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0 pointsornornor3y ago0 comments

> web services like search engines, social media, ad-driven news websites, etc are all things that users place practically zero value on.

I wonder if that’s the truth or if it’s this way because there are free alternatives.

If one search engine starts charging a monthly fee, users will just go to another one that pays for itself with ads and data.

But if the prevalent model for search engines is monthly subscription, then people will start paying for it and the value for the user won’t be 0 anymore.

Why would you pay for ice cream from the ice cream stand if you can get it for free next door for the “cost” of them keeping track of how often you come to the stand and what flavors you like, and selling that info to others?

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autoexec3y ago

> But if the prevalent model for search engines is monthly subscription, then people will start paying for it and the value for the user won’t be 0 anymore.

Far more likely ISPs will start providing search engines included in the cost of that service. Old ISPs like AOL and CompuServe did this in the past. Social media will never be something people have to pay for because we've already seen that people will create their own forums for free so we'd just go back to that. Hell, back in the day people paid for additional phone lines and hardware to host their own BBS which users accessed for free and that cost the sysop a hell of a lot more than webhosting these days.

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