Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

I don't like this sentence from the wikipedia page [1]:

> The price of the full direct to consumer testing service in the United States has reduced from $999 in 2007 to $99 in 2012, and it is effectively being sold as a loss leader in order to build a valuable customer database.

First, why can't companies these days just sell me a product for the cost price plus a margin? This seems like a fair way of doing business.

Second, what do they want to do with my data? Why do they think it is valuable (will they sell it)? Why can't I just get my data without them keeping a copy of it?

(It isn't because they offer an online comparison/discovery tool, since they could easily offer that as a downloadable app, so they don't need my data on their servers; it also isn't because they need to do research on the data, i.e., to find correlations, because they could make that voluntary).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23andMe

You misunderstand. The point is that the more data they have, the more valuable and "accurate" their analysis is -- it's like crowdsourcing genetics by building one large database.

So your complaint of "why don't they just sell it at the cost plus a margin" doesn't work here. They're dropping the price because they're paying you for your information to make their service better.

It's like Tumblr not having ads (for a period of time). "Why are you giving this to me for free?" you ask. Because then you're more likely to use us, and then we'll have a bigger user base and make tons of money later.

That's how SAAS models can give away their "service" for free and still be valued at billions of dollars.

The more data they have the more valuable they are to drug companies. The data doesn't help them provide you anything.

> The point is that the more data they have, the more valuable and "accurate" their analysis is

This is covered by my comment that participating in research should be voluntary.

> So your complaint of "why don't they just sell it at the cost plus a margin" doesn't work here.

Yes, my complaint makes perfect sense here. They are selling below cost price to build themselves a bigger market. This is not a fair way of doing business, in my opinion. The fact that you are framing this as "we are paying you to help us build a bigger market share" does not make a difference.

In my opinion, everything that is being built by crowdsourcing belongs in the public domain. It is not fair to have one company keeping that information hostage.

"First, why can't companies these days just sell me a product for the cost price plus a margin? This seems like a fair way of doing business."

Why?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com