A key for Japan is also that for various product categories, they don't export (or maybe manufacture at all - I'm just not really familiar with their non-export goods) low-quality goods - I assume because it isn't economical to compete at the low end of the market.
Even though China can compete at the top of many markets, they still also compete at the bottom, which taints their reputation.
Maybe I got lucky, but I drove a 2011 model Ford from 2013-2025, and the worst part delay I experienced in that time was when they had to get next-day parts from a nearby city.
It's worth pointing out that the F150 has been the best selling truck for 40 years and the best selling consumer vehicle for most of them as well. There's bound to be plenty of parts for them sitting around.
I've got one from 2011 that I'm still driving myself, and aside from one minor thing, I've not had a single problem with it, despite putting it through its paces.
Ford is definitely of the better manufacturers for this. Ubiquitous parts, most models are quite reliable, and a robust service network that's been embedded for decades. Toyota is another counter-example, and a lot of the incumbents are going to do better than newer brands.
For me, the "For you" feed is basically the best-case scenario.
I don't follow anyone and rarely use Twitter, so it doesn't have much signal on me, but a short scroll of my "For you" feed is pretty innocuous.
If I venture into any comment section, it's absolute drek. Going to the feed for a few of my local news channels and clicking through a few of their posts from today, I'm treated to half the comments being stuff along the lines of the following:
"Gee…an immigrant…no surprise"
"Another 3rd world import"
"Can’t predict the weather two days in advance but sure, global boiling for the summer. Got it."
"Queue in the carbon tax. FmL wake up people, it is a scare tactics. Like acid rain, hole in the ozone, polar ice caps flooding the coasts, you NEED CO2 for vegetation to live, and for the vegetation to gove YOU oxygen. Enjoy the few weeks of heat we get."
> their online services are trivial to ignore once and never think about again
The workarounds to get rid of the nag to log into your icloud account on macOS are far more difficult than the workarounds to avoid using an MS account in Windows.
> It ought to be illegal to host ads for registered trademarks (+/- some edit distance).
This makes me a bit uncomfortable because of how close it comes to infringing on freedom of speech, and how specific a rule it would for search engines (and chat bots) - i.e. there's no real analogy of "can't target trademarked terms" for any ad format other than search engines.
I think my preference would be to simply enforce laws around fraud. If you're a business and you intentionally mislead people, that's fraud, pure and simple. Bring the enforcement hammer down so that companies don't dare make an ad that granny might mistake for not being an ad. Make them err far on the side of making ads look unmistakably like ads for fear of ruinous fines.
It wouldn't impinge on freedom of speech. Nothing would be prohibited from being said.
It would require conflicts of interest to be disclosed clearly. I.e. labelling speech incentivized by someone else (ad buyer) clearly, as not organic speech (the search engine results).
That is pro-transparency and ethics, not anti-speech.
> It would require conflicts of interest to be disclosed clearly. I.e. labelling speech incentivized by someone else (ad buyer) clearly, as not organic speech (the search engine results).
That's specifically what I'm proposing in the post you replied to?
You're not allowed to use Pikachu commercially. Why should Google? They're taking advantage of every trademark to make money.
Googling a trademark should activate a "no bids" mode.
If Google wants to defend this action, then they should explain why they turned the URL bar into a search product and bought up 90% of the real estate. They've been incredibly heavy handed in search, web, and ads.
There are many uses of "Pikachu" that are reserved for the trademark holder, but by-and-large the point of trademark is to avoid consumer confusion by preventing people from passing off goods/services that aren't from the "Pikachu" holder as actually being from the "Pikachu" trademark holder.
Generally, I am allowed to use "Pikachu" if it's in reference to Pikachu and doesn't involve passing off non-Pikachu things as actually being Pikachu things. If I'm a former employed-by-Nintendo Pikachu illustrator, I'm allowed to advertise that. (Even if I can't provide samples of my work.) I can advertise that I'm the "#1 seller of Pikachu snuggies" as long as I am the #1 seller of non-counterfeit Pikachu snuggies. I can charge people a subscription fee for full access to a website where I review Pikachu (and other pokemon). If I work at Walmart and someone asks me where they can get a Pikachu plush, I'm allowed to direct them to the Digimon plush section, for which I receive a kickback on sales.
The consumer confusion happening when someone googles a trademark and gets ads for different things isn't due to trademark infringement, it's due to misleading ads, which shouldn't be allowed regardless of whether a search term is trademarked or not.
Yes, of course, you can't lie as a business, but if someone walks into Walmart and searches for "Pikachu?", Walmart employees are free to be trained to use the trademarked term and reply "You don't want Pikachu, consider Digimon!"
(It's a contrived hypothetical, but the closest I could get to a meat-space version of search keywords.)
Let’s remember it’s not new: Back in 2005, gannies (and 20yo non-nerds too) would install all sorts of viruses by clicking on popups thinking it’s the real thing. I personally switched to Firefox then Mac which didn’t have this problem. It’s like browsing a torrent website without an adblocker: There is absolutely no way to hit the right button, it’s URL changes between mousedown and mouseup.
> If you meant inside, some airlines already do this with ads that play on the entertainment system before the flight, a lot like how old movie theaters used to.
Air Canada did this once to me years ago with the audio piped over the plane PA system - I doubt I can personally take credit for them ceasing the practice, but I sent complaints to both Air Canada and each of the advertisers, and haven't seen that again since.
You're not wrong, but sometimes a local <seller of thing> will do SEO by actually putting up valuable articles. (e.g. the Yale Appliance blog)
And for a kinda counter-example for the car dealership one, Ford dealerships sell extended warranties that are backed by Ford and usable at any Ford dealership. If you're in the market for one of those, you absolutely want to go with whichever dealership offers you the lowest price in North America, and not whatever your local dealership is charging.
Money is fungible, but there are various government expenditures that generate positive returns, either in direct revenue (e.g. tax collection enforcement) or knock-off economic benefits (e.g. libraries) some proportion of your taxes go to these services where you are effectively getting more back than what you’ve paid for these services.
(Economically, governments should spend more on such services until the marginal returns are no longer positive, but tend not to for political reasons.)
Assuming the influencers pay taxes, this doesn’t seem like something that can’t be addressed - we should be requiring influencers to prominently disclose incentives that could result in conflicts of interest.
> Every dollar you spend on advertising provides additional customers.
If you’re just taking these customers from competitors, the marginal utility can be pretty low.
e.g. If you consider a world where there are no ads for cars, people aren’t going to meaningfully lose out of the utility they get from cars, carmakers simply avoid the prisoner’s dilemma of having to advertise as much as the next manufacturer.
The world isn't zero sum, advertising grows the pie for all involved. One of the best examples would be the iphone when it was released. Even in your example category of cars Tesla and later Rivian/Lucid/BYD marketing was a game changer for electric vehicles.
Very few ads are for products where exact 1:1 competitors exist (though it's nonzero, maybe something like a commingled Amazon Basics widget).
My point is that advertising can grow the pie, but it doesn't necessarily do so, and even if advertising is net pie-growing, it can still shrink the pie in specific markets.
For a more on-the-nose example than the arms race between car manufacturers, consider cigarette ads. If the ads simply convert smokers between brands, then it's basically zero sum minus the cost of the ads. If the ads convert non-smokers, then the ads are of significant negative utility taking their externalities into account.
> Very few ads are for products where exact 1:1 competitors exist
Sure, but also, I'd contend that few purchases are made based on ads informing consumers of meaningful differences between products. The products could be 1:1 duplicates, and the ads could be identical.
e.g. I just turned off my ad-blocker and fired up YouTube, the first four ads I see:
1. An ad for a multivitamin. Zero mention of any differentiating feature from a generic multivitamin.
2. An ad for a grocery delivery service. Zero mention of any differentiating features from any other food delivery service. (This one was a bit wild to me - this is actually service I already know and use, I'd never seen advertising for them, and this ad didn't mention any of the reasons anyone would choose to use them.)
3. An ad for some predatory-looking debt-relief service. Maybe not predatory, but no information about why that debt-relief service would be better than any other debt relief service.
4. An ad for a jeans company. I actually had to google this one to figure out what it was even an ad for, the ad just featured shots of people hiking in mountains and dunking into icy lakes without any mention of clothing.
Even though China can compete at the top of many markets, they still also compete at the bottom, which taints their reputation.
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