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The same way restaurants and bars give free nuts, chips, popcorn, breadsticks etc.

It's a way to keep you coming back. And each time you use their products they have a chance to upsell you, show you ads, you might like the product so you subscribe to get better features.

That's also why they work so hard to make all their products work well together. So even if you use one product, it's very easy when you need something to use another of their products without going to a competitor (eg opening an email attachment in google docs not in ms word)

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I think for docs it is mostly storage space, I think they are pretty tame in what they charge too, at least compared to other industry standard programs in their own fields.

> It’s bait. Not google acting out of the kindness of their heart.

IMO it's also free ongoing testing. They get to see how users interact with their software, as a LARGE aggregate. Very useful information.

Data about what you do, who you communicate with, when & where you are, what devices you use, the sites you visit, it's a huge and terrifying list.

Also, since it's doing the rounds today:

https://www.bitestring.com/posts/2023-03-19-web-fingerprinting-is-worse-than-I-thought.html

How about identifying you even in incognito mode?

I believe the big one is storage space (on Google Drive)

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There’s paid versions?

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I never knew there were paid for benefits in google docs, can you list a few?

I'm mainly a word user so I never spend more time than necessary in docs.

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What you're describing isn't really metadata, it's the outcomes/process by which google anaylzes data/metadata.

The fact Google provides docs for free and is online is the online reason I use gdrive subscription for my college

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That is precisely why they’re getting sued. We’re not sure if it’s legal, ethical or how copyright applies since it’s not using your code but learning from it

Suppose I stored some code in GitHub, can anyone else just take it like that? Can GitHub use my code for training without my permission? Or did I already grant permission in their fine print?

Yep, got solidworks for free in school through student design team, got pretty good at it, tried to switch to cheaper Cad software, gave up and paid solidworks 12k for software and 2k a year for maintenance.

Right. It’s just a sales strategy. It’s bait. Not google acting out of the kindness of their heart.

With that said, I love free stuff. Google docs came in super clutch in college.

Read my other comment. I was more trying to make an example rather than something anyone would actually wanna do.

It was more about illustrating that the use we have for data is not necessarily the same one a company has for it.

Never said it had to be a successful AI, or a good idea

This is exactly it. In addition, it costs Google pennies per user (on the high-end) to give it for free, so it doesn't really cost them anything to give it for free to those who wouldn't pay otherwise, while also greatly increasing the likelihood that companies will pay them to use it for their businesses.

It's a win-win.

>> Say Google wants to develop an AI that writes books right? So they need a lot of text written by humans to train it right? Well, Google Docs is full of that.

I don’t think Google wants to train an AI on all the crap I wrote in Google docs. Let alone all the spelling and grammar errors people make in those docs.
For an AI that can write books, they probably just use actual books.

Yeah, and not just Microsoft. Students can usually buy* software for tens of dollars a year what pros have to pay thousands a year for (like 3D/CAD software) because companies really want students used to their software vs their competitors.

• It used to be buy, but now that everything is subscription-based, they're really only leasing it.