Users may be the product, but we come with a hell of a price tag

[tangor]

Consequences can come at you fast or slow. If you’re a trillion-dollar company, you get to choose which, a bit, but you can never escape completely.

Amazon is burning billions on Alexa because voice assistants need massive infrastructure but can't be monetized. Google Cloud is $700 million in the red as of last earnings and heading south to a state of madness like a New Jersey retiree. These are mature products in saturated markets. You don't need an MBA to know what will happen. But even the dean of Harvard Business School can't say when.

[theregister.com...]

Opinion piece regarding "free" services and the collecting of user data (and how it is done) and what the bottom line is of supporting same.

One of those too big to live and too loved too die kind of things.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Users are not the product. Amazon and Google are running deficits on these BECAUSE they haven't turned enough users into the product. IE: Hooked us so deeply on needing what they offer, with no alternatives, that we can't live without it.

Once they do, you'll know, because it will no longer be cheap and the cost will increase quickly. Besides, they are making consumers pay in other ways, like showing an obnoxious amount of ads on Youtube/Amazon, and asking people to subscribe. Their quarterly profits are extraordinary so don't cry for them, worry about the users.

Alexa could cost $100 more per year than it costs to produce and support, for example, and users would decide if they "need" one. The problem is the goal, they want Alexa to be so involved in your life you'd pay far more.

History is full of examples. 1k for an iphone and you still need to pay to use it? Somewhere along the way earning money by providing product or service was no longer the primary goal, IMO. Now it's getting EVERYONE to embrace it.

Note: This alternate goal is common whenever personal data can be collected on an ongoing basis.

Prediction: These will be deprecated in the not too distant future. Mobile devices can too easily be made to do the same thing. They don't fit into the "you will own nothing" theme. We'll see.