[Non24Throw]

I’m not speaking on behalf of Google and I’m only speculating, but I think what you’re proposing could increase the per-user cost of service 10x or even 100+x, and could easily invalidate their entire revenue model and put them out of business

If a customer makes 1 phone call to support every few months because their Wifi is down and they think it’s Google’s problem, they would probably be losing a huge amount of money on that customer (relative to per-customer revenue)

Amazon only does this so well because they have so much revenue per transaction, and those transactions already necessitate a paying relationship directly with the customer, so it’s trivial to distribute the cost of support across all transactions as a minor and unarticulated fee

[ocdtrekkie]

If a business can't survive treating humans like humans, perhaps it shouldn't exist.

[Non24Throw]

Again not speaking for Google and only speculating without any inside information on the details of this subject, but:

If Google didn’t exist because only customer-paid business models were permitted for the services they provide, you would be cutting the vast majority of humanity off from essential communications and information services, and they would only be available to the wealthiest people in the wealthiest nations

People in the Philippines for example have the same access to Google that you have (assuming they’ve paid to load enough data onto their phone that week, which some of them can’t afford, or they have access to wifi, which most of them don’t), and I think that isn’t just amazing but is one of the greatest boons to humanity that we’ve ever seen

That would never have happened if Google was required to provide human customer support to every user, and if that changed today Google would very likely have no choice but to scale their entire business back to only being accessible to the top n% wealthiest people (or go out of business)

There are a few billion people in less-wealthy nations who wouldn’t even be capable of paying Google, not only because of poverty but also for simple lack of the required financial infrastructure that you and I take for granted

[d1zzy]

This is what I try to point out every time someone tries to say that ad-based revenue models should be made illegal because of various reasons. It is ignoring how useful and accessible ad-supported web products are to pretty much anyone that isn't living in a first world country having easy access to credit cards.

As someone that has grown up in a second world country, barely having any money to pay for food in college, nobody I knew had even a debit card not to mention a credit card, I was very much grateful to have access to Google Search for "free" and the quality of the results it returned and I continued to be grateful and enjoy the products later developed (Mail, Maps, etc).

[kortilla]

The people who can’t pay tend to be pretty low-value to google anyway when it comes to advertising. If they had to, they would quickly find a way to charge a very little amount to those people if advertising had to go away (e.g. agreement to charge cell carrier).

[trasz]

It’s not Google vs paid service, it’s Google vs another free service. They already exist, it’s just that Google has monopoly due to network effects, despite providing inferior product.

[thelittleone]

Would be interesting if governments (perhaps the EU) started mandating levels of support.

[thelittleone]

An example in Australia is consumer protection law. This saved me recently. My AppleCare has expired. I had raised a support case with Apple before that about a flickering screen. I live in bali where we have no Apple stores and authorised service centres take 5-6 weeks to do screen replacement. But after opening the case I call support to discuss this open issue and going to Australia to get it fixed. The supper guy said sorry your AppleCare expired and doesn’t matter that you already opened a case before it expired. But I went to australia and Apple Genius Bar and the guy said well your still covered under consumer law.

[exikyut]

To clarify, you bought the device in Australia and thus had an Australian warranty on it, right?

[thelittleone]

That’s correct.

[exikyut]

Gotcha, thanks. That makes sense. Very glad I live in Australia too :)