we traded our souls for we don’t even get. The web would be both cheaper and better if we just paid for what we use straight up. And more importantly, society would be better. I'll explain all of these. IT'S NO…

There was no way for me to buy anything online until I turned eighteen (no longer true now that Canada got with the program and started issuing visa debit cards). I'm very grateful for the opportunity I had to use the Internet to learn and communicate for free. And it's not just children. How would people in poor countries afford to pay the same amount as a Westerner for access to StackOverflow or a motorcycle repair…

I don't think you got what I was saying. Try a closer read. The internet is for-pay; we are paying for it, and there's no way around it. The question is how we pay for it.

In your pre-eighteen-year-old case:

* Most likely you (or your parents) bought stuff from a company that advertises on the web. So you (or your parents) were paying, just not directly. And as I point out, you were paying extra.

* If you didn't buy enough of the advertised products, your internet was subsidized by other users who did. Same for people in poor countries. But these subsidies are wasteful, as the advertising overhead takes a huge cut.

* You still paid for the opportunity costs of an inferior product.

* Most importantly, you still paid for and will continue to pay for the damage to society that advertising and an ad-supported web inflicts. Ads are dishonest and manipulative. An ad-supported web is driven by click-rates, not user satisfaction, so we get the proliferation of link-baiting empty (if not manipulative) content that we all see today.

But you are right in that if we ditch advertising, we need some way of distributing the costs progressively, and make sure that people who have little still have plenty of internet and internet content access.