> But I suspect they will never do it until forced by law because of the cost.
I would go further: I suspect that Google would just shut down many of its services if they had to provide human support, because the cost of serving the sheer number of people Google serves, with any level of effectiveness, would turn the the products from positive-margin or at least acceptable-cost loss-leaders, into highly-negative-margin.
I definitely agree and this is my main point: If Google or others have to fundamentally restructure their business model, or the cost of keeping up with the regulations outweighs the potential upside (and here cost includes all metrics: real cost, opportunity cost), then they will most definitely back out, scale down, offer a reduced service, or worst of all, charge for their software! -- gasp!
> I hate how "normal" of a company google is becoming. Closing down services and products not because they aren't profitable, but because they aren't profitable enough.
What specific services and products are you thinking of there? How do you know they were profitable?
> but then it might not be economically viable at their scale either.
Google has a net income of well over 20% of revenue in their last quarterly earnings, even over 30% last March. This is ridiculously profitable. So I don't buy that argument at all.
And even if it's not economically viable to have customer support (or just a proper and timely process for appeals of AI decisions), then their business model probably shouldn't exist in its current form to begin with.
>> I dont think it's surprising that they make trade-offs to support that model. Just think of how many support staff you'd need to support 1.5 billion users!
Google has a shitload of money, they can afford hiring enough staff. Cost is a lame excuse here.
> Why do you think Google and Amazon and others can create entire products that never make a profit for years and then unceremoniously shut them down or reduce their investments in them?
It seems like Google and Amazon shutting down or divesting some products would make room for a lot of competitors to step in and dominate that space.
> Google... Phenomenal engineering, and horrible customer service
How can a company with THAT MUCH MONEY be THAT plagued with an issue that everyone has been shouting about for more than a decade ??
I wonder if there is a business model in contracting in Google's customer care. I'm sure someone could do a lot better with Google's customer budget. Google can start off with a few departments, and then have performance based expansion. If it goes too well, they can always get acquired in.
> wonder why nobody at Google seems to realize or care that their poor track record is hurting their bottom line?
If I had to guess, these things are incredibly tiny compared to their main source of income (ads). As a result, atleast from a monetary perspective, it would basically be a negligible effect on their bottom line.
From a PR perspective, it might have a slightly higher impact as they gain a reputation for shutting stuff down, but with ads and the like being their main source of revenue, this doesnt necessarily have a massive impact
> what kind of a commitment[1] could they make that makes me believe that me paying them would mean they stop treating me as a product and as a customer instead?
I'm not sure they could make a credible commitment to that at this point. I'm not sure there is any viable way for them to transition, at scale, from their current business model to one where they just charge users directly for services those users want. But the latter business model is still there, waiting, and sooner or later I think someone will find a way to use it to take Google's market.
> Not true... you just have to pay for it. I worked for A fortune 100 company
It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that there only about 100 companies who can afford Fortune 100-ish level support..............................................
> The trust Google has built with users over the last 25 years is the most valuable asset the company owns.
That gave me a laugh. I don't trust Google. Their entire purpose for many years now has been simply to enable SEO trash in such a way that users see as many ads as possible while providing a minimum amount of useful information so that users are not totally frustrated.
If Google could legally sell your organs, they would. They are that nefarious, and deserve all the hate they get. AI is just the next step. Frankly, if Google went bankrupt today, I think civilization would benefit immensely.
>There’s no great solution to this apart from the economy and company doing well so that this doesn't happen.
Google is making 25% profit on massive revenues, they're easily in the 10 best performing companies in the US. There's not a good economic reason for them to do something like this.
> What would be news is if Google were paying $11/hr + social security, etc. just to have people tell an algo which pictures have a dog in them. That would put them at a competitive disadvantage.
Yes. Sometimes maximizing profits and having a functional society where everyone has a meal and home is incompatible. I would prefer to see that the long term viability of countries is put higher up than the short term profits of companies. And that is why it is so important to set all countries to the same standards of living (on the high-end preferably).
> I would love to see a real challenger to Google. A paid model will not likely be that.
How could a challanger to Google use the same business model that Google has? That is certainly destined to have the same end game/degradation as Google has.
> then the entity wont survive for long and will go out of business (or at least that's the hope of a competitive free market economy)
Only if the inefficiency is large enough to overcome other forces.
Or to put it another way, picture if every single individual teams at Google did this to the tune of 100k a year, per team, and assume among 135,000 employees there are 13500 teams.
That's 1.35 billion dollars. Well under 1% of their revenue.
No way is a competitor going to appear that is identical to Google in every way except they have better budget management. Google has too many moats around their business, they can be really inefficient in many many ways and still dominate in multiple markets.
> The cost of not being visible where customers are actually looking for you is very high indeed.
Does it constitute a monopoly though? I doubt the folks at Google love Amazon.com but if this became the sufficient to declare Amazon.com a monopoly, then the obvious next step is to immediately declare Google web search a monopoly. With over sixty percent of the eye balls (the last time I read any stats), Google would be in the cross hairs.
I would go further: I suspect that Google would just shut down many of its services if they had to provide human support, because the cost of serving the sheer number of people Google serves, with any level of effectiveness, would turn the the products from positive-margin or at least acceptable-cost loss-leaders, into highly-negative-margin.
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