No problem. All your favourite online services are no longer free though, what a bummer. Will it be a lite, regular or premium Google maps subscription? How about Facebook Messenger?
You don’t need detailed tracking to run ads. Newspapers did it in the time before the internet.
What did occur, is that advertisers could not be sure of performance so placed more value on the prominence and reputation of the media source. National well reputed papers got the best deals, regardless of real world performance.
It will lead to tight localization again, as advertisers can’t rely on Google just selecting the right people to display ads to, but would have to seek specific sites to advertise on.
This it could have the side effect of killing independent journalism startups. Big media is already too entrenched.
These big newspaper websites do already sell ads directly too - DoubleClick can serve both Adsense (usually as a backup) as well as their own inventory.
There are drawbacks to every option. Given the choice between a surveillance state and a propaganda state, I will always choose the latter - at least you get some agency over what media you consume and which statements you believe. Surveillance is forced on you, and invisibly at that.
> You don’t need detailed tracking to run ads. Newspapers did it in the time before the internet.
Newspapers did it to some extent, and they were not competitive businesses against methods where tracking does exist.
The reality is that newspapers are still very strong lobbyists, especially in newspapers, as they frequently sink politicians who don't toe their line with unrelated scandal or just plain fantasy. If Google pushes this they are likely to find legislation, particularly in the EU, mandating quite the opposite to what you want.
I stopped using both of these BECAUSE of the ad network, years ago. A lite / regular / premium option, that I could trust to not also sell to the ad network (just because you pay doesn’t mean your info isn’t being sold...), would be a most welcome upgrade. Bonus: my friends and family become protected from this ad network too, which nets even better privacy for me (since analytics can know a lot about you just from the people you associate with).
If the lite subscriptions are comparable to the current content it'll be pennies per day, and only on days I actually use the service. That's acceptable.
And then I can buy a 'regular' subscription for google products that comes with actual support? It's like a dream world.
It's not as if Google maps is the only game in town. Really the only thing I use it for over openstreetmaps is business hours and transit directions, but there is no reason the later couldn't be done. I use osmand on my phone and have offline maps for everywhere I've been. Grabbing some gtfs files wouldn't be difficult.
As for messenger, there will probably always be some "free" messaging service out there. Free in quotes as it'll come with phone, isp, or email subscriptions.
Premium Google thank you, Facebook I will love to see emplode, Twitter will slowly die away and I will be able to go back to RSS feeds to peoples blogs.
You also put your time where your mouth is and compete against one of those free services (Github) :-) I don't even use SourceHut (yet!) and I send you money because what you are doing is awesome (admittedly a tiny amount -- if anyone can convince Boris Johnson to walk away from Brexit, I'll be able to up that ;-) ).
