because consumers don't want to pay for anything. It's easier to extract private data, and sell that to a corporation for a lot of money, than to extract a small premium from each user (which is like squeezing blood from stone).
Yep. This battle was lost way, way back in the 90s when we collectively decided that everything on the Internet should be free.
I think it's one of the great lost opportunities in human history.
I don't know what the "correct" course of action would have been, instead of making everything ad-supported and mostly terrible. Some kind of very very seamless micropayments? Maybe there was no "correct choice." Maybe "free, but awful" always would have won no matter the alternative.
But man, this outcome sucks. The internet turned out to be just one more way to squirt advertisements into our eyeballs.
I think you could argue that this very battle was lost far before the 90s... Advertisers and marketers have been exploiting and targeting the mediums in which most consumers paid their attention too long before the Internet was around. Inevitably the Internet was going to have ads seep in because it garnered the majority of consumer attention
It's never taking off on the scale of the internet itself.
It just doesn't pass any kind of common-sense test. People don't really want to spend large portions of their lives wearing goofy headsets, seeing things nobody else can see. Even if (when) we shrink the screens down to the size and weight of regular eyeglasses, I don't see it. It is not compatible with anything else... you have to completely cease all other activities and utterly devote yourself to your VR experience, sealing yourself off from the world.
VR definitely delivers a pretty awesome experience when done well, don't get me wrong. I think it will hang around and have its fans. But, game-changer? Never.
because consumers don't want to pay for anything. It's easier to extract private data, and sell that to a corporation for a lot of money, than to extract a small premium from each user (which is like squeezing blood from stone).