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Google Envisions Free Cell Phones For All
Salvance writes "Google's CEO Eric Schmidt envisions a day when all cell phones are free if the user agrees to watch targeted ads. While he provides no specific plans for Google to give away phones, the implication is that he expects such moves in the future given Google's current pilot successes with delivering text ads on phones." From the article: "Schmidt also said his company was working on how to allow users to maintain basic control of their personal data. Currently, Google stores consumer data on hundreds of thousands of its own computers in order to provide additional services to individual users. The company is looking to allow consumers to export their Web search history or e-mail archives and move them to other sites, if they so choose."
Everything looks like a nail.
When your only revenue is advertisments, everything looks like sticky eyeballs.
For a (smart)phone used for web communications, I can understand how they'll target ads, but for a phone that is only used for voice communications, how can targeted ads be implemented? There has been a trend of Google venturing into print, TV, and radio ads, and those can be done successfully through advertisers bidding for related spots on each medium, since newspapers/periodicals have separate sections, and TV and radio have set programming, but what about voice communications? Will they target ads by looking at your contact information? Or perhaps capture keywords in your spoken words? I doubt that, since they will never do any evil, but how else would this work (without text to analyze)?
The business world seems to have gone advertising crazy!
People don't want adverts. People do not want adverts on TV; that is why we used to have VCRs, before the advent of DVD+RW and Sky Plus. Anything worth watching got recorded, and the advertisements got the fast-forward button. With Sky Plus you can start recording, wait ten minutes or so (the total amount of advert breaks in the programme minus the anticipated amount of time spending re-watching good bits), start watching from the beginning, and fast-forward through the breaks.
People do not want adverts on the radio, which is why it's so good that Radio Two is the first station up from the bottom of the dial.
People don't want adverts in magazines and newspapers, and will turn the page and miss a good story rather than see an advertisement.
People don't want adverts on the internet. Hence the popularity of various advert-blocking and flash-blocking Firefox extensions, the use of "block images from this server" and {for the full-on geek} Squid. Even people without advert-blocking software will navigate away from a site which tries to bombard them with images.
I don't think I'm alone in saying that I would much rather pay cash up front for the phone calls I am going to make, than watch advertisements.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
From TFA: "Schmidt acknowledged that mobile phones may never become totally free to the consumer. Newspapers are still not completely free a hundred years after they started relying on advertising, but they certainly are inexpensive, he noted."
the idea that in the modern electronic age .. communications for the masses is some kind of convenience or privilege or commodity .. to be payed for by allowing myself to be lied to .. influenced .. manipulated .. conditioned .. pitched .. and sold ..
.. fully functional and participating citizen ..
.. "public education" in it's current form ..
..
.. is destined to implode on itself .. taking everything else in sight with it ..
.. Buy .. Buy .. Goodbye .. mankind ..
..
.. i/we am are FREE to do other work .. i/we am/are FREE to be .. i/we am/are FREE to do anything .. if i/we don't have what i/we Need .. i/we am/are not free at ALL ..
.. i have no FREEDOM ..
as opposed to the "right" of a fully aware
is just another proof that mass brain washing
works very well
and why the corporate capitalist structure
Buy
in a society
if i/we have what i/we NEED
if i have to pay to play
but if you read the article they are looking further into the future than just giving you the latest nokia on a std contract and making you watch a few ads or get a few texts and mms's. the article would be more orientated at a society where the phone replaces the computer, and also states "Schmidt says consumers would get the device without cost - provided they accepy targeted advertising." (SIC) and "Schmidt acknowledged that mobile phones may never become totally free to the consumer" so the article title is a little misleading, which one is it? then they talk about storing consumer data ... very little about free mobiles is mentioned, so really its a pointless article unless you want to discuss possibilities of the way the internet and computer/mobile phones will work in the future.
Yes pay movie, but I do pay for cable TV ($50) and still get bombarded with commercials. Yes satellite radio is commercial free, but not all stations.
I pay taxes and tolls, yet there are still advertisements on the highway. Granted many are probably installed on private property.
Free with ads may be the new model, but the old one has certainly been updated with "you pay far less because ads cover some portion of the cost (aka profit)".
I don't browse the web on my phone. I don't watch TV or listen to music on my phone as well. I use it for what it is.. a PHONE. So I am kind of concerned at to HOW they will bring the ads to me. Will it be something like this?
.. see.. Well, you're father is really sick so you should go see him.
*ring*
Me: Hello?
Phone: This call has been brought to you by....
Me: Argh!
Caller: Hello?
Me: Ah, ok.. I had an ad playing here. What's up?
Caller: It's you're father he is in the hospital with..
Phone: Interested in hospitals? Check these out...
Me: What the f**k?!?
Caller: What did you just say? you're father is in the HOSPITAL!
Me: Sorry, the phone just ran another ad.
Caller: Oh, I
Phone: Want to send flowers.......
Me: Let me call you back from my land line.
Phone: Need phon... *click*
Oh yea.. I can see it now...
Never mind your time, the whole approach neglects the outrageous fees some telcos associate with data vs voice traffic. At the rate I get billed for data transfers, it would be far, far cheaper to buy a cell phone every six month than it would be to pay for the data transfers of advertising.
Especially if it goes beyond SMS ads.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I see where you're coming from, but that's a misuse of the term "advertising agency". They compete in no way with the likes of Saatchi & Saatchi. They are an advertising broker, being a middle-man between those who have ad-space and those who want to place ads (some of which will have been designed by ad agencies). Even that doesn't do them justice, though -- it's merely a description of their main source (AFAIK) of revenue. What they are is an information organisation company. They apply that skill to many things, including the problem of ad brokerage. They gain revenue not only through the ad brokerage service, but also as an ad-space provider in their own right. They are successful in the former case because their information organisation skills result in (relatively) effective automated ad placement, and in the latter case because their various information organisation tools (like Gmail) are popular and double as ad-space.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
I remember when I was a teenager, I used to go to the movie theatre and it would cost me 4$. The popcorn and the sodas were reasonably priced and I could enjoy an hour and a half of ads-free entertainement. Those were the old days.
Now, the ticket prices have more than doubled, I have to take a second mortgage just for a small popcorn and the movies are half as good as they were. Fortunately, I now have the chance to watch 20 minutes of ads before the movie begins. Because, let's be honest, if it weren't for the ads, I would pay even more right ?
Just my 2 cents...
financed buy advertising
Now, that was a great lapsus.
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
The really frustrating thing is the ads are cheap. There's a chain of theaters here that doesn't show ads and their prices are the same as the other chains. We're all sitting through 20 minutes of ads for about 20 cents per person. What a ripoff!
Man, you really need that seminar!
And for this application, I want REALLY targeted adverts. For instance, I'm a bit of a gourmet. I want my phone to report my GPS location to Google's adserver, which I expect will return restaurant ratings to my copy of iNavigator, so that when I'm out on the road and decide to stop for dinner and I hit Menu...Shortcuts...Restaurants I get the 25 closest to me that have three-to-five star ratings, sorted by cusine. Then I can just hit one and have iNavigator lead me to dinner.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.