
Would you give up Google for $17,000 a year? The Fed wants to know - kjhughes
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/11/fed-tries-to-figure-out-value-of-free-internet-services-to-americans.html
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mrkstu
The biggest difficulty is that many of the web 'accounts' I've created have
been only ever accessed via my Google account- i.e. I effectively don't have
an account there w/o my Google account.

I assume Github and some of the others have mechanisms to migrate to a 'local'
account, but I'm fairly sure some of the others would involve basically
starting from scratch.

That said, for $17,000, of course I would, it would pay for the inconvenience
many times over.

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mikestew
_That said, for $17,000, of course I would, it would pay for the inconvenience
many times over._

EDIT: ignore; went back and re-read it and sounds like the user _would_ be
paid.

Unless I'm reading TFA wrong, they're not paying you, you're paying _them_. I
took it to mean that they are trying to place a value on personal data
required for such "free" internet services as Google.

~~~
RandomBacon
The wording is ambiguous, but they meant the user would need to be paid.

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freediver
The idea does sound silly, because Google and Facebook are not "free". The
economic output of Google and Facebook (ad revenue) is already being factored
into GDP.

But lets explore the possibility of unaccounted economic value for a second.
Today there are roughly about 3 billion people using search engines with total
ad revenue roughly around $150Bn, meaning value per user is ~$50/year.

In order for unaccounted economic surplus to exist, all of these users would
need to be ready to pay more than $50/year (and that there are no ads).
Another scenario is 90% of population keeps it as it is and 10% (300M people)
get no ads and pay more than $50/year. With adblockers around and no other
value proposition I can think of right now, this sounds unlikely.

There is a big difference between being offered $17k to entirely quit search
engines and being ready to pay $17k a year to use them.

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joshuamorton
This argument doesn't follow: if I create something of value, and give it away
for free, it still creates value even if no money changes hands.

> $17k to entirely quit search engines and being ready to pay $17k a year to
> use them.

No, economically speaking these are equivalent constructs. Of the value of a
service is X, then I would be willing to pay X for access to the service, and
similarly be willing to be paid X to lose access to the service.

If people are willing to pay for a search engine, just because they aren't,
doesn't mean they wouldn't be willing to. It just means that there's
deadweight loss somewhere, or in this case that Google isn't operating at
maximum short term profitability.

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freediver
>No, economically speaking these are equivalent constructs.

I am willing to get paid $10k to get rid of cancer, and in no scenario I would
be willing to pay $10k to get one. It is clearly an asymmetric construct
economically.

~~~
joshuamorton
You're misunderstanding: 17000 is the marginal value of a search engine. 10k
is not the marginal value if cancer. If you find the marginal value, then you
should be willing to pay that price (but no more) to trade for the thing.

People are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for cancer
treatment, so 10k clearly isn't the marginal value.

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corodra
I think avoiding using GPS is the hardest one.

Youtube... 90% of my viewing consists of history, documentaries, programming
tutorials and maker/engineer channels. Adequate replacement of that, that's a
toughy. But what's funny, Youtube is demonetizing a lot of that. So, I'm
hoping for a new platform to pop-up soon.

But man, "Twitter, however, was valued at zero euros." Burn.

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ntw1103
Considering I already make an effort of avoiding Google, sure, free money.
When I say make an effort, that is because if you really are trying to avoid
Google, it is an effort, there services are embedded everywhere. The 17k
figure in the article was associated with all online search engines. This
would be a little more difficult. I remember the internet before search
engines. I would probably be creating my own, and better about book marking
things.

~~~
corodra
Yea, I'm fine with using duckduckgo or even something else. But "no search
engines"...eh... well, that might bring back sites like HappyPuppy... that'd
be fun... well, wouldn't that make "influencers" actually really valuable? I'd
imagine they'd jump on that opportunity.

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tonyedgecombe
_Brynjolfsson is advocating an entirely new measure of economic health that
calculates benefit rather than output._

This needs to go well beyond a few internet services. GDP is a poor measure
that was never intended for what it is used for today.

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RandomBacon
Not Google, but "search engines".

I wonder how that would affect the Internet, and society.

People would have to learn how to find information out for themselves. Yes,
some people will find wrong info, but I'd argue there's still a lot of wrong
info floating around today.

Hopefully such skills would carry over to the physical world as well.

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obenn
If I stopped using YouTube I would already be eligible, and the answer is yes.

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JohnFen
I gave up Google about five years ago, in exchange for no money -- so sure,
I'd do it for $17,000 a year.

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zamadatix
FWIW the article is actually about "internet search" which the writer equated
to "Google".

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rolph
ive already firewalled google from everything i do, so can i have my 17k now
and how much tax do i owe for it?

