
Ask HN: Why doesn't Google offer more paid services? - gtirloni
E.g. Gmail and Search that doesn&#x27;t show ads or track you everywhere.
======
chewz
Because advertising value of poor and dumb users of the internet is more
profitable.

And Google is pretty bad at creating products so no one is willing to pay for
them - Gmail, Search Google Cloud etc. - they can survive on the market only
because they are free.

As long as Google products are free they can suffocate any potential
competition. If Google products were paid for there would exist healthy
competition that would marginalize Google in a blink of an eye.

~~~
highhedgehog
Why do you think Google's product are bad? I find Gmail, GCloud (do you mean
the Cloud Platform) ect work perfectly. What's wrong with them, apart for the
"evilness" of collecting huge amounts of data of the user?

~~~
thiago_fm
All other paid mail options are better, such as protonmail etc. It's just too
expensive for me though. So I use GMail. Google can beat competition with
storage space, integration and infinite money from Google cash cow etc. But
the products are crap and I concur with the other person who commented on it
that it's just another Google product to show ads and track me.

~~~
highhedgehog
What do you find in other services that you think is better? Like proton-mail
vs gmail.

~~~
thiago_fm
It works very well, no downsides, apart the fact I need to pay. I'm not the
product.

Gmail web almost eat all my memory and is kind of shitty and not snappy at
all. I think even office 365 looks better atm. I don't know what happened to
google, but it's probably something really wrong. Maybe it got too big that
nobody cares anymore?

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RickSanchez2600
Google makes money off the activity and behavior of people using their free
products. They sell the data to the highest bidder. If it wasn't free nobody
would use them. This is to serve them advertising and sell info to spammers
and marketers than will send them email.

~~~
dastx
Just a quick correction, Google doesn't sell your data. They sell targetted
ads, that is, they promise advertisers that their ads will reach whoever they
require targetting.

------
adiian
Here are a few simplistic observations:

1\. Let's consider 2 type of users to which ads could be served. The premium
segment willing to pay have a certain profile. By removing the premium segment
the entire group will have less value in the eyes of advertisers.

2\. Google offers plenty of integrated services. They have only a few
profitable when taken separately. Most of them are to support the few
generating profit.

3\. Would you pay separately for email, drive, search, ...? Probably not, so a
flat price for all would make more sense. In this case you might be more
valuable as part of a bigger pool of ad consumers. Remember you're a "premium"
user willing to pay for certain services that you can have for free. A gold
mine for advertisers. I should keep your contact for when I'll have some saas
to sell.

4\. If sold separately, each service will have at least one competitor
specialized on a single product. Eg. Dropbox for Google drive.

5\. They will probably have more premium/freemium services. People were
missing the incentive to pay for something that could be free. Not anymore.

------
buboard
Google and Facebook not switching to more paid services is an open admission
that subscriptions and paid does not work on the web in a
sustainable/profitable way for b2c services that don't generate content. OR at
least that the payment services are not there, or the fees are prohibitive, or
deregulation is needed.

