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If AT&T Had Managed the Phone Business Like Google

tedgioia.substack.com

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Re: If AT&T Had Managed the Phone Business Like Google

#61

Post by raldi »

throwawayay02 wrote: post #46
raldi wrote: post #43

> And just think—we can sell the information we collect to other businesses. Or to the government or the police department. Anyone, really, who’s prepared to pay. So sick of this lazy attack on Google. If they'll sell your data to anyone who's prepared to pay, where do I sign up to purchase your search history? Edit: If you're downvoting, please also reply.

You need just some millions to your name and to contact their sales people. But to protect themselves it will be sold in a way that makes it useful to you and still have plausible deniability. Like Facebook letting you advertise to users that liked or saw something, instead of just straight telling you who they are, though it is trivial to do so with some tracking on the website.

It's a big backpedal from "Google sells your data to advertisers" to "Google allows advertisers to target groups with particular interests, and in the extremely unlikely event that they guess what group you're in and you click the ad and they're able to match your IP or browser fingerprint to somehow identify you, then they might be able to infer some of your data."

Re: If AT&T Had Managed the Phone Business Like Google

#63

Post by 7773777 »

chubot wrote: post #51
7773777 wrote: post #37

Kinda brilliant actually - convincing the AT&T guys of yore to give away everything for free so you can inject ads into a phone call. Yeah, that would certainly be met with disbelief, anyway I gotta go "skip some ads" on YouTube I'll talk to you later.

FWIW I pay for YouTube Premium and it's so worth it. No skipping ads. I wish Google would do that with everything. Allow me to see zero ads by paying.

What do you reckon the monthly fee would be? Targeted ads by search is quite lucrative...

Re: If AT&T Had Managed the Phone Business Like Google

#64

Post by eesmith »

james_in_the_uk wrote: post #10
eesmith wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun?! When it came up two weeks ago I felt like it was making me more ignorant. Here's what I wrote at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28473805 : This makes no sense. It's like the author has zero knowledge of the relevant history, including things I learned in high school American history. Don't read it unless you want to get dumber. At the very least, here's some of the missing real-world context. The Mann–Elk…

Interesting factual analysis. I think the original piece was written as parody of Google, though, rather than as a criticism of At&t per se

How is that parody supposed to work?

That is, it looks like the piece is trying to show how ruthless Google is by comparing it to AT&T, and arguing that Google makes AT&T look like a piker.

But every example of Google's proposed idea was either actually done by AT&T, or economically impossible.

IMO, the parody should have gone the route of Google explaining how to avoid the anti-trust legislation that AT&T had to deal with at the time.

Re: If AT&T Had Managed the Phone Business Like Google

#65

Post by djweis »

ridaj wrote: post #29
paxys wrote: post #17

I don't think people realize just how expensive and congested these networks were back in the day. Phone calls cost what they did because capacity was a real constraint. It's not that they were all ethical businessmen doing a public service as the article makes them out to be (some old business tactics of AT&T, Standard Oil, American Tobacco etc. would make the most ruthless big tech exec of today blush). They simply…

I believe AT&T long subsidized its local operations with revenue from long distance operations. This took advantage of businesses' higher willingness to pay for long-distance in order to subsidize local access networks (as opposed to reinvesting all the long distance profits into more long distance capacity). It stopped not just because of capacity increases but because the govt created the incentive for competition…

I have a book that covers this in great detail - The Deal of the Century. You're correct that long distance subsidized local service.

Re: If AT&T Had Managed the Phone Business Like Google

#66

Post by throwawayay02 »

raldi wrote: post #61
throwawayay02 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need just some millions to your name and to contact their sales people. But to protect themselves it will be sold in a way that makes it useful to you and still have plausible deniability. Like Facebook letting you advertise to users that liked or saw something, instead of just straight telling you who they are, though it is trivial to do so with some tracking on the website.

It's a big backpedal from "Google sells your data to advertisers" to "Google allows advertisers to target groups with particular interests, and in the extremely unlikely event that they guess what group you're in and you click the ad and they're able to match your IP or browser fingerprint to somehow identify you, then they might be able to infer some of your data."

You don't need to click any ads silly goose.

Re: If AT&T Had Managed the Phone Business Like Google

#67

Post by raldi »

throwawayay02 wrote: post #66
raldi wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a big backpedal from "Google sells your data to advertisers" to "Google allows advertisers to target groups with particular interests, and in the extremely unlikely event that they guess what group you're in and you click the ad and they're able to match your IP or browser fingerprint to somehow identify you, then they might be able to infer some of your data."

You don't need to click any ads silly goose.

What data is Google selling access to that doesn’t involve the clicking of ads?
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