Who pays.

All companies ultimately are responsive to the wants and needs of their paying customers, within the limits of legality and physics. Do not underestimate how important it is that Google’s paying customers are ad buyers, not you.

And why would they not also be responsive to the wants and the needs of the customers who look at the ads, without which the model would not be profitable?

They had to create a service people want to use in order to be able to put ads on it.

They are responsive. They'll push ads at them to the limit of their endurance, then back off a smidgen and call it good.

And isn't that the same story in any business? They'll raise costs to the limit of customers' endurance, or else reduce quality to compensate?

If there is a problem then the problem is Google. I don't think this can be blamed on just the ad-driven profit model.

Not a business that is purportedly just a publisher. The channel creators were told they could choose their ad model. That was contradicted by this decision.

Imagine your letter carrier started stamping Aunt Agatha's letters with car ads or whatever.

The USPS is ad supported. They invented spam.

Aunt Agatha's letter is ended by junk mail.

If non customer complaints and responses threaten the ability of the organization to sell to their actual customers, they will respond. Short of that line, the business is not going to be responsive to non-customer complaints.

This is particularly relevant for subscription vs. ad companies, because both of these companies have different kinds of “non customers”. For a subscription company non-customers can be induced to convert into customers via sales, advertising, and features. So for these companies non customers are all potential future customers who should be listened to some. For companies like Google they serve an entire different class of customers. As an individual there is literally nothing you can do to become a Google customer; so unless if your complaints interfere with Google’s ability to sell your attention to their actual customers, then they have zero reason to care about your opinion.

> unless your complaints interfere with [their bottom line], then they have zero reason to care about your opinion

Again, how are the incentives any different whether or not the business is funded by advertising?

Just like how Google knows that a user with a complaint isn't necessarily going to stop using their services and looking at their ads, Apple (for example) knows that a user with a complaint isn't necessarily going to stop buying iPhones.

In that sense I don't see why a "customer" who is paying in ad impressions is any less of a "customer" than one who is paying in cash.

> Apple knows that a user with a complaint isn’t necessarily going to stop buying iPhones.

Nonsense. People switch to android all the time. Apple’s sales depend wholly on continuing to meet the needs of their customers and providing perceived value. If they fell behind Android in perceived value, or stopped producing what their paying customers want they would lose money. Relatively high switching costs dampens this a bit, but there’s no magic that keeps Apple customers buying apple products.

> I don’t see why a “customer” who is paying in ad impressions is any less of a “customer” than one who is paying in cash.

A “customer” who pays in ad impressions is, quite literally, not a customer. They’re a user, at best. The customer is the person who pays the business for a good or service, which in this case is the ad buyer. Google will try to make you happy insofar as it helps them get more money from their paying customers, but the moment there’s a conflict between between the needs of their users and the needs of their customers, the paying customers will always win.

Put more brutally, your relationship with Google has more in common with a cow’s relationship with Nike than a shoe owner’s relationship with Nike. Your attention is the product, as much as the cow’s leather is. Just as we don’t confuse good animal husbandry with a genuine interest in the cow’s long term well being, don’t confuse Google offering features & products as an interest in your productivity and/or happiness.

> there’s no magic that keeps Apple customers buying apple products.

So then what's the magic that keeps Google users using Google products if they stop producing what their non-paying, but ad-watching customers want?

If the answer is "anticompetitive practices", I don't deny that at all, but that has nothing to do with advertising as a revenue model. Just look at Microsoft, they have long been the champions of anticompetitive behaviour and yet they didn't really use advertising as a revenue model until recently.

> Google will try to make you happy insofar as it helps them get more money from their paying customers, but the moment there’s a conflict between between the needs of their users and the needs of their customers, the paying customers will always win.

The needs of the users are the needs of the paying customers, that is what I am saying. Without the users there is no opportunity to have paying customers, period.

> your relationship with Google has more in common with a cow’s relationship with Nike than a shoe owner’s relationship with Nike.

No, that is a totally misleading analogy and I think it perfectly demonstrates what is wrong with this argument. Users choose to use Google products in exchange for ad impressions.

> So then what's the magic that keeps Google users using Google products if they stop producing what their non-paying, but ad-watching customers want?

Free is one hell of a competitive advantage. And again, Google does enough to keep the customers coming back as much as the rancher does to help the cow grow. The rubber really hits the road when you consider customer's need for say, privacy.

Or, try and get Google to help you out if your account gets locked. Good luck. Now if you're having issues with your ad account, they'll happily hop on the phone to figure it out with you....

> The needs of the users are the needs of the paying customers, that is what I am saying. Without the users there is no opportunity to have paying customers, period.

An overlap in requirements is not the same thing as being the same thing. For a short while, the rancher meets the cows needs too.

> Users choose to use Google products in exchange for ad impressions.

Unclear. Users choose Google products because they're free, it's not obvious if they fully understand the implications of that, or if they see that they have a meaningful choice.