I saw a YouTube video (thumbnail) for a video essay about why all of Facebook’s side projects have failed. I asked myself what I would do in Zuck’s (or FAANG leader’s) shoes; what kind of product would I make, if I had those kinds of resources? What is important to me today that technology could fix? Well, the most painful thing of late has been how bad search has become. So, I guess we’re now in Google’s shoes, instead. How do you avoid Doctorow’s Curse in bringing any service that’s supposed to be as frictionless as search? You can’t force people to make accounts and pay. You can’t support it with ads. You can’t go to governments and ask them to pay. …But what about ISPs? They’re kind of the perfect middlemen in that (as common carriers, ostensibly) the government can’t get involved in censorship, and as giant corporations with a de facto cartel monopoly, customers have no choice but to go through them. And you, as a dominant, quasi-utility c. 2012, can dictate (fair-ish) terms and protect your bread-and-butter (people who want to use your service, ISP machinations be damned).
You even have precedent. Apple shook down AT&T and turned itself into America’s dominant phone manufacturer. They used the threat of releasing the insanely popular iPhone with a competitor network to dictate terms, and then eventually released a phone compatible with Verizon’s network anyway.
Or look at cable networks in the 90s or 2000s, going directly to consumers to force the hands of providers.
So, consumers see slightly higher internet bills. Who cares? Better than the ad hell and AI-biased neutering we currently face.
Did they just not think it could get this bad? Or was the goal just always to make us the product?
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45765285
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Source: news.ycombinator.com
