Hacker News Reader

>Cable television and netflix have made it quite clear that payment does not mean “no ads”, it just means “no ads, yet”.

'It's better to be a millionaire hero than a billionaire asshole' (Ben Elton, Gridlock)

Of course at $10/month even a 1% share of the search engine market would make the company worth billions.

View on HN

Perhaps, but the millionaire hero will likely be outcompeted by the billionaire "asshole"

If the only metric of success is yearly revenue, yes.

If that is the only metric, the best business model is to extract as much money out of your user, while simultaneously offering less for the same amount of money, until you reach the asymptotic ideal of 100% profit.

If you were to start a company, would you be willing to do that? Would you choose profit over everything else? Some would, but not everybody.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com