Would You Give Up Google For $17,000 a Year? The Federal Reserve Wants To Know (cnbc.com) 140
The Federal Reserve wants to know what the internet is worth to you. The answer could help the central bank solve one of the most puzzling paradoxes of the modern economy: The current expansion is the longest in history, yet productivity gains are weak and GDP growth, while steady, is far from stellar. From a report: In a speech last week, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell raised the possibility that the problem is with the data itself. GDP measures the value of products and services that are bought and sold. But many of the greatest technological innovations of the internet age are free. Search engines, e-mail, GPS, even Facebook -- the official economic statistics are not designed to capture the benefits they generate for businesses and consumers. "Good decisions require good data, but the data in hand are seldom as good as we would like," Powell said. Instead, Powell cited recent work by MIT economist Erik Brynjolfsson, one of the leading academics on the intersection of technology and the economy. In a paper with Avinash Collis of the National Bureau of Economic Research and Felix Eggers of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, the authors conducted massive surveys to estimate the monetary value that users place on the tools of modern life.
The results? The median user would need about $48 to give up Facebook for one month. The median price of giving up video streaming services like YouTube for a year is $1,173. To stop using search engines, consumers would need a median $17,530, making it the most valuable digital service. The authors also conducted more limited surveys with students in Europe on other popular platforms. One month of Snapchat was valued at about 2.17 euros. LinkedIn was just 1.52 euros. But giving up WhatsApp? That would require a whopping 536 euros. Twitter, however, was valued at zero euros.
The results? The median user would need about $48 to give up Facebook for one month. The median price of giving up video streaming services like YouTube for a year is $1,173. To stop using search engines, consumers would need a median $17,530, making it the most valuable digital service. The authors also conducted more limited surveys with students in Europe on other popular platforms. One month of Snapchat was valued at about 2.17 euros. LinkedIn was just 1.52 euros. But giving up WhatsApp? That would require a whopping 536 euros. Twitter, however, was valued at zero euros.
No problem (Score:2)
Let me t... Yes.
Re:No problem (Score:4, Informative)
Re: No problem (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as you have porn sites... (Score:2)
... You won't even notice Google is gone for days. ;)
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in my browser, wikipedia is the default search engine.
it does tick people off though when they quickly want to use my browser to search for something.
google is easy, other stuff not so much. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, even if it is all search engines I'd say hell ya, I'll take the $17g. Presumably I could keep internal searches (for our internal documents) so I could do my job. We'd have to rebuild internal libraries though, I'd be pulling out more manuals now and then or else I'd make a lot more bookmarks. Society got along just great before google.
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Why make such a broad category out of search engines and treat virtually every instant messaging service provider on its own?
If they really mean 'to stop using search engines' completely, it means also no local indexing, (pan) site maps or anything that will support you in finding a not yet noticed URL, except for a static direct link in another HTML page. For Wikipedia it means, only the articles. No local search, so only links within articles give you access to other articles.
Yeah, I can see why the techn
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I stopped using Google except to mock them with their privacy invasive monitoring and use https://duckduckgo.com/?q=duck... [duckduckgo.com] it is the far superior search engine as it turns out. I still use google maps because it serves that function but apparantly Apple is looking to jump in that market so, good. I also default straight to Wikipedia search for that kind of search. Even Youtube search where appropriate, although I am now finding using https://duckduckgo.com/?q=duck... [duckduckgo.com] to search youtube to be far more reliab
Information wants to be free? (Score:3)
How about... (Score:2)
Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook's WhatsApp/Instagram, and any friends of yours who use any of them (like Gmail) to communicate with you?
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While I have no use for the rest, I would miss YouTube. Too many talented creators don't duplicate their stuff to BitChute like they should.
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While I have no use for the rest, I would miss YouTube. Too many talented creators don't duplicate their stuff to BitChute like they should.
I've been at this shit since Moby Dick was a minnow and I never heard if BitChute. I had to Google it. Maybe that's closer to what the real problem is?
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YouTube has a serious network effect going for it, and yes that is the problem. But if you followed controversial stuff on YT, you'd know BitChute, because that's where the stuff that YT bans goes. The nice thing about BitChute is that it has a fully automated "backup everything I post to YouTube over here just in case" button, so it's effortless to post to both if you're primarily on YouTube.
If you're trying to purge Google from your life, BitChute is the best alternative right now, while still not being
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My information already is free from Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Translate, and all the rest. They would have to pay me to use them.
Therein lies the rub. You don't report your worth because you don't know what it is and those you list certainly aren't going to tell.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
PM Me here (Score:5, Insightful)
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When the check is ready.
$5 and I'll give someone my facebook account... I created it but never put anything on it, I also forgot my password and don't feel in the mood to scan my driver's license for them.
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Re: PM Me here (Score:2)
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You can block out the serial number first.
Only a massive fucking idiot thinks the important bit is the license #.
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Educate us.
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I have really bad news for you if you think the only way your driver's license gets into the cloud is by you sending it
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Too bad, because the government's driver license records are probably in the cloud too.
Much less as far as I am concerned. (Score:2)
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That's stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
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I'd give up $17,000 to end Google in a year! (Score:3)
And the Federal Reserve too, if that is possible.
This is NOT a hit request! I repeat: This it NOT a hit request!
Re: I'd give up $17,000 to end Google in a year! (Score:2)
Sampling method (Score:2)
"The median user would need about $48 to give up Facebook for one month. "
But that's the median USER. I don't use Facebook and I do so for free. What does that do to their average? Same with WhatsApp.
I do use YouTube, but that's fairly recent and I think I would stop if they charged, say, $1 per month. At the end of the day, it's mainly a time-filler and I have lots of other things to fill my time with.
There's a general difficulty with the idea, in that the Internet is worth a lot to me but it has so many s
Re: Sampling method (Score:2)
YouTube? I still have 1,000 DVD movies I haven't watched from the 90s.
Movie studios allow French tv stations to show movies sooner than English stations, and I speak both, so 1st run movies that don't show up for 2 years are 6 months wait instead. So what am I missing by not streaming? Nothin
A gross misunderstanding. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are not the consumer of Google or Facebook. You are the product. The consumers are the advertisers, just like broadcast media. So ask Proctor & Gamble or Bank of America how much they consider Google or Facebook to be worth.
k.
Re:A gross misunderstanding. (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question should be: IF it was required to pay a monthly subscription to Google, then how much would you be willing to pay before moving to a competitor?
If all competing search engines also required a monthly subscription to use, then how much would you be willing to pay per month before you would instead decline and look for alternative ways of finding content?
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That's a common trope I hear from people online, but it's really not true - you're certainly paying for Google and Facebook, you're just paying in screen real estate and information. Sure they may get their cash from companies looking to advertise, but if they don't provide a good product for you to consume, people don't visit and they become worthless to advertisers.
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Advertisers pay Google and Facebook for their services, which is counted in the economic metrics the usual way. The advertising providers and users have worked out what that service is worth in the usual market-based manner.
They hypothesis that there's significant value that's not showing up in the usual metrics implies that this advertising stuff doesn't work as well as the companies think it does.
They Aren't Customers (Score:4, Interesting)
On a somewhat related side note, I'm curious why they didn't do a similar value comparison for internet pornography. I have a feeling that people value that considerably higher than most of the social media platforms or other services. I also will admit to enjoying that Twitter is considered worthless and that my assumptions have some empirical backing.
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Kidding aside, you can make the exact same argument with internet pornography because in the absence of a free service you either go without, or you have to purchase a substitute at some cost, which is what is being examined here. They're both things that consumers use without paying direct cost, but the method used here establishes their perceived value in the same way.
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Well, food and water arguably result in productivity gain, so I guess that means they have effectively infinite value? Wonder why farmers aren't rich then.
Really they should ask whether people would limit the number of searches they do per day at various levels for what amount of money.
(I really hate the "what the market will bear" mindset.)
Yes. (Score:2)
I would absolutely give up using Google because I would turn around and build my own search engine that other people can use and contribute to.
Just because they are entrenched doesn't mean they are irreplaceable.
Startpage.com already uses their engine. (Score:2)
But without the crap.
It is the first one I consider an acceptable everyday substitute for Google. (DuckDuckGo is too limited for me.)
It still clearly has a somewhat smaller index. Likely due to not being able to spy on people's e-mails and Android activities etc, and corporate search engine optimizers not trying to get their site in yet.
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But without the crap.
It is the first one I consider an acceptable everyday substitute for Google. (DuckDuckGo is too limited for me.)
Have you tried qwant.com [qwant.com]. I enjoy using that a lot.
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What practical issue do you have with using Google? I mean a real, concrete problem it causes you in your life?
What practical issue do you have with a total audio/visual surveillance system installed in every room you live in? So hey, start some live-stream web-cam service of yourself, and you might even get some income from product placement. With Google listening and watching instead of everyone on the Internet, it is not much different, but you cannot sell the product placements in your life, Google does that, instead.
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I would absolutely give up using Google because I would turn around and build my own search engine that other people can use and contribute to.
Just because they are entrenched doesn't mean they are irreplaceable.
Yeah, that's the question asked in the crappy, misleading headline. But what TFS actually says is "would you give up search engines?" Ostensibly that would include search engines you might come up with yourself.
Timed for 2020 (Score:5, Interesting)
Smells like a way to announce sudden fantastic economic growth just before an election, by changing the rules. 6% GDP growth at last, using the new and improved GDP-that-counts-what-people-would-pay-for-free-stuff (which will be conflated with old-GDP for past quarters comparison since there was no new-GDP data back then).
I'd like to believe it's an honest attempt to get better data, but it's hard to believe that given the track record of appointees in the current administration and the fact that Powell will lose his job if low growth numbers decide the election next fall.
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Why can't Trump raise employment levels above 100%! Obviously he is inept.
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You're right, but regular economics measures things in terms of percentage growth/returns/whatever. That means exponential growth, which is of course impossible.
2% sustained annual growth for an economy as rich as the US isn't bad, it's incredible.
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What gets me is they're talking about the mystery of slow productivity growth.
The low minimum wage causes low productivity growth. Everybody knows that.
The part I explained was simple: when minimum wage falls as a percentage of per-capita income--or a percentage of GDP, if you like (the two trend together)--mean wages also fall. Mean
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If productivity growth is slowing it requires a much more careful examination. Is the growth slowing because we're hitting walls in terms of maintaining growth (nothing in the real world sustains limitless exponential growth) or because we've hit a point where people are generally more content with conditions an
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The only people who care about GDP are governments and economists (and the media). The rest of us use the tried and true method of how fat our wallet is.
The economic measures for that are consumer sentiment, credit, employment. You know, real world things.
Entirely wrong way to do valuation (Score:2)
Nobody is willing to give up using search engines. Every student uses them.They've been around in paper as posters, newspapers and magazines. city directories, the Yellow Pages,etc. We don't have libraries with card catalogues any more.
As for Twitter, they could go to a pay-to-post business model, and the trolls, nutbars, and agitators would happily pay to post. People spend money on shrinks to be listened to. You get that bundled with your Twitter participation.
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The biggest problem with doing this for sites like Google is that the population of users is inherently bifurcated between folks who do Internet searches as a critical part of their job functions and those who don't. If they don't, they would probably take far less than $17k, but if they do, then they would need enough money to make up for losing their jobs.
So I'd expect a bimodal distribution, with a large cluster at a few hundred dollars and a second large peak that starts at fifty grand or so and goes
Yes please! (Score:2)
Bad excuse for poor economy (Score:2)
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When experts are doing something different than your 'most basic concept' understanding suggest, it probably isn't the experts who don't know what they are talking about.
Never (Score:2)
No and no
With all the drivel and ads these days, never. Almost makes me miss the UUCP days. Never mind the modern internet made many of us data entry clerks for many large and rich mega-corporations, where is my pay when I login to these web pages to find data in my account. In the old days I would swing by the bank/store etc and make them work for me.
Explain this to me, please... (Score:2)
If I understand this correctly, they walked around and asked people what they thought "online things" were worth to them, and the people gave them a number, they averaged those numbers and THIS is the number that they've decided to use?
Set Interests Rate at 6-7% (Score:2)
If you want to see the "real" health of the economy instead of a bubble propped free money low growth casino.
Most of the "digital" economy are BSed valuations anyway.
Twitter.. (Score:3)
No such thing as free. (Score:5, Informative)
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My jaw dropped when I read the author's comments that GPS was free. It is very much not free because it's paid for out of the US Federal budget.
So how much do people who don't have enough money to pay taxes pay for access to GPS? Oh, zero dollars? That sounds like it's free to me.
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My jaw dropped when I read the author's comments that GPS was free. It is very much not free because it's paid for out of the US Federal budget.
So how much do people who don't have enough money to pay taxes pay for access to GPS? Oh, zero dollars? That sounds like it's free to me.
It only sounds like that to you because you're not really listening.
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Are free beer, free parking, or free samples not free because someone else paid for it? GPS costs money to run, but it's provided free of charge to the end consumer, which is what everyone means when they say "free" (gratis, not libre, which is a whole different subject of course).
Facebook (Score:2)
I don't know about giving up Google but they're free to send me a $50 check every month for not using Facebook.
it's not Google (Score:2)
Honestly, nobody needs Google's search engine. Duck Duck Go is fine. however, this is really about the broad category of search engines, which are extremely important. In more broad terms, the internet is:
Search engines -- invaluable, people get stuff done with them
Email -- invaluable, people rely on it as the primary non-realtime means of communication on the internet
Streaming video -- valuable but could be skipped
Social media -- not particularly valuable, some more or less than others depending on dem
Re: it's not Google (Score:2)
Get rid of Google! (Score:2)
How much ... (Score:2)
Calling bullshit (Score:2)
Pony up! (Score:2)
Instructions unclear (Score:2)
Am I supposed to get or do I have to pay 17 grand to get rid of Google?
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Google? (Score:3)
>"Would You Give Up Google For $17,000 a Year?"
Why is that the headline? That isn't the question. Google is not "the internet". Would I give up Google? What does that mean? The search engine? All their services? Android? I use very little of it right now, anyway (and I don't really use any social media), so it wouldn't be hard for me. And I would love to see more people use other ecosystems....
I do like free ($) ecosystems, who wouldn't? But what I prefer are FREEDOM ecosystems- those that are open source and community-driven and preferably also distributed. Those not driven by profiting on our loss of privacy. Those that can't be controlled by one entity. And there are a lot of such ecosystems out there, struggling (I won't try to list them, I am sure most of us know about many). Not all of them are at the level of perfectly replacing Youtube, search, maps, and all the social medias. But there is hope.
How about (Score:2)
repeal the 16th Amendment and get rid of the Federal Reserve, the IRS AND "Corporate Personhood" (This would negate the need for Citizens United!).
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hell yes (Score:2)
The summary seems to contradict the title though and implies giving up all search engines not just google.
Goddammit ... (Score:2)
... just pay Google for the data.
I have to think of everything.
Count the ad money. (Score:2)
Seriously? The fed still doesn't understand that the business end of most online portals is eyeballs for ad money? What's so hard to count there?
Looks to me like we're trying to come up with an accepted "creative accounting" method of placing value on the eyeballs so they can inflate GDP reporting to keep a country full of poor people thinking they are doing alright.
Once this decision is made, these transactions can be taxed, and I suspect that's the end play here.... finding a way to tax the eyeballs AND t
For 17k a year I could replace google (Score:3)
I could build and host it myself. I wouldn't have the benefit of google's excellent search. It's been getting shittier every day for years and at this point duckduckgo gives better results for some sorts of searches.
For running my own search I could index my own data horde and have it index a bunch of RSS feeds I like and then it would keep up to date on the latest buzz. There is an OCR full text search (forget the name but it requires setting up and installing multiple things) that I'd like to start using for ebooks but the amount of compute and storage to do a reasonable size library and store the index is a limiting factor. The quality of content in my data horde is much higher than the general internet. I don't know exactly what I'd do but for 17k I could figure out how to get full metadata for all my ebooks from somewhere and add related book suggestions to various wikipedia pages. I could add a search field to search all the related books on a subject using the full text search.
I already have an rss news page but I need to spend more time on it because I still find myself using google news. For 17k I could make things much easier on myself.
Fuck google office which I'm slowly replacing with self hosted services already.
Easy (Score:2)
Yes
Google, or all search? (Score:2)
To do without Google, I'd take $17k.
If I had to live without any search, it would be more like $170k. I can't work without being able to search.
On the other hand, I'd give up F*c*book for $0, because I already have. I don't have an account, I've never had an account, and I will never have an account.
For $17K tax free? (Score:2)
Hell yeah!
There's nothing on Google that's indispensible for me.
Fed owes me $85000 (Score:2)
I gave it up 5 years ago, what do I win?
Worth (Score:2)
GDP measures the value of products and services that are bought and sold. But many of the greatest technological innovations of the internet age are free
This is nothing new, by the way. You buy a hell of a lot more car, for example, than 50 years ago. How do you count the introduction of a new product like a vcr, upgraded to dvd then blu ray/tivo or dvr, to at-will download streaming of anything?
This was a complaint in the government's inflation rate estimates, especially in the context of COLA adjustments for Social Security. Monstrous increases in quality or capacity are largely ignored in classic inflation rate calculations.
Hmmmm. The supercomputer i
Observe what people do, not what they say (Score:2)
The only worthwhile results of work like this is to actually run the test. Get a group of representative people - which would have to include non-users - and see how long their resolve holds out at various price points. My suspicion is that far from $17k to give up Google (actually: all search engines) a significant number would go Google-free for a buck or two. Especially among those with limited technical knowledge and who don't use the internet!
But wh
Twitter has negative value (Score:2)
Where can I pay money to get rid of Twitter?
As an old programmer (Score:2)
Sing "Count your many blessings" (in the GDP now!) (Score:2)
How much ransom would you pay to get your kids back? That's their value! Add it in, Mr Green Eyeshades.
How much would you pay to get the Bill of Rights back, if we hypothetically take that away? (And is it even hypothetical any more?) The founders that secured "the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity", what's that worth as an asset on the balance sheet? That intangib
Who still cares about Google? (Score:3)
What product does Google currently make, that isn't Open Source, and doesn't have a better replacement?
Google could rival North Korea for privacy violations, and they seem proud of that fact, which is insane. .
What do you recommend for those? (Score:2)
SJWExchange, I mean StackExchange?
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It's dumber than that.
If Google is productive, then its productivity is what it facilitates. Is Google an end product? No. You use Google to find something which you use to achieve some goal. You search for information.
That means if Google has a dollar value, that dollar value is not for a finished good, but for an intermediate good.
Think of it this way: a farmer takes land ($0) and adds $5 of labor and fertilizer. That produces cotton, which he sells for $7. A threadmaker spins and dyes the cott