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Would You Use a Free Netbook From Google?
Glyn Moody writes "The response to Google's Chromium OS has been rather lukewarm. But suppose it's just part of something much bigger: a netbook computer from Google that would cost absolutely nothing. Because all the apps and data are stored in the cloud, storage requirements would be minimal; screens are getting cheaper, and the emphasis on lean code means that a low-cost processor could be used. Those relatively small hardware costs could then be covered by advertising in the apps — after all, they are just Web pages. Interestingly, Google has not only rolled out advertising to more of its services recently, it has also started running AdSense ads in the desktop application Google Earth. Would you accept a free Google netbook — or is the price you would pay in terms of the company knowing even more about what you do on an hour-by-hour basis just too high?"
As nice as it is to think that advertisements will cover everything, a single user isn't worth a $150+ netbook. Actually single user is worth a lot less for Google and other companies.
Lets say Google gets around $2 CPM on normal searches. That means a single search is worth something like $0.002 for Google. It's going to take lots of searches and ad clicks from every user to even cover the costs of the netbook. And the same users would be doing those searches and ad clicks anyway, so it serves no purpose.
Another thing is that search result advertisements and even ads on gmail are worth more because they can be really targeted. But what do you advertise on a spreadsheet app? Users aren't looking for any info or such - they're working on their spreadsheet.
It's just out of the question that a single user would be worth $150 for Google.
I won't use a machine which is useless without network. I don't like to rely on an internet connection because some times it breaks. I want to be able to store files on my computer and use it on the plane. And I want to be able to do it off-line. I want all my tools locally, I need LaTeX to work, I need a compiler, I need scientific visualization tools.
I believe in free-as-in-speech software and I don't see how GoogleOS really fits into it.
Sure, as long as it wasn't too difficult to wipe it and install Debian.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Basically, the idea is impossible and stupid.
... having a patent on forced advertising.
Myself, I would not want such crap.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I can see hotels, conference centers, and the like providing computers "brought to you by Google" or for that matter any advertising partner.
Of course, to be a winner with businesses they would have to allow VPNs to work and would have to guarentee there were no keyloggers or other security issues with the device. That should be easy enough to promise if the device boots over the network from an authenticated and trusted source and the machine were epoxy-sealed to prevent tampering.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'm guessing AdBlock and/or NoScript are out of the question, huh?
No..
Aside from Gmail, (which I access with Thunderbird) I try not to use too many google services. . I'm also mindful of that recent Apple patent about ad's which can physically block the machine, forcing the user to interact with them.
There's also a personal freedom/privacy issue.
I use Linux because it's 'mine' as such. I can pretty do what I want with it (compared to traditional software licenses anyway). I'm not quite sure how to word this in a rational .... but something about Google providing me a free laptop, in exchange for being allowed to target-advertise me.... it's deeply unsettling. I don't like being followed.
Of course, I'm just a tinfoil hat moron, but well.... my computer is my castle, thick stone walls around my data safeguarding my privacy against casual observers.
I don't want transparent walls of glass showing my world to someone else.... even it it was free.
It feels very Big brother-ish.
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
When companies would hand out free computers to anyone who asked, but they were so ad laden they were unusable? Or stopped whatever it was you were doing to play some sort of video for 30 seconds? Nothing is free.
The good gents at IBM didn't see the value in the "Operating System" Microsoft was selling them.
The good gents at Microsoft didn't see the value in monitoring what their users' daily activity on their respective OS was.
I wonder what the good gents at Google are ignoring today that will be a gold mine tomorrow.
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On another note: I'm very surprised that people are all that interested in what is, essentially, a SpyOS. Forget tracking cookies - this OS is going to be tracking people's behavior 24 hours a day.
Not to provide any ideas into advanced Spywware under the guise of "free useful PC" but imagine if there is a GPS in the netbook that is able to track the users' movements. Traffic patterns, of the individual, could be analyzed and combined with other users and applicable advertising will show up for 'popular' products both in on-line advertising and roadside billboards.
I don't want to get too far off topic so I'll ask this question: When did we turn the corner of being Anti-Spyware to being Pro-Spyware?
I just about can't use a machine without using a network. My favorite game is an MMORPG, which is useless without a network. Even other games, I usually have a browser window open for reference. My e-mail is accessed via a web client. (Even with a local client, all you could do is compose or read, not send or receive.) I do web development, which is on a remote web host. When I'm developing things locally in Visual Studio, I'm constantly using online references and documentation. I suppose I could in theory write a letter or something, but to be honest, I don't write letters to people any more. I even require the Internet to do something as simple as watch television these days. (Broadcast tv? Forget it, I use Hulu.)
If you don't use the Internet as much as I do, more power to you. But I really think that going forward, offline computer use is going to be the exception, not the rule. I think saying what you said will eventually sound like, "I won't use a telephone that is useless without a wireless connectivity." Like the cell network, the Internet is so pervasive today that it's weird to run across an application that doesn't use it in some capacity.
Oh, and by the way, Chromium is released under the BSD license, which is free-as-in-speech. I don't know what the license terms will be if such a hypothetical netbook were released, but at least the OS running on it would be open source. From a freedom-as-in-Stallman viewpoint, it may not be perfect, but it is orders of magnitude better than what is currently running on most netbooks out there. Evil is not the opposite of perfect.
i have already started teaching my son who is 2 and a few months about computers. found a few free games like Thomas the Train that he likes. and for reading i'll open up Google and type in Dora in the search box and spell it out for him letter by letter. he already knows most of the letters of the alphabet, can count to 12 with help, knows a bunch of basic shapes and colors. time to teach him to read since most of the good NYC schools expect a child to read and write by 1st grade. at least that's what i'm told by parents with kids that old. the good schools in the NYC suburbs are the same way.
a free or ultra low cost Google netbook is perfect for this. my son likes to bang on the keyboard so if it breaks i just go get another one. nothing to break software-wise.
a few months of playing with one of these junky useless Chrome OS gizmos and he will be ready for a real computer. i'm thinking a Mac just because he can learn some UNIX on it and it's usable unlike most of the linux distro's i've tried. I do think Ubuntu sucks as a home PC
i've played with the Chrome OS vmware image floating around the internet and i don't think it has any value at all for a normal person or any kind of computer user i've ever met
Give us a free netbook at the cost of seeing ads? You're forgetting one thing: Chrome OS is Linux at its heart, and we're a bunch of Linux geeks. We'd have those ads hacked out of it faster than you could say "/etc/hosts.deny".
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This was attempted before with Free-Pc.com (Now it is just a parked domain). This was back in 1999. 10000 free Compaq computers were given away. In return people gave up personal information/demographics/hobbies/etc in return for a PC that had advertising on the screen 24/7. Source.
The attempt was a bust if I recall right.
But this is 10 years later; we have come a long way in targeted advertising. If anyone can do this, it is Google.
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"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
Advertisers don't want clicks from users of what would be "welfarebooks".
If they can't even afford $200 for a netbook, their demographics are horrendous. Advertisers base their CPM on such things as location, time of day, day of the week, referrer, OS (if I'm advertising pc software, I don't want mac user clicks, and vice versa), etc. Clicks from users of "free" computers won't generate revenue because advertisers will avoid them like the plague.
These are the type of people who are the most likely to be engaged in click fraud, such as pay-to-click "make money at home surfing the web" scams. After all, if they can't afford a computer, they've got to pay for their net access somehow, and it's easier to do click fraud than to scrounge around the 'hood for returnable pop bottles.
Exactly. And because of infinite demand, you'll really need a lot of clicks, but you probably won't get many. Here's why. Let's say you make something free. Say a McDonald's hamburger. Suddenly you are going to have everyone running out to get the hamburger, even though they weren't planning to get one today, just because it is free. Now consider a netbook. I really don't want one, but heck, if it's free I'll take one! Everyone would take one, whether they really wanted one before or not, because it's a free portable computer. Now most of those people will later put that netbook on a shelf to gather dust as soon as the novelty wears off, because they really didn't have a deep need/desire for the netbook in the first place. They've probably got a desktop or laptop that has more computing power, more privacy, and runs a greater variety of apps, so they won't really need the netbook. The problem for google is that each of those netbooks still cost them 150, and now they don't even have people using them and clicking on ads.
So this will be a guaranteed fiasco for Google should they choose to go through with this. They will have to make about 305 million of the netbooks because everyone in the US will want one (ok, maybe 250 million because there will be some 1 year olds and grandmas that don't, but anyone who knows how to use a computer will probably take one). Multiply those millions of units by 150 dollars, and that's how much advertising dollars google will need to have just to break even. And that's oversimplifying things, because since the apps live in the cloud, you have to have the server infrastructure, bandwidth costs, engineering, support techs, software developers, etc. Their costs will be much greater than the costs for the Windows OS, because at least with a Windows OS you don't have to provide a server, bandwidth, PC, etc, because it's off running on a user PC somewhere. I think you start to see how there is no way this will possibly happen... no way can they get the ad revenue to cover this. Plus it's naive to assume that they will even get that many users (something they would have to have, since that's the only way they could truly corner the ad market and charge the premium prices they'd need to pay for this), since most people will probably stick with Linux, Mac, or Windows.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Advertisers don't want clicks from users of what would be "welfarebooks".
Since you imply you've worked for the search industry, I'll take your word for it. But I'm surprised.
The poor are a lucrative market for certain products, and many successful businesses made their fortunes by taking small amounts of money from large numbers of poor people. Simple and not-unethical example: discount supermarkets.
Yeah, pushing Lexus adverts at them isn't going to work out. Pushing cornflakes ads at them might.
The problem is that too many of them participate in "pay-to-click". You may have seen that sort of thing - "make money surfing the web". Clickstreams from people in that general demographic, and a few others with smilar economic profiles, can't be monetized - they aren't worth even $0.001 (a tenth of a cent).
Sure, they'd be suckers for credit cards at 35% interest, with a front-loaded fee on the first month of $75, etc. Problem is, they wouldn't even qualify for that ... and those that would, too many would default, so the advertiser would just find it to be a huge money pit.
Then you have the possibility of mixing those into the general click pool - which only goes to lower the overall quality of your click stream to the advertiser, who then reasonably drops the price they're willing to pay - or if it now becomes marginal, drops that whole stream, because it's too contaminated with crap.
Clicks in and of themselves have no value. It's only because you can safely predict that in a particular batch of clicks, from a particular set of sources, for a particular product, a certain percentage will convert to actions that ultimately generate the desired response - usually involving the exchange of money at some point. There's a floor to how low you can go for any demographic before it becomes unprofitable, and halo effects (such as "increasing brand recognition") have to be discounted. This can all be calculated in real time, then automatically applied to "protect" other ad campaigns against similar conversion-poor sources.
At under a tenth of a cent per click, the associated costs just aren't worth it - better to devote the same resources to handling a market that *has* money. After all, to generate $10 of revenue, with a click-thru ratio of 2%, shared 50/50 with the web site desplaying the ad, at $0.001 per click, you'd need a million impressions. There's bottom-feeding, then there's *bottom-feeding*. A million page views to make $10? "Well, just show more ads per page!" Too many ads lowers your click-thru rate, so at a certain point, you're going backwards - and your page becomes a wall of ads and almost no content, so you end up losing traffic.
This is just a replay of the old "get a free pc" gimmicks from years gone by, where you had to browse the web with a browser that constantly streamed ads. It didn't work, and this won't either. It's also extremely vulnerable to the peer-to-pear web (the real "cloud computing" model) that will render centralized search engines obsolete by the end of the next decade, but that's another story.