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Comment by mudil | Hacker News Reader

As a small publisher since 2004, every day for 14 years, I am sick and tired of Google's serfdom. Their monopoly on ads, their Panda updates, etc etc, do not respect anyone else, but Google's interests. They will make internet into a strip mall like entity with the same boring list of players, the monotonous list of websites, all for their own profit and monopoly.

Internet is supposed to be about the content, ideas, journalism, etc. But there is virtually no VC investment in the content. Nothing. That is scary, and Google is single handedly responsible for it.

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I have the same attitude. Especially its been hard when Google entered our "niche" last year and suddenly became #1 result overnight:

I blogged about it back then: http://blog.speedchecker.xyz/2017/07/20/lessons-learned-from...

> But there is virtually no VC investment in the content. Nothing

Have you stopped to consider that content is a nearly-worthless commodity for which very few people are willing to pay actual cash for?

No, it's not. Content makes billions and trillions, and has always done it. From print to theater to radio to movies, since Gutenberg and Shakespeare and first newspapers, content been generating the revenue.

Then I'm sure you'll have no problem finding people willing to pay to subscribe to your content.

Take a look at the finances of content providers over the past 20 years. How many publishers, newspapers, studios, etc. shut down? Why do you think that is?

How about, for starters, that Google and FB control 85% of the ad market, with the rest going to everyone else.

Also, I run a website for doctors. Google learns that my visitor is a doctor, and next time displays a doctor related ad on Candy Crush, when she is playing the game. So by invading her privacy, Google makes money and my website literally competes against Candy Crush for the ad revenue.

None of that solves for the fact that your readers aren't willing to pay anything to read your content.

You can remove Google and Facebook, replace by anyone else, or eliminate it entirely. It still won't solve the problem: nobody wants to pay for your content.

Maybe the problem is in your content...

maybe the problem is that google allows the quick indexing of all content produced on the web, including pirated content, and then uses a very opaque algorithm to guide users to sites. This has the externality of making ad-funded content easily available. Not very many people are going to pay for something when you can get the exact same thing for free somewhere else, and in a global marketplace it makes sense for someone to plagiarize paid content and reproduce it for ad-revenue alone. $20/day won't support me in California, but in India?

Removing Google and Facebook changes the game entirely. They have such a strangle hold on the way the internet operates financially--by utilizing their deep integration with users' usage of the web to feed them highly targeted ads--that alternate usage models can't compete.

> Not very many people are going to pay for something when you can get the exact same thing for free somewhere else, and in a global marketplace it makes sense for someone to plagiarize paid content and reproduce it for ad-revenue alone. $20/day won't support me in California, but in India?

Exactly, content became a near-worthless commodity.

> Removing Google and Facebook changes the game entirely.

No, it doesn't.

But it seems that what you're suggesting is that ad-funded business models should be outlawed, is that it?

I think that the same people who do search and who do blogging shouldn't be allowed to leverage that data to sell ads. It's unethical.

I also think that Google and any indexing service should be held accountable for linking to pirated content.

I don't fully understand the way Google sells ads on a marketplace, but I think that Google is guilty of being unsavory in their behavior as the premier online advertisement market place and search giant.

I don't think that ad-funding a business should be illegal, I just don't think that advertising should be as valuable as it is when the biggest data horders on the web are the ones doing the advertising.

You have no idea about the content, but you think you do. Somehow, current deals for Warner Bros and 20th Century Fox are in the billions. And so is value of News Corp, CBS, AIC and so on. Why do you think you can proclaim the near worthlessness of the content or that people don't want my content? Because you are an opinionated nobody? What do you know?

I'm not proclaiming anything in particular about your content, but you don't seem to be able to fund anyone willing to pay for it.

For newspapers, it was largely poor decision making and Craigslist.

I've worked for two large newspaper companies in the past. They both operated on this model:

- Newsstand fee covers the cost of printing and distribution

- Classified ads revenue pays for everything else.

Craigslist hurt newspapers and local news far more than most people realize.

We need a micropayment system so I can donate a dime or a dollar to an article or info site I like. Seems like something the US government should do to improve peoples lives and promote commerce. They are the controllers of the US dollar after all.

Then someone needs to set up a search engine that has the option of only returning sites that are controlled by an individual person, not a corp or non-profit or other group. I would be interesting to see how that might work.

The bitcoin cash guys are tying to do that.

https://www.moneybutton.com https://www.yours.org

If you can reach your customers yourself, instead of Google sending them your way, why care about Google at all?

Because when you live in a serfdom, you are a serf. It's just the system we have under the Google's monopoly. And the system defines what you are able to achieve. See here: medgadget.com/google

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