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Ask HN: Do you think a Google subscription business model would work?

6 points by hajderr ↗ HN
So this is in the context of privacy, data breaches, cookies and all that. Google relies heavily on ads, I presume much of their revenue is dependent on ads network.

To tackle privacy concerns and user data collection. If Google hypothetically considered to get rid of user data, they'd need another income source. Would a subscription be something you pay for? Sure, they wont customise search results, maybe at worst (?) you end up like DuckDuckGo.

7 comments

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methuselah
Well anything apart from adds never paid Google. Android is doing good as it's open source and based on Linux. Time will tell.
buboard
Why subscription? Why not pay as you go?
hajderr
Sure, anything else than 'free'
ps101
No. If a multi-billion dollar company completely overturned its revenue model, it wouldn't be the same company anymore. And the billions of people who have used their services for years wouldn't be happy with suddenly having to pay. Can some subscription services work for some people and some products some of the time? Sure. But Google has so many services, coming to so many people for free, and making them so much money from ads, that even the hypothetical is ridiculous.
hajderr
I would consider paying. I don't mind Google selling ads, just don't do it while tracking users.
ps101
The reason for the tracking is to better target the ads, you can't separate the two in Google's model.
dennisy
I hate the Google model, but the appeal of everything in one place is too high for the lazy!

The only way I see this changing and people shifting to an alternative search engine is if that engine is 10x better in terms of results...