Paying for internet services such as Youtube/ E-mails, etc.

[Cresselia~~]

Recently, there's a piece from Yahoo UK news asking readers whether they would pay for Youtube.
The majority answered no, some even said it's ridiculous, and "What next? Charging us for E-mails?"

But on second thought, should E-mails really be free?
Are we all just taking something for granted, and have become too entitled?

Companies do have to pay for server fees, maintenance, and hire people. Server fees can cost a lot, since a lot of forums do ask for donations, so I know they don't come cheap.

========

That said, maybe charging monthly/ annually isn't a smart way to obtain money.

Maybe it's better if a service comes out with extra features you can buy with money, to unlock the features.

Or maybe it can be like LINE (popular app for texting since texting is not free in most countries) where you can buy "LINE stickers" to use as emojis. (They are pictures bigger than emojis)

========

Slightly relevant:

For my final year project in university, I was researching on why people pay so much in micro-transactions, but are unwilling to pay for WhatsApp. (Another texting app that plans to charge like $1 annually for their service)

We chose the mobile game Puzzle and Dragons as an example. This single game profited more than the entire Nintendo via micro-transactions alone.
It's really big in Asia, and we personally all know people who spend more than $5000 USD monthly on this game.

However, when it comes to games to be paid regularly, like annually or monthly, then people are instantly turned off.


Another example would be LINE and WhatsApp.
WhatsApp wanted people to pay annually, but just $1 USD. Everyone was instantly turned off, and many criticized it.
However, LINE was a free service but comes with in app purchase. Each LINE sticker set which comprises of around 38 pictures, costed more than $1 USD.
Yet no one every criticized LINE for charging on the stickers. A lot of people pay for lots of stickers. Especially when it comes to official Hello Kitty stickers.

We then conclude that people love the idea of owning something. People would pay to own something.
But paying annually/ monthly does not feel like owning something, it feels like you are constantly in debt of someone.
Moreover, you have to remember when to pay, which is not easy for everyone.
=================

So, in conclusion, whilst I personally think that E-mails/ Youtube/ Facebook shouldn't be free, I don't think charging monthly/ annually would be a nice choice neither.

They should make people willing to pay via other methods.

 

[Darth Manaphy]

Well, emails used to NOT be free and then services like Hotmail and others opened up where they replaced the then-typical email service with a web-based one filled with ads (to replace lost revenue). So, most of these services make it up in ad money. If you wanted to pay for a service nowadays you would pay to have a more direct and less intrusive method of doing it (sort of like other websites blocking you if you have an adblock and offering you a fee to browse it ad-free).

You have people pay, not for a service, but for ad-ons to that service. You need to addict people FIRST to using it and then you can rope it in.

BTW, have you read this Cracked article: http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1762-5-reasons-i-lost-249000-iphone-game.html ? I think it would be worth a gander at because they talk about these types of "whales" as they call them - people that would spend a lot of money on microtransactions.

 

[Chou Toshio]

So, in conclusion, whilst I personally think that E-mails/ Youtube/ Facebook shouldn't be free, I don't think charging monthly/ annually would be a nice choice neither.

They should make people willing to pay via other methods.

E-mail I'll grant you... but Youtube is the world's 2nd biggest Search Engine (sorry Yahoo, 加油百度)-- and Google's not about to bust the party of billions in ad revenue coming in by doing anything that could upset that dominance.

It might seem odd to think of Youtube as having anything but a dominating grip on our eyeballs, but remember that Google had to BUY Youtube. Despite the monster Google having been designing and directly competing in the video sharing space, it couldn't beat Youtube, which was a much smaller company. Likewise, Youtube may dominate now, but anything that upsets the users too much could begin to open cracks in their omnipotence.

 

[veiva]

YouTube and Gmail aren't traditional products. They are services, provided by Google, and are largely free to the consumer. However, users of these services provide data and exposure. In turn, Google can utilize the data and sell the exposure to other companies, such as via advertising channels or analytics or whatever. In essence, the user is the product.

If Google charged for these services, it would be somewhat (only somewhat!) like a Bobtastic Motorized Axes (BMA) charging his supplier, Fred's Grease'n'Nuts (FGN), for the luxury of selling him specialized supplies. Normally BMA would charge its customers, such as Pylons & Moore (P&M). FGN benefits from selling supplies to BMA, and BMA benefits from FGN's supplies in order to produce motorized axes. If BMA alienated FGN, then FGN could move on, resulting in BMA being unable to provide its product to P&M.

In this scenario, Google is BMA, consumers of Google services are FGN, and P&M are the companies purchasing ad services and such. Google users benefit from Google's services and thus provide the value that Google leverages when working with other businesses.

Google also provides business services, many of which are built on its consumer services. Its free consumer services provide advertising, in essence, and demonstrate the quality of its products and build trust in its operations. For another example, see Microsoft's consumer products and services (Windows, Office, OneDrive), ranging from free to cheap, and its business products and services (Windows Server, volume licensing, Azure, etc) that range from costly to expensive (in comparison to the consumer products). Other companies, like RedHat and GRSecurity, distribute free software such as Linux distributions, yet were/are incredibly profitable (by offering support to professional customers) despite the GPL license and such.

 

[Adamant Zoroark]

It's about what people are willing to pay for. You can't reasonably expect to paywall all of YouTube because people simply aren't willing to pay to see cat videos and teenagers playing video games. Meanwhile, Netflix can get away with charging a monthly fee because nobody honestly expects copyright holders to provide their goods in a way where they'd make no profit on it - plus, do you want your viewing of The Matrix to be interrupted by like, five ad breaks? Hell, you'll find plenty of people who will unwatch artists on art sites simply for providing Patreon-exclusive artwork. People don't like paying for things they can get for free.

So in the end, it comes down to what the consumer is willing to pay for. Providers don't decide what their good or service is worth; the consumer does. In this case, the consumers have decided they don't want YouTube paywalled because people aren't willing to pay to see cats do dumb things and see teenagers and celebrities dump buckets of ice water on their heads. Same case with Facebook; find me someone who wants to pay to see their friends' deep philosophical ramblings and pictures of their lunch.

 

[Shrug]

I feel like veiva did a good job answering the main question of the thread, so i'll ask a different one. Adblock: a lot of ppl on this site use it, as do a lot of ~savvy~ internet users. Theoretically, if everyone used it, there wouldn't be "free" content at all, as companies making the ad-bet is how a lot of free internet places get paid, and cutting off that market entirely means sites would go out of business or need to go to more direct-revenue based models. Are the ppl using adblock existing in an early-adopter advantage state rn and is the transition of more staid internet users to adblock inevitable (as was i assume the move of previously non-internet people to the internet was however many years ago?) or is there something about it that will prevent normal dudes from dling it? and if this progression happens, will most or all sites require some form of payment? Is the idea of a internet controlled by money or the idea of an internet where you, the user, is the commodity (even more than you are now) scarier? Would there be some kind of legal action against adblock despite the potential constitutional diceyness of forcing people to view ads? Am i misunderstanding this situ?

 

[Ironstrongma]

To be honest I think emails and YouTube and Facebook should be free.
They are making so much money in ad revenue that doesn't bother the user much that it would be business suicide to begin charging for it. Everyone takes it for granted and if the email services were charged another free one would just pop up because people now fee entitled to these services.

I'm amazed that no one has said this yet (I may be wrong) but I'm pretty sure youtube are launching a paid subscription section which is like Netflix. This is so popular youtubers can upload paid content to earn more money eg Superwoman (Lilly) will use YouTube red as a way to publish her film that she has made (again I may be wrong this may have changed since roughly 6 months ago) I think this service is fine as long as it doesn't start eating up the real YouTube and things that were once unlocked become something you have to pay for.

 

[Cresselia~~]

To be honest I think emails and YouTube and Facebook should be free.
They are making so much money in ad revenue that doesn't bother the user much that it would be business suicide to begin charging for it. Everyone takes it for granted and if the email services were charged another free one would just pop up because people now fee entitled to these services.

I'm amazed that no one has said this yet (I may be wrong) but I'm pretty sure youtube are launching a paid subscription section which is like Netflix. This is so popular youtubers can upload paid content to earn more money eg Superwoman (Lilly) will use YouTube red as a way to publish her film that she has made (again I may be wrong this may have changed since roughly 6 months ago) I think this service is fine as long as it doesn't start eating up the real YouTube and things that were once unlocked become something you have to pay for.

More and more people are using ad block though.

 

[Outlaw]

I think this service is fine as long as it doesn't start eating up the real YouTube and things that were once unlocked become something you have to pay for.

It will. It always does.

 

[HelenTheHero]

To be honest, I'd be okay with paying for YouTube if it removed adds entirely. That is what YouTube Red (A paid service for extra content by creators.) does, right? If I had the money I'd definitely buy it. While YT makes plenty of money from adds, I dislike them and in an instant (If the price was in the $10-$60 range.) buy something to prevent them. The same with email if they took better prevention for getting junk/scam emails. However, I think it's fine they are free. Not everyone uses it, and the companies make so much money anyway from other means (Google, for example.) that it just might now matter.

Speaking of YouTube Red, I support it. It's a good idea. It allows channels to create fun extra content (Screen Junkies has a parody of Agents of SHIELD for their thing.) and get paid, and it gives the user satisfaction. I may be wrong but I'm very sure Red also removes adds, which is a huge plus. An optional service I think is great for any free thing such as YouTube, etc, for things like this.

 

[shaian]

Theoretically, if everyone used it, there wouldn't be "free" content at all

I think this is a misunderstanding of what the cost of the content is to be honest. In many ways applying conventional business models to an internet site is what creates this disconnect from theoretical vs application, as we understand the access to the content to be free as there isn't a direct monetary price we pay for it. However, if we examine the cost as viewing the page as it was meant, as in that we have to view the ads on the page then we can better understand that the page advertisements are in fact the expense we have to incur to view it. You could even factor in that most of the larger scale services such as video hosts, email services, social media, derive significant revenue just by storing and selling consumer information on top of the the advertising revenue.

 

[Platinum God n1n1]

Recently, there's a piece from Yahoo UK news asking readers whether they would pay for Youtube.

So, in conclusion, whilst I personally think that E-mails/ Youtube/ Facebook shouldn't be free, I don't think charging monthly/ annually would be a nice choice neither.

They should make people willing to pay via other methods.

I don't understand why you feel like that these services should not be free?

Companies do have to pay for server fees, maintenance, and hire people. Server fees can cost a lot, since a lot of forums do ask for donations, so I know they don't come cheap.

goggle had nearly $15billion on operating expenses last quarter
but they do over 100billion searches per day. so thats less than half a penny per search
and in return they had over 20billion in revenue

so the marginal cost of doing 1 search or 1 gmail or 1 route on google maps or 1 youtube video watch is essentially zero.
since the marginal cost of these services is zero then I disagree with this:

Are we all just taking something for granted, and have become too entitled?

if google got greedy and tried to charge of this there would be another competitor taking their customers and taking a big bite out of the 20billion in quarterly revenue from advertising.


if we all had to pay for these services it would be a be an extra cost to the poor who already spend most of their money on bills and rent. Adding a cost to essential free services like email would make their lives harder than it already is

 

[Cresselia~~]

I don't understand why you feel like that these services should not be free?

Why should people give you service for free? It's a service.

 

[jumpluff]

Why should people give you service for free? It's a service.

Apologies if this was covered already in the thread, but a lot of 'free services' under capitalism deal with this by making you a product, not a customer, as the simplification goes. Serving advertisements is an easy way to monetise people's appreciation of free, quality stuff. A lot of people watch YouTube ads, click on Google AdSense advertisements or at least notice them (marketers are happy to get your eyes in many cases; it's worth noting that Google gets a heck of a lot of data out of you using its services for free, and the ads it can deliver to you in Gmail etc. are tailored based off that data, cookies, etc. -- seriously, Google isn't broke), etc. Making YouTube free means people will produce content for YouTube, which in turn draws more people to YouTube, which gives Google lucrative marketing partnerships. Other free services work the same. Twitter needs a userbase so businesses will want to interact with it (and in turn promote tweets). You are doing Twitter a favour by making it your primary communication medium, especially if you talk about the news, events, media, or anything branded!

Revenue-losing free services have another reason for existing: they draw you to other services the company might own and into their ecosystem. Free-to-play games with microtransactions work like this on a smaller scale (and to examine both, we can take Valve's case and look at how they have free-to-play games with microtransactions and games that cost money alike, and getting into those games means installing their free distribution platform, which means you'll a) be exposed to advertising b) be tempted to buy games on that distribution platform, which means a cut for them and more profitable relationships c) buy skins or whatever. To get your account fully unlocked, which is generally preferable if you're playing multiplayer on these games, you need to spend $5, your slippery slope that tempts you to make further investments because you already have stuff on the platform and you want to consolidate).

Google is attempting to launch a paid-for music service on YouTube that may or may not have something to do with Google Music, I don't remember. Social media sites are often profitable for the starters because they more than pay for themselves with ads. etc. etc.

I normally stay out of conversations like this because I don't like capitalism at all and personally I think pretty much everything should be publicly owned, but I feel perfectly ethically fine regardless using these 'free' services, because by using them I am contributing to their lifespan. Why should I pay for sites where I am generating the content? As for email specifically, if it weren't free someone would just make free email and monetise it alternatively (Google has business email accounts that are paid for btw and actually reasonable professionally, many schools use them or Microsoft's equivalent), because that's how the relatively free market works; I'm in the minority, but I'd probably run my own mail server if I couldn't get free and reputable email. Also, Google's search engine + mail helped bolster its brand in the first place to let it expand into everything, buy out YouTube, etc.

Why should I pay if the business is willing to give it to me for free and I don't prefer a paid service? My patronage is a service, that's why they offer it for free. I'm not the revenue target. Why should I pay if I can get something equivalent for free?

(Additionally, I'm poor as shit, as is everyone itt compared to these companies, and Google could buy a small nation probably, I'm not convinced there's any inherent value in transactions with large companies either. Like I said this is why I stay out of these conversations but I don't feel like people inherently owe business owners something when they profit off workers already. So, yes, it's a 'service', but as I said it's a service that we pay our dues for literally by using, and I'm not convinced we come out of that owing anything anyway. Whereas if jynx made me a really cool art project she'd be rendering me a huge service and producing something tangible of time, labour, materials, and talent, of course I owe her something for that. Yes, these services take those things and that's why people let venture capitalists exist, but surely we can appreciate that they're kind of on a different scale and make disproportionate amounts of the world's resources compared to the work and material that goes into them.

Yes, I pay for goods, including digital ones.)

 

[jumpluff]

Upon pondering this question in its specific context more, I have a point to add that I don't think was covered by veiva, n1n1 (whose post is really good), or myself, and which ties a little into some of my more obscure tangents. It's more minor than not randomly fucking over the poor due to some philosophical belief in transactional purity, economics, and data mining ethics, but it's interesting if you used the internet prior to free email.

Specifically, free email is healthy for the internet.

People asking 'what's next, paying for email?' probably comes from not remembering what using the internet before its huge growth a decade ago was like. You did pay for email. It generally came with your internet plan. Or maybe it was your work email. It may have even come with your domain or hosting plan. Free emails were provided by hotmail and yahoo and generally considered unprofessional (and associated with spam) because free email was scarce (accordingly, these addresses were great spammer bait, etc.) and if you were a real person you'd use a different email for your important communications, as well as sharing the tiny inbox sizes and other restrictions that came with these emails. Most were also unable to be accessed through web clients and required configuration in POP3(etc.) clients, making email a lot less of a convenient and portable communication tool.

Predictably the things I named led to a lot of address changing problems. These addresses were generally more ephemeral than today's email addresses (I have many of my old addresses set to forward to my main email address, my school address forwards to my main address, my domain-associated addresses forwards to my main address, you get to the point) and liable to disappear as domains, jobs, disposable cash, and ISP contracts did. I'm sure you can imagine why this was noxious. Of course, hotmail was ridiculously popular, along with the other free email providers (which also provided webmail), but the addresses were a lot more easily discarded. So webmail became a thing in ISP and hosting provider internet, so people were still paying for email ages into the 2000s, since it took awhile for ISPs to make their email packages 'free'. When's the last time you emailed someone with an earthlink address, though? Incidentally, the increased availability of email has meant that ephemeral accounts can function alongside less ephemeral accounts for those who are so inclined. I had one email when I started using the internet and it was ISP-bound and included identifying details, now I have a bunch in use and a nice division of labour.

A lot of this could be used as an argument for things like gmail's relative free mail monopoly being good, or centralising online identity around email being good, which isn't really the point of my post (and I don't agree with either point btw), my point is simply that email was much worse when it was a paid-for commodity and much better when it's a free commodity used to enhance product interopability and communication. Portable devices (laptops phones tablets whatever) etc. all made email more popular too. Everywhere you look in the history of email, you see it improving as it became more accessible.

A similar argument can be made for YouTube and hosting videos online btw, using different technical trajectories though. By the way because of these things there's a lot of goodwill and trust towards Google (provide vital service reliably, generally <-> trust cycle)

 

[Cresselia~~]

Upon pondering this question in its specific context more, I have a point to add that I don't think was covered by veiva, n1n1 (whose post is really good), or myself, and which ties a little into some of my more obscure tangents. It's more minor than not randomly fucking over the poor due to some philosophical belief in transactional purity, economics, and data mining ethics, but it's interesting if you used the internet prior to free email.

Specifically, free email is healthy for the internet.

People asking 'what's next, paying for email?' probably comes from not remembering what using the internet before its huge growth a decade ago was like. You did pay for email. It generally came with your internet plan. Or maybe it was your work email. It may have even come with your domain or hosting plan. Free emails were provided by hotmail and yahoo and generally considered unprofessional (and associated with spam) because free email was scarce (accordingly, these addresses were great spammer bait, etc.) and if you were a real person you'd use a different email for your important communications, as well as sharing the tiny inbox sizes and other restrictions that came with these emails. Most were also unable to be accessed through web clients and required configuration in POP3(etc.) clients, making email a lot less of a convenient and portable communication tool.

Predictably the things I named led to a lot of address changing problems. These addresses were generally more ephemeral than today's email addresses (I have many of my old addresses set to forward to my main email address, my school address forwards to my main address, my domain-associated addresses forwards to my main address, you get to the point) and liable to disappear as domains, jobs, disposable cash, and ISP contracts did. I'm sure you can imagine why this was noxious. Of course, hotmail was ridiculously popular, along with the other free email providers (which also provided webmail), but the addresses were a lot more easily discarded. So webmail became a thing in ISP and hosting provider internet, so people were still paying for email ages into the 2000s, since it took awhile for ISPs to make their email packages 'free'. When's the last time you emailed someone with an earthlink address, though? Incidentally, the increased availability of email has meant that ephemeral accounts can function alongside less ephemeral accounts for those who are so inclined. I had one email when I started using the internet and it was ISP-bound and included identifying details, now I have a bunch in use and a nice division of labour.

A lot of this could be used as an argument for things like gmail's relative free mail monopoly being good, or centralising online identity around email being good, which isn't really the point of my post (and I don't agree with either point btw), my point is simply that email was much worse when it was a paid-for commodity and much better when it's a free commodity used to enhance product interopability and communication. Portable devices (laptops phones tablets whatever) etc. all made email more popular too. Everywhere you look in the history of email, you see it improving as it became more accessible.

A similar argument can be made for YouTube and hosting videos online btw, using different technical trajectories though. By the way because of these things there's a lot of goodwill and trust towards Google (provide vital service reliably, generally <-> trust cycle)

I don't understand.
How do free E-mails make money?
They don't really have ads, they don't really survey you, and Gmail doesn't really have spam mail.
Do they collect user information by the content of the E-mails?

Does the gmail department of Google really earn money?

 

[JALMONT]

I don't really understand the premise of wanting to pay for email (I mean unless you're a google shareholder, why would anyone want to start paying for email lol? and even if you are a google shareholder I would doubt that charging a fee would increase profits, probably would decrease them as people would move to alternatives that don't charge). As far as I'm concerned, I could care less how much money google is making from gmail so as long as I continue to get a quality product in the form of gmail.

Google makes money primarily through advertisement. Gmail of course doesn't have a lot to do with that, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The reason they can make so much money is due to how many people use their services. Similar to how it costs more to get a commercial to play during the Super Bowl (vs. a channel no one watches), google can probably charge advertisers more because of the fact that they have so many people using their services. By providing a service for free, they get people to use their other services eg search. By building their brand through providing free email (which in today's day and age is pretty darn important) they get consumers to return to their products probably try out their other stuff. And by integrating all of their products together (chrome/mail/drive/etc), they have a "product" that is very appealing to all different kinds of consumers.

If Google were to all of a sudden start charging people for opening email accounts, they would probably begin to generate a lot of negative advertisement. People would be less inclined to use gmail and go to cheaper/free alternatives. And that's really why it would be very difficult for Google to start charging people unless they had government regulation on their side to prevent people from entering the market. People just wouldn't use Google and/or a new company could come in and do all the things that google does except for free.

 

[jumpluff]

I don't understand.
How do free E-mails make money?
They don't really have ads, they don't really survey you, and Gmail doesn't really have spam mail.
Do they collect user information by the content of the E-mails?

Does the gmail department of Google really earn money?

Yep yep yep.

It does serve ads, they're just unobtrusive if you configure them right. That's heaps right there. Gmail has a specific type of ad called Gmail Ads, which appear at the top of your promotions tab and can be tailored to your (data mined) interests and charge for uncollapsing. Their ads are tailored based off data mining your recent emails most specifically (as well as activities like deleting email), as well as using your search history/clicks, gmaps usage, etc.

Less profitably, Gmail business suites are quite popular for schools and large companies.

Gmail also generates loads of revenue for the rest of Google by acting as a draw to their ecosystem.

I haven't looked at other free email providers in ages (gmail helps Google a lot in that regard) except outlook, which was my school email, but they definitely do serve ads.