As I learn more and more about surveillance capitalism, I have become more skeptical about various decisions companies make. For example, I was a heavy Google Reader user before it was abandoned. I use Google Inbox rather than gmail for my primary mail app. Google will soon discontinue Inbox. Why?
I thought both of my valued services were superior and I was baffled by the abandonment of these products. With Reader, I thought Google had read the tea leaves on the decline of user interest in RSS as a discovery tool and needed to apply their human and infrastructure resources elsewhere. I am far more puzzled with the Inbox decision.
I have begun to view free tech services in terms of benefits to three parties – users, the tech company, and advertisers. With Reader, I assume Google decided that the value to a declining user base could not be justified in terms of the cost to Google. For a free product, I may not like this, but I do understand. As I have learned more and more about the collection of personal information, my perspective has changed a bit. Free isn’t really free. If a service cannot contribute to the collection of personal information which translates to the primary revenue stream for Google, does this become the primary variable in cuts. I really wonder if this is the rationale with Inbox. One of the issues that got me thinking about this was the ease with which Inbox and Gmail could delete a category of mail – especially ads. All of my unsolicited product information goes into a subcategory of my mail. With Inbox, I can scan the titles from 20-30 emails and if nothing seems interesting, use one click and delete them all. In Gmail, you must address them one at a time. Being able to delete all ads in one click is great for me, but probably not a feature ad companies like. This may seem paranoid, but I now need some reason to think otherwise. If nothing else, this is how surveillance capitalism has changed how I analyze things.