> 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.
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.