>I am afraid this business will fail (as a business). People, on average, prefer to have freebies at the expense of losing their privacy, than pay even a moderate amount for a service.
That is the current state yes, but I think that this was a manufactured type of psychology/expectation. I remember back in the day (90s 00s) when I used to install software for my family, one of my uncles was always flabbergasted that the software was free. "But why is it free?" "How do the make rent?!" I tried to explain the Hacker/OSS ethos and whatever else I could think of, but it never really sunk in for him.
I think paid software is going to make a comeback once clients realize that nobody except google (and a handful of companies) are actually benefiting from the pointless web surveillance. Hopefully that will happen when the tech industry stops giving Google a free pass for their spying and squarely puts them in the enemy camp...
That is the current state yes, but I think that this was a manufactured type of psychology/expectation. I remember back in the day (90s 00s) when I used to install software for my family, one of my uncles was always flabbergasted that the software was free. "But why is it free?" "How do the make rent?!" I tried to explain the Hacker/OSS ethos and whatever else I could think of, but it never really sunk in for him.
I think paid software is going to make a comeback once clients realize that nobody except google (and a handful of companies) are actually benefiting from the pointless web surveillance. Hopefully that will happen when the tech industry stops giving Google a free pass for their spying and squarely puts them in the enemy camp...