“Your Drive storage is filling up. Click here to purchase additional Google Drive storage.”
Click, look at the prices, and think to yourself “Well, Dropbox will give me an additional 5GB og storage for free. I’ll just put part of my files there.” And off you go, splitting and sorting your files across half a dozen cloud storage solutions because you couldn’t get yourself over paying for the convenience of having everything in one place. 100GB for less than €2 a month. That`s two sips of the pumpkin spice latte you`ll gladly justify tomorrow afternoon after going to the gym.
The same goes for apps, music, videos, and everything digital. We’ve gotten this idea in our minds that what is digital should also be free, because it doesn’t have a value you can touch. You’ll likely hesitate to click Buy while looking at the chart-topping newest mobile game on the market that everyone is talking about, even though it cost less than a single tram journey to uni.
Which raises the question: if most of the services that Google, Apple and the others offer are free, how do they cover the costs? How can the billion-plus monthly Gmail user base possibly be justified in Alphabet’s bottom line?
There’s one thing that explains it all: if you’re not the customer, you’re the product.
Yes, we do hand over ungodly amounts of data to the large companies that rule the internet. Photos, search history, interests, location data, contact data – the variety and precision of the data that is exchanged every single minutes between our personal clients and servers of all these services is immense. That’s where the latter get their value from. There’s three main reasons these services can be (and remain!) free. Let’s have a look:
- Google, Facebook, Apple etc. don’t make any money from these services directly. Your Gmail user file doesn’t have inherent value – nor do your Facebook photos. Google doesn’t charge for the use of their Translate service. Yet every single time you translate something, the inherent value you attach to it rises, and you become more likely to use other Google services as well. Found a few long-lost friends on Facebook? You’re more likely to stay on the platform and make it your main social network rather than hedging your bets elsewhere.
- If Google search were paid, it’s unimaginable that they would enjoy the market domination they do today. Users would balk and go seek out free alternatives, even if that means giving up a little bot of quality of service.
- Lastly, and probably most importantly: all these services make money from the data that you provide them. The personal profiling one can create with a little bit of internet history is shockingly accurate, and that means better advertising, better promotion of new services and personalised offers – and in turn, since all the services appear better to the user since they’re unique to him or her, higher inherent value of these services. It’s a virtuous cycle.
The large tech companies use data as the core of their business model. That’s how they make their money. They’re businesses, after all – not charities. Google uses data to personalise ads, Facebook to create an entire digital identity and Apple to sell you hardware it knows you will like. There’s no good guys and bad guys here – it’s a business.
Then comes the argument of privacy, which in a very pragmatic sense is a moot point. Of course there should be lines drawn on what can and cannot be stored and exchanged, or what needs to be anonymised. But the same people who fight for privacy have no qualms in posting their latest holiday pictures on Facebook for all the world to see. Huge improvements have been made in privacy awareness, but the reality is that whenever Facebook or Google prompts you to review your privacy settings once a month, most users click away because they want to get to the .gif of a hamster balancing on top of a lab’s head quicker. (It’s here, by the way. I know you want to see it.).
The services used on the internet can be this good specifically because there is so much data in and around them to make them this good.
Should there be an ongoing discussion on privacy and on what data the internet giants can be allowed to access? Most definitely. Yet should the users be aware that in any service they use for free, a trade-off between data given and service taken is made for the simple privilege of using that service and having it meet our expectations? Perhaps even more so.
Sources
Idea for this short note gotten while using the definitely-free Google Search. Google is now trying to sell me additional Drive storage (“how can google keep gmail/its services free”). Have a sold part of my internet soul to the giant? Yes. But it’s also made it possible to find this CNN article here as main inspiration and ponder my thoughts to write this contribution.
Guess that’s a win-win.
Hi Patrick, nice post and of course this remains a topic to think about (even if most of us are already in the back of our minds somehow aware of this problem). Actually, the first part of your post really got me thinking: you’re right, why DO I care so much about getting everything digital for free? So while I was already really aware of the privacy issue you pointed out, my solution had been to not make use of the service. You just made me realize that going for a paid alternative is also an option (and might not actually be that expensive in the bigger picture of life’s expenses). Of course, then my issue becomes: do the paid alternatives protect your privacy more than the free options? To what extent do the free options actually do things with my private information that I don’t want them to do? And in the end, because of the unknowns, I end up sticking to my current habits. I expect this is probably the same for many people: not knowing what to choose, so basically not choosing (in other words: staying with the old choices you’ve already made). So I agree, there are a lot of people who are simply not aware. At the same time, even for those people who are aware, it is still a difficult topic and choice. I’ll turn this over in my head once more. Perhaps I’ll actually make a decision on this for once 😉
Thanks for having a read and taking the time to comment!
It’s the constant conundrum of would you rather have that second drink or enjoy a much higher quality of an intangible product 🙂
There are indeed a few paid alternatives that indeed solve this privacy problem (I’m thinking of Tresorit, a fully client-side encrypted cloud storage provider), but the problem is that most aren’t integrated with the internet giants that have become the core of our digital lives.
The latter have made huge improvements over the last few years as they felt they’d lose out on the privacy question otherwise. As far as I know Drive, Dropbox and the others are all private as well, with server-side encryption of the files. That’s also why they’ve been able to offer their services for businesses for a while now.
Awareness is an issue, as you say. We’re often unaware of it because we evolve in circles of people similar to ourselves, but for most internet users, the internet stops at “The Chrome” and googling “facebook” to click on the link that will get them to “The Facebook” 😉 They’re a huge demographic and (sadly, in my eyes) one that has a very strong voice in how things are developed.
Hey! Thank you for your post. I enjoyed reading your article, especially with the gif of a hamster balancing on top of a labrador’s head. -Yes, I clicked the link;)-
I agree that we are using ‘free’ tools of giant internet companies against a price. A bit of data mays seem a fair price to pay for all the ways in which these tools have made our lives easier.
However, what is disturbing is the fact that privacy settings quite often change without us knowing. Also, the privacy settings may become harder to understand and less easy to use. (You can read more about that here: http://techscience.org/a/2015081102/) Therefore I think users should be made aware of their privacy settings, because they might understand that a trade-off is made between data and service, but they don’t understand WHAT exactly the trade-off entails.
Cool! Good catch on the privacy settings becoming ever more complex and comprehensive. I remember a while back Google actually offered 2GB free Drive storage to those who would indeed complete their entire privacy checkup – maybe incentives are the way to go as well?
It’s true that the trade-off we have between data shared and service attained should be balanced. As the solutions these internet giants provide become better and better with the years, will there be a point where the data we can give them does not justify them making their services free anymore? Food for thought 🙂
Thanks for reading!