[aviraldg]

Thank you for bringing this up. I find HN's obsession with getting rid of ads and replacing them with paid subscriptions disappointing for this reason. While everything is ad supported, it is easier for users in developing nations (like my country of origin) to afford services subsidised by users in wealthier nations (the ads the former group see are probably worth much less anyway, due to their limited purchasing power.) When services switch to a paid subscription model, this is much harder to justify since end users can see price differences across markets and will often try to use accounts in other reasons to get cheaper prices (Steam prices are the best example here.)

The existence of ad supported apps and services and free software is what allowed me to teach myself programming and graphic design in school. In HN's dream world of hundreds of dollars of SaaS subscriptions, this would not have been possible, or certainly more difficult.

Disclaimer: I work for Google

[csa]

> The existence of ad supported apps and services and free software is what allowed me to teach myself programming and graphic design in school.

I don’t know what country you are from, but I’m guessing the “free” vastly outweighed the “ad supported”. Furthermore, given the low ad revenue in developing countries, an organization seeking money probably could have gotten just as much by seeking a government grant or funding from a non-profit/NGO, and the whole process probably would have been easier in terms of securing revenue as well as app design (i.e., not having to design the app around ads).

I appreciate what you are saying broadly, but google ads doesn’t seem like the optimal way to facilitate this type of information creation and dissemination in developing countries.

Furthermore, Google has shifted from having “don’t be evil” as part of their code of conduct to straight up doing evil things. Trying to dress these actions up as being a boon for the developing world is approaching if not reaching the level of being a corporate shill. Again, there are better and probably easier ways to do this other than kowtowing to the Googlith.

[aviraldg]

> I don’t know what country you are from, but I’m guessing the “free” vastly outweighed the “ad supported”. Furthermore, given the low ad revenue in developing countries, an organization seeking money probably could have gotten just as much by seeking a government grant or funding from a non-profit/NGO, and the whole process probably would have been easier in terms of securing revenue as well as app design (i.e., not having to design the app around ads).

I agree, a hypothetical universe with paid apps subsidised for students and for people from developing nations would be better, but I haven't seen this happen in practice (and it's difficult for the reasons I mentioned before - it's hard to ensure that it isn't abused.)

> I appreciate what you are saying broadly, but google ads doesn’t seem like the optimal way to facilitate this type of information creation and dissemination in developing countries.

I said nothing about Google Ads in my comment - the best example of an ad subsidised service that helped in this context would be Stack Overflow, who, AFAIK run their own ad network.

> Furthermore, Google has shifted from having “don’t be evil” as part of their code of conduct to straight up doing evil things. Trying to dress these actions up as being a boon for the developing world is approaching if not reaching the level of being a corporate shill. Again, there are better and probably easier ways to do this other than kowtowing to the Googlith.

I just wanted to share my personal experience here in the hope that folks here take the users I mentioned into account - whether that's through an ad supported business model, or subscription based business models that are affordable for them.

[philistine]

Imagine a dystopian novel where people who don't own toilets are forced to lose a quarter of their portable device's viewport to look at glamorous photos of products for rich people living on the other side of their globe.

That's Android right now. Yeesh.

[philistine]

Whenever I try to picture who wishes to put ads in front of people making less than 5$ a day, all my ideas are social media hacks trying to goose up engagement, or evil companies like Monsanto ... and Google.

[arrosenberg]

Why should we be willing to subsidize developing countries with our attention? My obsession with creating subscription models instead of ad-supported is entirely based on my unwillingness to pay with attention any further.

[aviraldg]

See my other comment - subsidize it directly, if you can make it work with subscription models; I don't care. It's just that from what I've seen so far, this is harder to do with subscription models and so often not done at all.

As for why you should do this: the opportunities created this way are good for everyone in the long term. See: all the companies started and being led by people from developing nations, in developed ones.

[arrosenberg]

I think it's going to be a really tough sell to convince me or anyone else that we should pay more in cash or attention for products to subsidize developing nations. We've been doing it for decades on things like tech and pharmaceuticals and it seems like people are getting tired of sacrificing for the rest of the world.