*Mildly interesting British stuff here.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n24/john-lanchester/let-us-pay
(...)
"That is why, as Warren Buffett observed, the internet is probably a ‘net negative for capitalists’. (((Given the way capitalism has been behaving lately, one wonders why this remark isn't much better-known.)))
"Google, for instance, is a marvel of the modern world, and the range of services it offers everybody with access to the internet is genuinely wonderful. I do my web surfing via Google, I do most of my online reading via the news and data feeds I subscribe to on Google, both my work and family calendars are on Google (and by the way, the collective Google calendar is the single greatest breakthrough there has ever been in the field of passive aggression: ‘Oh – I suppose I thought somebody might check the calendar?’), my email is routed via Google and therefore Google saved me when my unbacked-up computer crashed and I would otherwise have lost my entire email archive; I use Google maps on my phone to navigate when I’m out and about, as well as for walking-time estimates; I frequently watch videos, especially of sporting events I’ve missed, on Google’s YouTube, though not nearly as much as my children use it to watch cartoons; in short, I use Google’s amazing suite of services all day, every day.
"Out of that suite of services, precisely one makes money: targeted internet advertising. Everything else Google does is essentially given away as a loss leader. In some cases, the losses are very big. Analysts reckon YouTube cost $500 million last year. Just imagine how that deficit would be described if YouTube were owned by a print media company.
"The internet is the most effective means of giving stuff away for free that humanity has ever devised. Actually making money from it is not just hard, it may be fundamentally opposed to the character and momentum of the net. .."
