Ads upon ads upon ads
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A single row of ads would be ok, but having this many plus an ad showing up first, where the search results should be… Oof
No it wouldn’t. Phones aren’t cheap.
The Android licence is free and the Play Store infrastructure has to support tens of millions of devices.
I’m not saying this is an acceptable level, but Samsung ain’t putting a dollar toward Google running the store, in fact, they’d much prefer to run and maintain their own.
That’s not true. Phone manufacturers need to pay if they want to include Google Play in their devices, it’s not free. It can cost as much as $40 per device.
Thanks for the correction, I was unaware
I don’t even get why having the store on more devices is supposed to “cost” google anything.
It’s a store. They get a cut from every transaction. Why wouldn’t they want it to be on everything?
I guess hoovering up all your data ain’t enough.
They can be. I bought a Galaxy s22 with a broken screen for $150, and my carrier just gave me an $1100 credit for it on a new iphone. I don’t need an iPhone, and I will be selling it to get yet another cheap phone and pocketing the money, but it goes to show just how much phones do not cost to the people producing them
Dam that’s a hilarious life hack lol.
I’m on a 12 Pro with no intentions of upgrading but when I go to I’m gonna try and find a new broken flagship to turn in too lmao.
I don’t think ads showing something related to what I’m looking for are bad in and if themselves. I want to find related content, the problem is that these are often not in any way related to what I’m looking for. It’s just a list of who paid to be listed there.
Enshittification spares no one.
“the play store is shit now!”
The play store was always shit.
Happens when you don’t have competition. (Except to steam seemingly)
The difference is that Valve is privately owned. They don’t have to please a board of shareholders who want to see the platform milked for the slightest increase in profit margins.
Bingo. Enshittification is mostly confined to companies that have gone public or whose sole aspiration is to do so quickly.
It shifts responsibility from satisfying customers/users to satisfying shareholders (who are never satisfied).
You can build the perfect product and ride a gravy train as a private company in relative perpetuity. As a corporation, you’re just going to strive for perpetually increasing profits on a quarterly basis with no real care or focus past that
We need more companies like that, then.
For that you need passionate people who are wealthy and not primarily driven to acquire more wealth. That seems to be very rare in large scale businesses.
It isn’t wealth that breaks or makes it. The system, and in this case the shareholding system makes it or breaks it. Valve owner Gabe is insanely rich (in the billions I assume) yet, because the system he put up, it is consumer friendly.
The system is the one, not the people.
Yes, the problem is when shareholders only want profit at any cost. These are the wealthy people I was talking about.
I mean, the other thing that’s kind of stupid is - lets say a companies stock once issued goes to 0 and is delisted. So what? That’s not the company going bankrupt. The stock market valuation has no direct application to a company once the shares are issued and bought the first time. But ignoring shareholder demands that would destroy the company wouldn’t likely tank the stock of a otherwise good company - because there’s someone out there who just wants value to hold and preferably dividends vs infinite growth (that doesn’t exist). Now, you could buy enough stock to throw out the CEO and whatever, but that’s likely to be expensive and a PITA. So while there’s going to be some high profile examples, A) that gets close to taking a company private anyway, and doing a shitty job and B) generally limited numbers of companies will have people going to these lengths.
I think the bigger issue isn’t wanting companies to be profitable - that’s kind of the point of companies. The issue is shareholders trying to make capital gains on everything. This isn’t possible long term because infinite growth isn’t possible. I would argue what people and decent investors should want is the steady dividends and not worry about if the stock is up or down.
I’d have to think Newell has a lot more skin in the game or passion for his platform. He actually believes in the business and what they do, instead of just viewing it as a way to make money
So you’re telling me that I can generate stable revenue if I work on my product and try to satisfy customers? Sounds kinda radical… who do we even screw over to get the money??
This isn’t entirely accurate. If Valve were a public company, the enshittification factor would increase significantly. The reason they’re great now is because the current board is the original founders who are passionate about their business, and actually care.
Private or not, once Gabe and the other old farts die, Valve will enshittificate. That’s almost guaranteed.
Private or not, once Gabe and the other old farts die, Valve will enshittificate. That’s almost guaranteed.
I think they will just live on as ghosts in steam itself. GabeAI here we come!
Steam has some competition, its just that said competition never took off because Steam is so much better.
(Except to steam seemingly)
For now. I’m curious what’ll happen when Gabe eventually retires.
We also can’t ignore the fact that the Steam Marketplace is a hellhole and the origin of a lot of today’s microtransaction hell.
If you buy all your games on one platform then you’re thoroughly fucked if it turns heel.
The point still stands though, you can easily filter out anything you don’t want to see.
But I doubt the same would apply if it was owned by shareholders.
A future change in leadership could very easily lead to it going public and then all the regular bullshit follows. Don’t just assume it’ll always be great; always be ready to jump ship.
I get worried with the amount of gamers who want Steam to be a monopoly. The existence of competition seems to upset some people and it’s really odd.
A future change in leadership could very easily lead to it going public and then all the regular bullshit follows. Don’t just assume it’ll always be great; always be ready to jump ship.
Ok, but what has that anything to do with what I said?
Only really the first part of my comment. I ended up on a rambling tangent for most of it.
We all know the answer to this. There will be a hundred threats with thousands of comments with people saying it’s not bad, the company promised x and y and we should be cautiously optimistic, but in the end it always ends the same way. Exactly the same thing happens with IBM buying Red Hat. No shortage of articles talking about how this will be good for Red Hat and the entire open source community but of course last month they started the enshitification process that will now March on relentlessly. Even now there are defenders of red hat, talking about how it’s not that bad and there are workarounds, but in the end they fail to see this is just the first step. Once started on this path, the rule is always enshitification, any exceptions are exceedingly rare.
If steam ever gets bought/sold it will follow the same path and it’s defenders will stay by its side until it looks like the screen shot above.
I agree. As much as I like what Valve is doing and currently trust them, I prioritize buying games on GOG and keeping archives of the installers.
Sure it does, but only those who have a zero-tolerance policy against using proprietary software. In the long run, Free Software is the only kind that can be relied upon not to betray you.
I agree, free software is the only thing that’s sure to not get worse over time. I took way too long to realize, now I have a shitload of stuff to migrate. I already ditched microsoft, but that google account is a real bitch to replace.
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Maybe they don’t have enough info on you to show targetted ads. Lucky you
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I mean, it’s Google. What did you expect? Android is free because having it on a ton of cheap phones helps Google collect data and sell ads.
Side-rant:
Apple’s got plenty of problems and anti-consumer behavior, too, don’t get me wrong… but it’s incredible how far they’re able to enforce privacy, down to the hardware level, while still giving devs almost the same level of control over OS features as Android.
Like, look at how ARKit does point cloud sharing vs ARCore. iOS limits sharing scanned AR environments to peer-to-peer local connections, and it’s a totally opaque object. Android meanwhile uploads your scanned room to a Google server, and the privacy terms for that data are the same as the ones for Youtube, search, maps, etc.
It drives me crazy how many FOSS nerds will rail against Facebook’s data collection and chokepoint capitalism, but then go on to praise Android for standing up to that no-good Apple. They hear “I can sideload apps” and they drop all of their recent cynicism about why they’re getting nifty stuff at a hefty discount.
I can’t scrobble my music to last.fm on iOS without some janky workaround. The “almost same level of control” part of what you said relies on an assumption that only the set of use cases explicitly determined by Apple as ones that “matter” are worth supporting. That it’s more important to prevent the user from explicitly allowing a scrobbling app permission to read the music player app’s now playing notification than for the device to be able to perform this simple function.
This point of difference doesnt have any meaningful impact on collection of my data. It just stops the device from being able to do the function I want. So that what, I can sleep easier knowing that Apple designed a slick interface to point out data vectors which were already implied to be collected? It used to feel like a smartphone with training wheels, now they’ve just locked up the handlebars so that it’s easier to go straight.
Apple makes money by selling expensive devices.
Google makes money by selling ads.
You can figure out the rest of the equation.
Apple does objectively suck for many reasons though.
Also, important to note that what you’re describing as their privacy focus is a deliberate rebranding exercise after a huge ,global failure with icloud and things like police access to their systems/data and public backlash.
They are only here now, in this brief moment, because of necessity and like any of this, it’s typically a pendulum. As soon as they don’t have to do this (which probably sounds a lot like users like you defending their security bonafides publicly on their behalf), they will start to creep away and de-prioritize privacy and security.
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Google has much better software and they charge for it in data/ads instead of money, but there’s a much better reason to choose android over IOS: It’s open-source, so people have created free software variants of it that retain compatibility with existing apps while respecting your privacy and freedom.
In case you care about that, give grapheneOS or calyxOS a shot on your pixel.
I mean, FOSS nerds run android de-googled (or more specifically never install google services on a custom ROM).
but it’s incredible how far they’re able to enforce privacy, down to the hardware level, while still giving devs almost the same level of control over OS features as Android.
I don’t give a shit about devs. I want that control for users. Until they allow users to do what they want, they can get fucked.
Privacy through the use of user restrictions is not acceptable either. It’s my god damn phone, don’t you dare tell me what I can’t do on it “for my protection”.
It’s like saying a security firm is the best in the world at keeping clients safe, because they lock those clients in a vault and don’t let them leave.
Privacy for freedom is not a good trade for those enthusiasts your frustrated with. They will accept Google’s shit because the alternative is getting in a fucking cage.
That’s not an Android problem, that’s a Google Play Services problem. You can run Android without all the Google bullshit.
Not to mention that you can at least install third party app stores like f-droid. For me Apple is the epitome of evil giant corporation that is consistently abusing it’s market power and getting a pass from regulatory bodies.
Don’t get me wrong, Google aren’t great either, but if I have to choose between them I would pick Google any day.
I’ll give apple this one thing.
They are really, really good at backup.
I recently had to wipe my dad’s iPhone, I manually backed up his pictures just to make absolutely certain they were all saved but everything else I didn’t even bother.
I logged him back into his apple account and everything immediately started downloading again.
With Google, you’ll get your text messages. Your contacts, your pictures, your videos. Maybe your YouTube history and subscriptions but any random app probably uses Google backup services but it might not.
This is the exact same thing I thought a couple of days ago. What the fuck is wrong with the product managers of the Playstore?
Since mobile gaming has died for me anyway, i have no reason to browse the store. For what I use it for, it’s fine. It has the apps i need and updates them.
On the App Store, if I search for “Two Dots”, the first 2/3 of my screen is filled with “Two Dots” and when I scroll down, I get related apps. And when I scroll down FURTHER, I see ads for other apps.
Android the open-source OS is cool and all. As soon as you involve Google in your Android experience, you’re better off getting an iPhone instead. They at least have the common courtesy of giving you a reach-around while they… y’know.
What was Heartless Ansem’s famous quote again? Oh yeah. “And now darkness within darkness awaits you.” But ads instead of darkness.
That’s… good. Installing an app on more devices is a nice feature.
I mean silver lining and all, sure. But did you notice that like 55-60% of the screen is ad-driven “suggestions?”
Wait,…, it’s all ads! I kinda missed it says “Ads”.
It looks bad, but try replicating it.
When I search two dots, I find exactly the matching app, with screenshot previews and details about it. I get only 1/4 of the screen as ad suggestions. The rest of the screen is related suggestions (non-ad suggestions). So about 3/4 is non-ads for me vs. 1/8th from the OP screenshot.
If I search something more generic like “card battle games”, I get a listing of about 7 games, with tags, and zero ads.
I think what’s shown in the OP is what remains after the user has already read the details and approved installing the app. Considering that this is the end of the user story, what else should be on that page?
Or maybe he’s got a different version of play store than me from A/B testing? Anyway, try it out yourself. I don’t have a problem with too many ads on playstore, my main issue is more that the good apps go to apple store first and only sometimes port to android because apple users are more lucrative.
I, too was not able to reproduce the same result again.
When I tried to do the same search again, I had one column more dedicated to non ad space, namely, showing the description of the game. Dont know how I got that particular spread of ads galore at that particular moment.
Screenshot taken later with the same query:
My version of android is, indeed, an older one, and my region is India, I suppose all these factor into what I see when I search for stuff.
Hmm, may also possible that vendor/carrier versions of the app carry more ads. This would nevertheless still be an android problem because I don’t think Apple allows other companies to do that with their apps.
This is Google we’re talking about. If their algorithm identifies you as a high value user in a high value location, they’ll absolutely shove you more ads than usual. This is why ads companies love tracking people to identify such users.
LMFAO I didn’t even see that in the midst of all the clutter!
Literally 80% of the screen is just useless garbage ads. It takes some effort to actually locate where the real search result is on the screen.
Yup! It’s fucking insane…
Luckily I only have F-Droid on mine.
This ad has features you may not like
What, no love for the Ad Store?
F-Droid for the main stuff, Aurora Store when I’m feeling dirty.
“Thanks for the F-Droid”
- Dirty Mike and the Boys
laughs in F-Droid
Alright, help me out. I had fdroid before but changed phones. What do I need to do to get fdroid nowadays?
You need to install it?
It won’t carry over because it’s not a local play app but you should be able to install it the same way you did on your old phone.
I’m trying to document this for others who have no idea where to start when installing things not in the play store.
To be fair, I’d wager the overlap between people that are on Lemmy, know what F-droid is, but wouldn’t think to just Google it is pretty low. Those people probably shouldn’t be messing around with sideloading and alternative app-stores anyways.
I dislike the “Why not just Google it?” argument because I’ve arrived at too many forum/reddit/stackoverflow posts that are the top Google result with comments on them saying: “This information is already on Google”
I would love it if Lemmy could start to curate information so that instances start showing up in search results more.
I agree up to a point. In an instance like this, what is there to document? The steps to install F-droid are to go to the website and get it.
For things where there’s actual discussion to be had, or answers that require some degree of critical thinking that can have value in the future, sure.
You can go to their official website and download it - https://f-droid.org/
Personally I prefer to use fdroid through Droid-ify.
Thanks, I will give that a whirl. I remember about having to change some kind of setting - third party apps?
(I could probably figure this out through some searching but I also want this for people who have no idea where to start.)
The system will prompt you to allow Fdroid to install apps as soon as you download something the first time. Can’t miss it
Otherwise, you’ll find it under
Settings > Apps > Fdroid > installation of unkown apps
(or something like that, my system isn’t in english)
Thanks!
I am so glad F-Droid exists. For the apps I need that aren’t there (Steam and Blizzard authenticator for 2FA) Aurora has been a godsend
What’s up with Steam not untying 2FA from their own app though? That is the one thing I genuinely hate about Steam
it got worse and worse over the last 1-2 years. this days you can’t even open an app description page on desktop anymore. you search for the name…and you can’t click on the app listing. it just gives you the option to install on your phone but not to read the store page. you only get to it by searching on Google for it. and the mobile app is like you said shit too. often you can’t even find an app and get random ads for other shitty apps.
It sounds like you’re browsing the web signed in to your Google account. Sign out and clear cookies, or go Incognito.
what has this to do with signed in our not? google does the same if you’re not logged in
what has this to do with signed in our not? google does the same if you’re not logged in
When I search for two dots in the App Store, I get an ad for two dots and then dots, both top hits. It’s a weird way to deliver the ad, but I’m much happier with that than this bullshit.
The Play Store peaked back when it was still called Android Market (which I still reckon is a better name). DAE remember
?Play store sounds like a game marketplace. Also Play has nothing to do with anything in googles brand so its really confusing why its still called that.
They tried having a Play ecosystem with Google Play Video, Music, Games, etc. Music was actually pretty good, so of course Google killed it in favor of YouTube Music, which is terrible and plays YouTube video versions of songs instead of actual album stuff.
Ytm definitely does have album content, wtf are you on about. Yes you can play videos there too, but it’s by no means the default.
It’s actually pretty good, just wish they did a lossless tier like tidal
It’s mixed. The worst is playlists, which are mostly just YouTube playlists without video. Was trying to play a Disney song playlist for a friend’s kid, and it was definitely from the videos, with all the sound effects from the scenes in the movies instead of just the song.
