{"id":2085,"date":"2019-03-03T19:54:20","date_gmt":"2019-03-03T19:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.learningaloud.com\/curmudgeonspeaks\/2019\/03\/03\/questioning-the-motives-behind-free\/"},"modified":"2019-03-03T19:56:41","modified_gmt":"2019-03-03T19:56:41","slug":"questioning-the-motives-behind-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningaloud.com\/curmudgeonspeaks\/2019\/03\/03\/questioning-the-motives-behind-free\/","title":{"rendered":"Questioning the motives behind free"},"content":{"rendered":"

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?<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

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. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-2085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-30"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningaloud.com\/curmudgeonspeaks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningaloud.com\/curmudgeonspeaks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningaloud.com\/curmudgeonspeaks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningaloud.com\/curmudgeonspeaks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningaloud.com\/curmudgeonspeaks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningaloud.com\/curmudgeonspeaks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2086,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningaloud.com\/curmudgeonspeaks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085\/revisions\/2086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningaloud.com\/curmudgeonspeaks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningaloud.com\/curmudgeonspeaks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningaloud.com\/curmudgeonspeaks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}