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What opportunities have we lost to Google?

And how can you implement subscription without tracking? A subscription-based search engine, or a video hosting website, would need to connect your searches and watching habits with a credit card.



In the ad-based business model all the people who use Google's services aren't Google's customers, they're Google's product. Google's customers are the companies who pay for advertising. We lost the opportunity of not building the web this way.

The tracking necessary to process payments is reasonable as-is but you could also pay cash for gift-cards that work just like credit cards. Either way that's nothing like the tracking that happens for targeted advertising.


Google didn't bring the ad-based business model, it was here long before they created Adwords. Yahoo!, Altavista, all had banners and sponsored links.


No, a subscription service need only connect the presence of your login cookie with a credit card.




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