> This debate reminds of all the shouting people used to do over Spotify ruining ownership of music. There was a lot of talk about ownership philosophy, DRM and the future of digital rights and "openness" but in the end, it didn't matter because the average user didn't care: convenience won out over whatever perceived philosophical downsides where voiced.
Your analogy may be reasonably apt, but if so, it shouldn't make anyone who makes their living thinking about systems sanguine.
It does turn out many consumers will trade ownership for convenience. Particularly if convenience comes at a fraction of a cost. Meanwhile, there are side effects: the people actually creating the product (recorded music) get paid a vanishing fraction of what they used to. That changes the economics of actually producing recorded music, shifting the ability to do it to people who can get their money elsewhere. Some people like to try and obfuscate that reality with talk of "new business models" and "innovation," but it all boils down to the assertion that people who make recorded music should have to do another job in order to provide cloud record collections like Spotify to a consumer for the cheapest price possible.
The consumer, as you've pointed out, doesn't want to think about this. Whether they think about it or not, it will shape what kind of music gets produced and by who, so perhaps they should think about it, even if the incentives are more long term and non-obvious.
Buuut even assuming they don't care to do that... it doesn't mean that people who do care to think about how that affects the industry don't have every right to "moan about the philosophy."
Same goes for AMP. Solutions like AMP will absolutely have second order effects. Many users don't care to think about them. Doesn't mean they won't be subject to those effects, that those effects are just about philosophy, and it surely doesn't mean that people who are interested in them have any obligation to stay quiet.
And of all the things to actually have this really be something people waste time on. Working out the economics of production and distribution of music in a time when making copies is just short of free is at least actually a tricky problem. The idea that making mobile pages that load fast is a tricky problem that requires a Google engineering solution is utterly ludicrous.
Once again, though, I think your counter to my analogy of Spotify just reiterates the echo chamber effect of the discussions here that like to debate the philosophies without seeing the bigger picture. Yeah, artists may get paid less now, but Spotify and its ilk pretty much removed piracy from the vocabulary of regular consumers. Back in 2004, music piracy was just something you did...Limewire was an essential app almost. Now, piracy is pretty much relegated to the vocal few that just flat out refuse to pay for things on some skewed principle and that's all thanks to streaming services. What's the alternative? $0.99 songs didn't cut it....should they have been priced down to $0.01? Even then, the amount of consumption would have made the cost unwieldy for many. What people "should" think about is irrelevant. Consumers should also think about using a password manager with 2FA support that stores its database locally. They should think about hosting their own email on a domain they control with SSL support and PGP built in. They should think about switching to using apps like Signal with end to end encryption built in by default. They should think about only driving cars built in the 90s before black boxes were mandatory and OBDII ports with digital interfaces were standard. They should think about a lot of things....but once again, not everybody is going to become a "geek" and jump through hoops just so they can get online, listen to must, check their bank, message friends and drive a car to the store. I completely agree that AMP and the like will have consequences if widespread adoption is seen and I don't like the idea of Apple, Google and Facebook basically controlling what articles get the most eyeballs simply because their platforms are being utilized, but in the end, what the consumer adopts is what developers will be forced to develop for. My problem is that a lot of developer-type solutions exist in the Silicon Valley echo chamber and will never see adoption because they don't take into account the big picture....technology is littered with the corpses of great ideas that consumers just didn't "get." It's true that Google doesn't have to be the one to decide how the architecture of the web works, but I think you're fighting a losing battle....it's much easier for Google to simply say "this is how it's going to be" than for a startup to say "we made this great new product and you should adopt it." Fundamentally, I don't think we disagree, but I'm playing my own devil's advocate here because I'd rather see some discussion on moving forward positively than just people yelling at a wall about how much they think Google's approach sucks which will change nothing...Google will do what they want to do and they're big enough to where if they lose a few million hardcore advocates in the process it's no skin off their nose.
> I think your counter to my analogy of Spotify just reiterates the echo chamber effect of the discussions here that like to debate the philosophies without seeing the bigger picture.
This isn't about "philosophy." This is about systems and consequences. The consequences are real to the user whether they're aware of the chain that produced them or not.
> Yeah, artists may get paid less now, but Spotify and its ilk pretty much removed piracy from the vocabulary of regular consumers. Back in 2004, music piracy was just something you did
2004 is a poor point of comparison if what you want is to get the big picture or even just answer the narrow question of whether the choice really is between cut-rate cloud record collection services like Spotify or free-for-all piracy. 2003 is when the iTunes Music Store launches and 2004/2005 is when you really start to see the rise of digital music retail. Between then and the early 2010s you see those services become widely accepted (even embraced by non-technical people) as an alternative to piracy, and you see revenue from those retail services rise just fine without streaming. In fact, I've seen some reports that suggest that by 2012/2013 the profits from digital retail was on its way to the profits from physical formats.
So the choice wasn't necessarily between fiddly inconvenient piracy and butter smooth streaming experience.
And the battle doesn't even necessarily play out on the field of consumer choice, really. I mean, in a perfect world I might well expect enough consumers to recognize how they vote with the wallet will shape the world, that when we value McDonalds the economy produces McJobs, that when your airfare dollars are ultimately decided by the lowest price you'll get a shitty airline experience.... but yeah, people don't. That's actually why it's more important for people who can see the consequences to discuss them, publicly, loudly, maybe even forcefully enough that product owners who can't see past their A/B testing (and may not even have arrived at the points where they understand the limits of that along with the value) might pay attention.
> My problem is that a lot of developer-type solutions exist in the Silicon Valley echo chamber and will never see adoption because they don't take into account the big picture....
We're concerned precisely because we see the big picture. Understanding that Google has the power to shape the landscape regardless of how that effects the value of the landscape as a whole doesn't mitigate the responsibility to talk about it, or imply that there's a missing larger picture.
> Google will do what they want to do and they're big enough to where if they lose a few million hardcore advocates in the process it's no skin off their nose.
If you're right, and we've reached the point where Google essentially no longer has management and engineering talent that cares to be a good steward of the web or no longer has the incentives to understand how AMP isn't, then that's a much heavier indictment of Google than most of AMP's opponents have leveled so far.
Your analogy may be reasonably apt, but if so, it shouldn't make anyone who makes their living thinking about systems sanguine.
It does turn out many consumers will trade ownership for convenience. Particularly if convenience comes at a fraction of a cost. Meanwhile, there are side effects: the people actually creating the product (recorded music) get paid a vanishing fraction of what they used to. That changes the economics of actually producing recorded music, shifting the ability to do it to people who can get their money elsewhere. Some people like to try and obfuscate that reality with talk of "new business models" and "innovation," but it all boils down to the assertion that people who make recorded music should have to do another job in order to provide cloud record collections like Spotify to a consumer for the cheapest price possible.
The consumer, as you've pointed out, doesn't want to think about this. Whether they think about it or not, it will shape what kind of music gets produced and by who, so perhaps they should think about it, even if the incentives are more long term and non-obvious.
Buuut even assuming they don't care to do that... it doesn't mean that people who do care to think about how that affects the industry don't have every right to "moan about the philosophy."
Same goes for AMP. Solutions like AMP will absolutely have second order effects. Many users don't care to think about them. Doesn't mean they won't be subject to those effects, that those effects are just about philosophy, and it surely doesn't mean that people who are interested in them have any obligation to stay quiet.
And of all the things to actually have this really be something people waste time on. Working out the economics of production and distribution of music in a time when making copies is just short of free is at least actually a tricky problem. The idea that making mobile pages that load fast is a tricky problem that requires a Google engineering solution is utterly ludicrous.