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A New Internet Business Model?

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: A New Internet Business Model?

#171

Post by jrm4 »

nickysielicki wrote: post #101
lapcat wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in Google's search monopoly challenges the underlying tech behind the internet. Anyone is free to complete... From the stats I've seen, Cloudflare has an 80% market share for reverse proxy services. 20% of all websites use Cloudflare, 50% of the most popular websites globally. That's a dangerous amount of concentration, and it's the only reason Cloudflare can propose this new business model for the internet a…

So what? I should hate them for that? Cloudflare is really good at what it does. Nobody has to use cloudflare, but people who know what they’re doing choose cloudflare because the service they provide is worth the minuscule price they charge and it solves the massive abuse and performance problems that otherwise plague the internet. Bing/msn.com failed to displace Google because Google was simply better, not because…

Whenever anyone says "Oh so I should hate company X" you know you're in for a bad, stilted argument that's going to defend some very narrowly defined thing.

Companies, by their nature, grow and take over things for the purposes of making money - tech companies moreso. We have seen companies overstep in the past.

Please don't stifle reasonable concerns with this sort of inflammatory rhetoric.

Re: A New Internet Business Model?

#172

Post by snickerbockers »

>Make no mistake, the Internet has never been free. There's always been a reward system that transferred value from consumers to creators and, in doing so, filled the Internet with content.

Jesus Christ I knew when I clicked on this link it was going to be corporate propaganda which pushes a specific narrative favorable to their business model, but this is just wrong.

It's one thing to say that online content has always relied on having somebody to foot the bill for infrastructure if the content can't offset that overhead itself but they're just lying as if none of those forums, IRC rooms and crazy geocities/angelfire webrings ever existed. As if there is nothing on the internet today which exists for its own sake rather than as the outcome of a creator's profit-motive.

Re: A New Internet Business Model?

#173

Post by ctoth »

Ah, it's the same playbook as their "free SSL for everyone" move years ago - take something that should be a commodity, offer it for "free," but make sure you're the chokepoint. Except this time they're trying to do it with the entire payment layer of the future web. Nice gig if you can get it.

Re: A New Internet Business Model?

#174

Post by carlosjobim »

mg wrote: post #86

ads have been the only micropayment system that has worked Why are micropayments so hard? I wonder how the web would look like if one could click "pay 1 cent to continue". Maybe content would become better? Maybe it would make one think "Hmm... one moment, is this something I want to read or am I just doomscrolling?".

Micropayments aren't hard. Customers simply don't want to use them. Tons of newspapers and magazines have tried offering single articles for sale for $1 or 50c, and all have failed. People just don't want to use micro payments. They want to pay a monthly subscription.

Re: A New Internet Business Model?

#175

Post by WickyNilliams »

9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #165
WickyNilliams wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also weird for their shining example to be Reddit. Where the actual creators there would not get a dime, presumably

Also weird that they think reddit is something other than ragebait. I avoid reddit as much as I can, because everytime I go there the reddit feed is full of some of the worst ragebait on the internet.

I think that's true of any algorithmic feed. The individual niche communities are still pretty good I find. YMMV of course

Re: A New Internet Business Model?

#176

Post by Mistletoe »

rhetocj23 wrote: post #9
falcor84 wrote: post #6

But what is this new business model, and how do we transition to it? There's so little actual detail there.

A bunch of vague nonsense, par for the course around the current hysteria of AI. Nobody at the head of these large tech firms has a clue about where this technology is heading.

I think they all know where it is heading and it is massively less money for everyone. Every technical breakthrough doesn't mean more profit for everyone and nor should it. Sometimes it's just a dishwasher or washing machine, something that frees up the bulk of humanity from something that is drudgery. Whether we actually get those benefits from AI remains to be seen.

Re: A New Internet Business Model?

#177

Post by velcrovan »

vorpalhex wrote: post #127
velcrovan wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Realistically, what was the benefit of the ad-driven model? ...Is this really what we want to preserve? Big publications and their interests? They are proposing a scheme by which AI scrapers would have to pay for the content they scrape, which could replace the ad-driven model and be viable for more creators.

How is this better for creators than ads?

Ads are ugly and invasive and bloated and slow.

Re: A New Internet Business Model?

#178

Post by switzer »

motorest wrote: post #57
lapcat wrote: post #31

> As we think about our role at Cloudflare in this developing market, it's not about protecting the status quo but instead helping catalyze a better business model for the future of Internet content creation. That means creating a level playing field. Ideally there should be lots of AI companies, large and small, and lots of content creators, large and small. Not mentioned: there would be a single gatekeeper for the…

I see what you mean, and I am divided on the issue. On one hand, I don't think it's fair to have AI companies to freely scrape the world without fairly compensating content producers. On the other hand, adding more gatekeepers to the web ends up killing it. This feels like a lose-lose situation.

Cloudflare is most active in pushing standards, and highlighting the issue of bots scraping web pages for free. That said, the other major CDNs (e.g. Akamai, Fastly) also have Bot Management functionality, so hopefully this is not a gatekeeping scenario, more of a standards-building scenario.

Re: A New Internet Business Model?

#179

Post by nicce »

swed420 wrote: post #114
motorest wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see what you mean, and I am divided on the issue. On one hand, I don't think it's fair to have AI companies to freely scrape the world without fairly compensating content producers. On the other hand, adding more gatekeepers to the web ends up killing it. This feels like a lose-lose situation.

In some positive news today, Cloudflare is sponsoring the Ladybird browser effort: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45332860 That's not nothing.

Likely related on getting influece in order to enforce the gatekeeping standards, unfortunately.

Re: A New Internet Business Model?

#180

Post by nickysielicki »

jrm4 wrote: post #171
nickysielicki wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? I should hate them for that? Cloudflare is really good at what it does. Nobody has to use cloudflare, but people who know what they’re doing choose cloudflare because the service they provide is worth the minuscule price they charge and it solves the massive abuse and performance problems that otherwise plague the internet. Bing/msn.com failed to displace Google because Google was simply better, not because…

Whenever anyone says "Oh so I should hate company X" you know you're in for a bad, stilted argument that's going to defend some very narrowly defined thing. Companies, by their nature, grow and take over things for the purposes of making money - tech companies moreso. We have seen companies overstep in the past. Please don't stifle reasonable concerns with this sort of inflammatory rhetoric.

There's nothing reasonable about your concern. My original reply two levels up explains why: they have competitors and the service they provide is highly fungible.
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