[marta_morena_28]

That's all well and good. However it still doesn't address three key factors:

* Everyone hates ads. You can try to shove it down their throats anyway by being a monopoly, but eventually this won't work anymore, since there is too much competition that doesn't rely on ad revenue and too many companies trying to block ads.

* Google doesn't have a solid revenue stream besides ads. And it's unclear how they are gonna get one. At least not in the magnitude they need to survive.

* Google faces strong competition on all fronts and all of them, except perhaps Facebook, don't count ad revenue as primary source of income. This puts Google at a substantial disadvantage, amplified by the first point: EVERYONE freakin hates ads

[arcturus17]

Everyone hates ads, but everyone hates paying for stuff even more.

Installing an ad blocker on desktop is easy, but about 90% of the planet still wouldn’t know how to do it.

Blocking ads on mobile is much harder and that’s where most of web traffic is coming from anyway.

Everyone hates ads, but everyone hates paying for content even more, and they don’t have the technical means to do anything about the ads. See where this is going?

Also, the claim that everyone hates ads is itself questionable. Everyone on HN hates ads, but Karen from Wisconsin or Rajit from Bangalore haven’t even so much as thought about it. They go on with their lives as they visit their favorite websites multiple times per hour, without realizing the atrocious UX and flagrant privacy violations they are being subjected to. Because the sites are free, and they provide value to them, and because they have other things to worry about.

[DoingIsLearning]

> Blocking ads on mobile is much harder and that’s where most of web traffic is coming from anyway.

Most of the developing world (i.e. the market share that is growing) can't afford Apple products. On Android it is absolutely trivial to block adds:

- Firefox + ublock

- Brave

You can argue that these are unknown or have different user experiences compared to Chrome but you cannot argue that "blocking ads on mobile is much harder".

[arcturus17]

I argued for both, but OK, excuse me for the lack of rigor in my wording.

"About half of the US population, and a quarter of the top EU markets have it much harder to block ads on their phones".

Clearly not the same scale as "the rest of the world", but also arguably the ad targets with the deepest pockets.

Regardless, you may easily be able to block ads on your Android today, but you're completely subject to the whims of Google tomorrow.

And the discussion is about the imminent downfall of Google. Oh the irony.

[disown]

Those aren't key factors. They are petty nonsense.

> * Everyone hates ads.

Yet ads are everywhere.

> since there is too much competition that doesn't rely on ad revenue

What competition? What is the challenge to google search, youtube, chrome, etc?

> and too many companies trying to block ads.

Is that a joke? Google's problem is too many companies want to buy ads. But ads are never going to disappear. Actually, ads are only going to increase on the internet. More video ads especially.

> * Google doesn't have a solid revenue stream besides ads.

If you're argument is ads are going to disappear, then I guess you have a point.

> EVERYONE freakin hates ads

Right. And the article said the same nonsense you are saying. But it said that in 2017 and guess what? Turns out the article was wrong.

You just have 1 point. Nobody likes ads. Duh. But if that mattered, google wouldn't even exist.

[tlarkworthy]

Goog has search, Gmail, YT and Play store, GCP. All massive assets. Not all of them require ads. YT has a ad free version for subscription. The escape pods are there. I would pay $2 a month for my gmail. If pushed (I would be annoyed). But it looks like as of today digital ads is still a good business

[prepend]

Only search/ads make money. The rest are negligible profit or no profit.

So the article was right that Goog is all ads, but those don’t seem to be drying up.

I expect that maybe ad views are dropping but they just turn up the prices to compensate. I don’t think we get usage numbers out of them, just that they bring in more revenue and make more profit.

Maybe they are just squeezing a shrinking customer base, like cable. But the article doesn’t cover that.

[hollerith]

>Google doesn't have a solid revenue stream besides ads. And it's unclear how they are gonna get one.

I'd pay more for ad-free access to Youtube than for a Netflix subscription. Maybe I'm suffering from the typical-mind fallacy, but because Netflix is a solid concern (current market cap, $214 billion), it looks to me like Youtube would continue to be a solid business if the hypothesized revolt by the common man and woman against ads materializes.