One of the many reasons AR will probably never go anywhere. It has some pretty neat applications, but then a ton of horribly dystopic ways to monetize it. And greed all but guarantees that the latter will drown out the former. Kind of like what happened to VR where anti-competitive exclusivity deals, profit motivated pricing (as opposed to a loss leader market to drive adoption) and all this other sort of nonsense went a long way towards killing the ecosystem before it even got off the ground. It was a like bait and switch, but they forgot the bait.
Once the tech is worth it we'll have uBlock, Ad Nauseum, and eventually Vanced apps. I'll help friends and family, but sadly have learned my lesson about helping the general public utilize such things.
> There are far more clever and profitable ways to monetize MR than to shove ads in your face wherever you look.
There are, but the problem with ads (and surveillance) is, they're purely additive on the margin. Any of the clever and profitable thing you do to monetize MR, you can get a bit more money if you also put in ads. Then the competition puts more ads. Rinse repeat, eventually ads overwhelm the experience - but not before you make bank.
That's the cancerous nature of advertising. It metastasizes to every new medium, feeds on it, and ultimately consumes it.
Really? Seems like ad funded “free” tech products have been the most successful in gaining wide adoption. I’d argue the opportunity for greed in AR makes it more likely to go lots of places, although we may not like them in the long run.
My argument would be that we don't really know which tech products would be successful, because any attempt to create a better product is immediately crushed by a "free" ad supported alternative.
The ad model yields worse product and are actively killing off any attempt to improve, because the majority of people don't understand the downside of financing products using ads, rather than direct payment.
The ad funded model is only successful if you view the world solely in terms of profit. I think Windows is a good example, the product doesn't improve when Microsoft loads the install up with ads and telemetry, but it is more profitable, and therefor more successful, if you're a stockholder.
