1. As soon as it becomes too widespread, Google will nerf it. They rely almost entirely on advertising for their revenues. There's just too much money for them to not water the scheme down in future.
Remember when cable TV was going to be ad-free?
2. It only works inside Google's semi-walled garden. This is true of every microsubscription scheme so far built (Spotify, Amazon Underground, Apple Music). They have all required a walled garden in order to avoid massive fraud and money laundering.
I'm biased, because it so happens that I solved the second problem. I have a patented protocol which is opt-in, can reliably track users on the web without identifying them and which is resistant to fraudulent visits.
I'm building the first release. Contact me if you're interested: jacques@robojar.com.
> As soon as it becomes too widespread, Google will nerf it. They rely almost entirely on advertising for their revenues.
Contributor directly replaces advertising revenue; if it provides a better UX for end-users, sites that use exclusively traditional advertising rather than Google's model with Contributor will suffer reduced traffic (and thus, won't get money from advertising.)
If Contributor gets widespread, its good for Google, increases costs for advertisers to reach eyeballs (whether they use Google's ad network or not), and bad for ad networks other than Google's that don't do something like what Google is doing with Contributor.
> It only works inside Google's semi-walled garden.
It certainly only works on sites that actively choose to use Google's advertising network. I'm not sure that's a "walled garden" in any meaningful sense.
If the price of advertising goes up, Google will be incentivised to water down Contributor. An equilibrium might form, but in the long run it probably won't be "ad free". Google can't get away from the contradiction.
> I'm not sure that's a "walled garden" in any meaningful sense.
Hence "semi-walled". It's walled in the sense that only Google's ads are affected. They can somewhat reliably track users on sites that belong to Google's network. They can't do so otherwise. I imagine they solve fraud with their existing tools.
> If the price of advertising goes up, Google will be incentivised to water down Contributor.
The Contributor model, as I understand it, intrinsically scales costs (or effects) to the cost of advertising, with participants effectively bidding against advertisers for their own views. So, no, they wouldn't be incentivized to water it down if the price of advertising goes up, rather, the fact of Contributors success would drive the market-clearing price of advertising up while driving up Google's revenues from its ad networks, simply by increasing the market for its ad networks from "advertisers" to "advertisers + contributors".
> An equilibrium might form, but in the long run it probably won't be "ad free".
It will probably be ad free for the users willing to pay the most money to avoid ads, and less so for those willing to pay less.
Which, ultimately, is a pretty reasonable market-based solution. You choose the content you wish to consume, and you choose the degree to which you'd prefer to pay money vs. viewing ads.
1. A user request comes with an added header with the user's version of events.
2. The provider adds their version of events and forwards it to an authenticator.
3. The authenticator cross checks the details and signatures and logs the transaction, optionally telling the provider "yes, this person is a paying participant".
I have a more detailed protocol writeup, which is easier to follow than the patent (which was lovingly converted to patentese by a lawyer). I'm at work, happy to email to interested parties. Best address to reach me is jacques@robojar.com
1. As soon as it becomes too widespread, Google will nerf it. They rely almost entirely on advertising for their revenues. There's just too much money for them to not water the scheme down in future.
Remember when cable TV was going to be ad-free?
2. It only works inside Google's semi-walled garden. This is true of every microsubscription scheme so far built (Spotify, Amazon Underground, Apple Music). They have all required a walled garden in order to avoid massive fraud and money laundering.
I'm biased, because it so happens that I solved the second problem. I have a patented protocol which is opt-in, can reliably track users on the web without identifying them and which is resistant to fraudulent visits.
I'm building the first release. Contact me if you're interested: jacques@robojar.com.