27
votes
I got paid $0.33 for confirming with Google that I got a haircut where I did and paid with a card
Who got the better end of that deal?
It was in Google rewards.
They were already involved in that transaction.
How much is me matching their phone records really worth?
It's worth 33c, really. That's what they will pay for you to confirm that information, so that's what it's worth.
I get those all the time and I do them, mostly. Because I could barely care less about Google having that information (half the time I've paid with my phone anyway) and I get enough money from the rewards app to buy a book every so often.
Well yes but we're talking about the made up idea of "money" and "value" so it's all semantics at the end of the day.
Is it? Because if you can't get someone to actually pay you that higher value then it's not. That information might be worth more than 33c to Google, somehow through some arcanely complex calculation which some Business Intelligence system has performed, but it's worth to OP is either zero (if they keep it to themselves) or whatever Google will pay. It's not like there's somewhere else they can sell this information.
It's worth noting that this isn't 33c of money. It's 33c of Play Store credit, which costs Google somewhere around 23c if redeemed, because they take a cut from all Play Store transactions (actual value depends on who it's redeemed with, different sellers get different rates)
Yes, except that there is no "real" value. Value is inherently subjective. A transaction is evidence that it's worth at least that much to one buyer (in this case, Google), and at most that much to one seller. But the way they decided that is not necessarily by doing any math, and they could change their minds later.
My guess is that someone at Google has a budget for this, but no clear idea about how much money it will make for Google. It's an expense that seems worth it for now, but only in a fuzzy, unquantifiable way.
This is how lots of things have worked at Google. They give away lots of stuff for free, hoping to make it back somehow. Ad sales pay for it all.
And more generally, lots of business expenses work that way. When a business pays to fly employees to various places, they may never figure out whether an individual trip was "worth it" or not. It's something that's only done for certain kinds of accounting, like cost of goods sold.
My favorite is how many places I go near so I can get 54¢ for saying I visited the business but did not go in.
Of course I entered and did not make a payment, 54¢ please!
Google definitely got the better end of that deal.
They wouldn’t pay you more than what the data is worth to them.
Google is probably trying to quantify the value advertising with them brings to a company. Your data will help them sell more advertisements and target their advertisements to the highest value audience.
Deals don't have to have a winner or loser. If OP doesn't mind letting Google know that he a got a haircut at a place, it's not like he lost anything. He gave seconds of his time, Google gave 33c, everyone wins. Trade is the centerpiece of civilization.
Well yeah OP didn’t “lose” or anything unless the time it took to collect the $0.33 was more trouble than it was worth, but I bet that info brings google more than $0.33 eventually.
But the question is who got the “better end of the deal”. It’s not like there’s some other entity that would purchase the information that OP went to a store for more than 33c. I certainly wouldn’t buy that information from OP for that price.
It’s perfectly possible that both Google and OP got the best end of the deal. OP couldn’t have gotten, realistically, a better price for that information. It would have just faded from his memory, valueless. Google can probably get more than 33c of value in the end. If OP got 33c instead of 0c, why isn’t he the one who got the better end of the deal?
Both win, because there is resource asymmetry. Google has money, OP has information. It’s not like a game of poker where everyone is vying for the same pot of chips.
Are there any transactions with perfect information? I think it's kind of a given that people make assumptions about values and expectations then decide accordingly. When I accept a job offer or pay for takeout, I have expectations and ideas but it's impossible to know exactly how things will turn out.
That's part of what makes the real world so interesting, people make decisions all the time without knowing everything inside and out. Someone designed the algorithm that set the reward of that survey, but they probably didn't think too deeply about the specifics. It's impossible for any one person or organization to know everything.
My uneducated opinion is that it's akin to a production line. They know every time you visit that barbershop, and for how long, let alone every other place they track you at. They just took one unit off the production line and paid $0.33 for the data equivalent of quality testing. What we're doing isn't just telling Google we got a haircut for $0.33, we're also verifying that the data they had about everyone else going to that barbershop was also accurate.
Which I'm not against. They're gonna pay someone that $0.33 for that quality testing, and it may as well be my minimum wage making ass
From a purely numbers standpoint, Google almost assuredly got the better end of the deal.
They didn't approach you offering to throw away $.33 without expecting to make at least that much in return.
Someone thought that paying users to confirm information about businesses in Google Maps (which is what this does) was worth the money, but this says nothing about what the profit margin is. Let's say it's worth 40 cents in revenue to them. Getting .33 is not a bad cut for a trivial amount of work, and although it's a tiny amount, it's still likely worth more to you than to them.
But that's just a made-up number and typically the profit for this sort of thing can't be quantified. It's just a guess. How much will Google gain from making Google Maps a tiny bit better? That's a question about the future, and they may never know for sure.
Fwiw I like this better than just bring asked to rate things for free. If you want me to post a review, pay me something for it.
Also, what program are people a part of that you are getting these offers from Google? Or is this from using google pay for contactless payments IRL?
Google Rewards app. They occasionally ask you questions about places you've been (if you have location services enabled) or other stuff, you get some pennies of Play Store credit in return. It pays for my Google One subscription and I have money left over to buy a few books and a couple of games a year.
I will check it out. Thanks!
App links:
Do you get the ones about which AI search results do you like better? It sucks when I realize I'm helping train their software for pennies on the dollar, but I also like free rental movies and premium apps so it is what it is.
Just remember that you sold that information to Google. They will not forget it. They will not hesitate to re-sell it. You will be in multiple databases with that, and all your other questions that you've answered, and some that you don't realize you've answered. If you get used to answering, suddenly your tax bracket doesn't seem so bad for another $0.10, and the value of your data to other advertisers and potentially bad-actors goes up or down accordingly.
And there's also context. The data you've given up includes which credit card you prefer for small payments, which can likely be corroborated with purchases made at other vendors. And if you've previously told Google that you've got a certain level of education and what field of work you're in, they'll be quick to connect the rest of the dots.
Data is a wide web and every little bit is part of the whole.
Your comment is absolute fan fiction …
Google isn’t buying information. 33c is an obscenely high price for this. Another poster got it right; they’re buying QA.
And op installed Google rewards to be asked this question, for financial compensation. This is akin to telling an eBay seller “Just remember you sold that thing to the buyer! They will not forget it!”
Great answer. My sentiment exactly.
If it's worth $0.33 to you to be getting hair product ads for the next 6 months.
They probably aren't making 33c off you from that information. Ads pay very little. Presumably, matching your phone records helps Google with their AI to track everybody else who doesn't use Google Rewards.
Google made $65 billion in ad revenue last quarter. Nothing else comes close. How do they make money from "tracking people" if not from ads?
I mean, if you divide that by the number by the number of Google product(s) users (e.g. 5 billion) and then by the number of months in a quarter, it's not that much money per person Of course, I'm cutting a lot of corners in the above calculation. That profit is relatively indirect.
Let's say Google is spending $1 billion this year to send users money to confirm ad data. Let's also say that Google is expecting to improve their ads enough through this program to increase their prices by just 1%. Their revenue increase for this year would be about $2.37 billion (based on last year's ad revenue of $237 billion) from that price hike. That's a billion dollar investment that sees return within the year.