Top Tim Wu Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Tim Wu Biography

Tim Wu is an American lawyer, professor at Columbia Law School, and contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. He is best known for coining the phrase network neutrality in his 2003 paper Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination, and popularizing the concept thereafter. Wu has also made significant contributions to antitrust policy and wireless communications policy, most notably with his "Carterfone" proposal.

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Tim Wu Quotes

I think, year in, year out, Google is starting to get worse instead of better. I think this is happening to a lot of the web companies, is as their demand to increase the payload they deliver in ads increases, they end up degrading and corrupting their own services. And you can see it with Google Maps, you can see it with Google Directions, where somehow Uber is, you know, always one of the options. And it's becoming exactly what they said was what they never wanted, which is a pay-for service where the highest bidder gets the best results.

Degrading, Services, Thinking, Uber, Year, Years

You have to think back to the '90s. The computer was this terrible-looking thing that was trying to compete with the television. And it was this idea of email and chat rooms and this kind of stuff that first people - got people there.

Ideas, People, Rooms, Stuff, Think, Thinking

Movies you pay for - well, sometimes they throw some ads at the beginning now - but generally you pay for ads. And that business model - actually, much more ancient, paying for stuff - is much more straightforward in terms of the incentives of the people who are then giving you the stuff.

Beginning, Generally, Giving, Incentives, People

There's always going to be merchants who need to get their message out, but things have gone way too far.

Gone, Merchants, Needs, Way

There's always people - it doesn't take many - who have a different psychological makeup than most of us who really get joy out of provoking. They don't always believe the things they say, they just like to watch people go crazy. You know, I knew people like that in elementary school - bullies of one kind or another.

Believe, Crazy, Joy, Know, Makeup, School

I think Google is the most successful attention merchant - profitable attention merchant in the history of the world, most successful advertising-only based company - most profitable. They started a very idealistic, beautiful company in many ways, but they didn't have a business model.

Attention, Beautiful, History, Merchant, Successful, Thinking

In the media, traditional media like print, we had boundaries. You know, we had spaces that ads didn't leave. They stayed where they were on the page. They didn't float around over the text. And we're kind of lost on the internet. We don't have any barriers. We have a demand for growth that is insistent.

Ads, Growth, Like, Media, Page, Space

We have just decided we have to have everything for free. And I think we're starting to pay for it in terms of our mental states.

Everything, Pay, Starting, States, Thinking

Right now it is illegal for a service provider to censor or block a site because they don't like it or to privilege someone who pays them extra money. So it's basically a level playing field. I think it was a great victory. It doesn't solve all the problems of our time, but I think we've gotten a much better place.

Block, Thinking, Victory, Field, Level

One thing that all the totalitarian states did was make the great leader's face everywhere.

Faces, Leader, States, Thing, Totalitarian

All business models have something challenging about them, but the problem with the attention merchant business model they have is they need to keep increasing the amount of ads they deliver to people and therefore make their product worse.

Ads, Attention, Business, Challenges, Needs, People

Nothing, save the hangman's noose, concentrates the mind like piles of cash.

Mind, Cash, Hangman, Save, Like

One thing I'll say about Hitler that many people don't realize - and I don't mean to besmirch the industry - but he did get his start, not only as an artist, but as an advertising man writing art for advertisements.

Art, Industry, Mean, Writing

There is this inherent human instinct that the usual way you control trolling is you force people to use their real identities. So there's less trolling on Facebook, for example.

Identities, Identity, Inherent, People, Real, Usual

Google's AdWords, they allow you to bid on words that people will type into the search engine, and they cost more or less. For example, I think mortgage refinancing can cost - now, it's probably hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars. So, in other words, they are allowing you to bid on what people are going to type, and that is the AdWords program. So you own certain terms, and then your ads show up as opposed to someone else's.

Google, Hundreds, Mortgage, People, Probably, Thinking

Google - and some of the other sites, YouTube and, you know - Google has an amazing search engine. The map product is incredible. So there's a sort of exchange when you put up with a bunch of ads. Facebook basically gives you access to your friends who, in theory, you had access to already. So sometimes I don't really understand the deal, but I guess it makes it slightly easier. So that's their contribution.

Amazing, Easier, Giving, Google, Maps, Slightly

Markets are born free, yet no sooner are they born than some would-be emperor is forging chains. Paradoxically, it sometimes happens that the only way to preserve freedom is through judicious controls on the exercise of private power. If we believe in liberty, it must be freedom from both private and public coercion.

Believe, Exercise, Liberty, Freedom, Born

I'm afraid when too many people know too much about you, it actually makes us all a lot more boring because you're afraid to express yourself.

Afraid, Boring, Express, People, Too Much

If we generally like the way things are now, we must also ask whether our current situation is really so different from the open ages of radio, film, or the telephone. Might it not also have seemed in those times that the orgy of limitless entrepreneurism would never end? The point is that we are near the high end of a pendulum arc that, so far, has aways begun to swing in the opposite direction -toward greater integration and centralization- with a force that can seem inexorable.

Age, Centralization, Greater, Opposites, Swings, Way

When you decide to like something, I mean, you may feel you're sort of innocently putting out your preferences, but actually you're delivering something of enormous value, which is indicating that, you know, you'd essentially like to be advertised to by this company.

Essentially, Know, May, Mean, Preference, Value

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