[rayiner]

Attributing the decreased costs of computers to the rise of advertising-based business models is quite a stretch. As far as I can tell, advances in manufacturing technology and the broadening of the market base is what made that possible.

As to Google--I'd pay $500 per year not to have it constantly barrage me with reminders to use Chrome instead of Edge (so it can steal my apparently valuable browsing data). But, 90% of everything is crap. Crap is what the market wants, whether it's pop music or USA Today or advertising-based software. Who am I to argue?

[flyinglizard]

> Attributing the decreased costs of computers to the rise of advertising-based business models is quite a stretch. As far as I can tell, advances in manufacturing technology and the broadening of the market base is what made that possible.

The Internet was built on an advertising monetization model, and you could argue that the penetration of computing devices to our lives wouldn't be nearly as far reaching without the Internet. In other words, non-tech people buy iPhones to access the ad-sponsored Google, YouTube and Instagram.

[dragonwriter]

> The Internet was built on an advertising monetization model

No, it wasn't; the internet was built long before that. The advertising monetisation model didn't become significant until the internet was established as a popular mass venue.

Which makes sense; the audience drew advertising, not the other way around.

[flyinglizard]

Change that to "the commercial internet" then - not talking about the DARPA/Usenet/early www universe, but rather anything post 96-97 or so. It's either ecommerce or advertising ever since then.

[CaptSpify]

Why not talk about usenet/early www? Just because you can sweep it away doens't mean it didn't exist

[rayiner]

Or AOL.