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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.
Right now,phone calls don't cost much. With all the competitive pressures they'll just come down. Let's say your life is worth $60/hour or $1/minute. How much of your life are you prepared to throw away to get that free phone call?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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)?
I could be wrong, but it seems this only means that you would get the device for "free," not the service. This is hardly a revolutionary idea; cellphone providers have been "giving" away devices for free (along with those nasty catch-22's) for ages.
This is not to say I'd go long with this anyway. I'd be very annoyed if my phone beeped every 10 minutes, only to discover that I've received an advertisement.
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Am I the only person who hates advertisements? I don't want to see ads while I browse the internet. I don't want to see ads while I'm watching movies or TV. I don't want to hear ads on the radio. And I sure as hell don't want ads on my cell phone.
Charge me for your product or service, then leave me the fuck alone.
Maybe not
It didn't work with landline phone and it won't work with cell phones!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Which reveals in stark relief what sensible people have been saying for a while - Google isn't a search company, or a technology company - it's an advertising agency.
It's not possible to watch ads 24/7. Sorry folks we simply can't do it. Seems to be a great frustriation to advertisers that we don't want to watch their ads all bloody day. After a while you just shut down. CNN is driving me nuts lately with the Head On commercials. They even tried to make a joke of how obnoxious they are. Hate to break it to them but I switch the channel everytime they come on. The scary thing is if I try to switch to the other CNN channel half the time there's one running there too. I swear the Clockwork Orange eyes pried open senerio is an advertisers wet dream. You want advertising to be more effective? How about less of it. People used to watch commercials or at least let them run. I hit mute or switch the channel everytime so it went from say ten minutes plus an hour to zero exposure for me. How effective are your commercials when no one will watch them or worse yet they switch the channel?
..my 'targeted ad' would be for V1@GRA and 'how to ease your debt'
I love humanity, it is people I hate
Honestly, I don't even like getting text messages from friends, unless it is a girl who is saying "I am on my way to give you BJ, need beer?"
I don't even watch TV anymore because commercials are so god damn annoying.
The last thing I want is some annoying bullshit ringing my phone while I am sleeping, roll over, cursing the fact that I haven't muted it, check out who sent me what...
"Best buy is having a sale on Kelly Clarkson: From church going babe, to cocksucking ho! And don't forget to watch 3LBS tonight, it's not exactly brain surgery... Actually it is!"
While "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is playing in the background...
Jesus Christ, that is some evil shit.
You take it, I don't want it...
>Will there be a 911 and other emergy number exception?
Almost. You'll get a YouTube ad for clips of Police beating up suspects.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
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."
It's relatively easy when the medium is passive, like TV.
The next time your phone rings, however, try not answering. You'll reflexively pick it up anyway. You've been programmed to.
This has the potential to be astonishingly annoying to people like me, who use their cell phones for business and are acclimated to the idea that when the phone rings, it's important.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Not everything can be financed buy advertising. Eventually you're going to have to advertise a product that separates the end user from his pennies.
I suspect that the person who makes this product that people are willing to spend money on is going to make a killing.
Well, it should make for some interesting ad targeting.
Let's see, we'll just dial here... Nine One One... Send..... "ring, ring... Your call will be connected shortly. Did you know, Kidde fire extinguishers come with a full lifetime guarantee...."
ARRGGHHH!
Hmmm, try again. Let's call a Corvette dealer.... dial the number here.... "ring, ring.... Your call will be connected shortly. Did you know that you can order Viagra from the privacy and comfort of your home? Press 69* for more information."
Now, if Google would give me a tzatziki chicken sub for viewing ads, I would definitely be interested.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
I don't watch TV partly because of the ads. I hate ads. I don't want to consume. I don't want to WANT to consume!
Having Stuff be supported by ads is incredibly annoying. I use google instead of say... MSN(ha!) because I don't want my bandwidth sucked up by annoying ads, and I don't want to be clobbered over the head with pictures of pretty people. Frell That. And when I'm just searching, I don't look at the google ads at all. Sure, subliminals count for something... Sigh.
When I do shop, I use sometimes use google (when I don't go directly to a website I know and trust) though. Their ads are less annoying and intrusive. They grate less on my nerves. It's simple. When I want to shop, I'll go FIND the ads. They don't need to find me. Screw the impulse buy!
So, by being less annoying, google gets me to shop through them. Sometimes.
Thank the gods for Adblock and Firefox, or I'd have to browse in Lynx.
I've read Snow Crash. I've read The Selfish Gene. My mental anti-viral software is loaded.
Oh gods, I'm becoming a Luddite.
-T, who will always pay to avoid ads or go without.
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.
CNN is driving me nuts lately with the Head On commercials. They even tried to make a joke of how obnoxious they are. Hate to break it to them but I switch the channel everytime they come on.
But you are now familiar with "Head On" as a brand. The average consumer is now far more likely to select Head On instead of some equally useless, but less familiar generic homeopathic headache remedy. I would guess that very few American consumers are even smart enough to research their headache remedy purchases in the first place (a quick Wikipedia search reveals the snake-oil nature of Head On)
Wasn't that the goal in the first place? Advertising works far better than anyone is willing to admit.
A while ago my mother was complaining about how her vacuum cleaner didn't suck anymore. (har). Well, she said she had heard good things about the Oreck line of vacuum cleaners. She just might have bought one of those overpriced pieces of junk, had I not been there to google for "Oreck reviews" and see what some actual real people thought about them. It turns out her preference was entirely due to constant exposure to Oreck's often lengthy advertisements and infomercials, despite the fact that she had not been paying conscious attention to them all these years.
Advertising works, and it ain't just about click-through. It's all about brand awareness and plain old brainwashing.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
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.