Google killing of Reader was the symbolic point where the business plan of the internet moved from "Let's sell stuff to users!" to "Let's sell users to advertisers!".
There are a variety of motivations. These include...
The biggest is that they are trying to maximize revenue/profits. In controlling the flow of information to people they are in better control of that. A lot has been studied about this.
I didn't realize there were other motivations until FB started to publish studies they carried out on people. Some of those (which they published awhile ago) were around the manipulation of users emotions and their ability to target voting groups (to increase people going to vote in target groups) around elections.
Yeah I can think of a few. That sort of influence is one, benefiting advertisers is another, positioning themselves to get a cut of all transactions is another. Is there an alternate universe where in order to get your content in front of users, it has to be AMP and in order to be AMP, it has to meet a new requirement that all payments must be done through a payment framework that lets google control the user experience (“purely for the end users’ benefit” of course)? Probably.
I hear what you guys are saying, but "maximize revenue/profits" means "benefit advertisers so they come to us instead of anybody else." "Getting a cut of all transactions" means benefitting advertisers who sell anything through the site.
What? Getting a cut of transactions has nothing to do with advertisers. Are you saying apple forcing app payments through the App Store is about advertisers? Seems like you are trying to fit all scenarios to a predetermined narrative here.
This is exactly what users want. Tiktok is so successful because you don’t have to pick the content you consume. RSS on the other hand is far too manual and too much bad content gets mixed in with the good.
Google Reader was a service that brought in good will, subsidized by people trusting Google to "not be evil" and provide useful services. This subsequently turned into people using Google's money-making products, like ads.
At least to most I've spoken with on the subject (a few dozen, so informal straw poll), killing Google Reader turned people's opinion of Google from scrappy startup to untrustworthy behemoth.
> At least to most I've spoken with on the subject (a few dozen, so informal straw poll), killing Google Reader turned people's opinion of Google from scrappy startup to untrustworthy behemoth.
You can add me to that informal poll. I moved to Feedly, but Google Reader was my go to for a whole lot of years. My opinion of Google changed the day they announced its demise. I am probably an outlier but the only way I want to consume content on the web is via RSS feeds. Allows me to curate what I see and if subscribed sites start delivering me poor content, I drop them from the feed list.
Right, but it was an early step in Google’s now-classic playbook of undercutting existing paid solutions by subsidizing a free, shiny alternative, driving the paid versions out of business, then either turning their product into a surveillance nightmare or shutting it down.
Indeed, spot on. And given the internet is the computer this is (as good as any) a representation of the fatal bifurcation that has essentially destroyed the potential of digitization for at least a generation (and maybe forever)
Agreed. And that while I am not claiming Apple as a savior here or anything, imagine how bad it could be if we didn’t have at least 1 company still in the business of selling computers. At least to SOME degree. Things could be a lot worse
Apple does some amazing things with network protocols, but they are a leading force in pushing walled gardens, locked down devices, and such.
Other companies give you less privacy, but more functionality exposed to the user.
Of course, without Apple's walled gardens, google might lock down their stuff too, no longer needing to have a bit of openness to differentiate themselves.
It was when business plans from moved from letting users control what they consume to being in control of what users consume.