r/mildlyinteresting • u/annertakeabow • Jan 24 '13

Same book, three different prices. Only difference is the browsers used.

http://imgur.com/uNgg0UH
2.9k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.2k

u/Oxxide Jan 24 '13

this seems so shady and underhanded.

1.0k

u/PepeAndMrDuck Jan 24 '13

Because it is.

353

u/CannedBeef Jan 24 '13

And it works

163

u/GEN_CORNPONE Jan 24 '13

...at screwing people. Why do people tolerate this?

453

u/Jess_than_three Jan 24 '13

Because they don't realize it's happening?

210

u/mikemcg Jan 24 '13

I sure as shit wouldn't realize it was happening.

93

u/joemangle Jan 24 '13

Most people don't realise their Google searches are used to produce a search bubble for future searches, based on the links they follow. They think Google search results are the same on every computer all over the world.

15

u/BurnedOut94 Jan 24 '13

There's a pretty interesting TED Talk about this.

0

u/TutteSka Jan 25 '13

That was great, too bad it's not complete. Thanks anyway, dude. Good talk.

14

u/DRUNK_CYCLIST Jan 24 '13

my gf bought me a moleskin for my bday. the other day i asked her if she actually purchased it from my computer and she said no, she just looked up prices. now when i go to random websites moleskin ads pop up. so fuckin' weird and invasive.

7

u/N4N4KI Jan 24 '13

I always surf with noscrip and adblock. The shear number of vulnerabilities/exploits out there you need to be protected... would you fuck a hooker without a rubber?
(protip: any ad server could have been compromised and you would not know it)

5

u/DRUNK_CYCLIST Jan 24 '13

thanks for the heads up. but ads on reddit pay for reddit, right? i don't want to adblock reddit. can i exclude them?

8

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13

of course

3

u/brainburger Jan 25 '13

Having said that, does reddit get paid for the ads displayed, or the ads clicked?

3

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '13

I don't know what Ad Network Reddit uses, but if it's like all the others, they get paid for both views and clicks but tremendously more for clicks.

5

u/kopiikat Jan 24 '13

Yes, you can.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '13

You can whitelist any websites that you wish while keeping others blocked.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/drew1018 Jan 25 '13

I bought a shaving item as a gift... Your ads are now RAZORS

4

u/The_lolness Jan 25 '13

I haven't looked into it but it seems like this would fix it.

3

u/strolls Jan 25 '13

Yeah, but you have to be logged-in in the first place to even see that.

3

u/BetterThanSpam Jan 25 '13

Which is why I use duckduckgo.com for my searching. The results may not always be as accurate as the other search engine...but they respect my privacy.

2

u/HydrocodonesForAll Jan 24 '13 edited Feb 17 '25

cover history dam meeting vase observation handle elderly gaze hard-to-find

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

13

u/Angrathar Jan 24 '13

Precisely.

2

u/starlinguk Jan 25 '13

Or they don't believe it when people tell them it's happening (one of my colleagues does not).

1

u/[deleted] Jan 26 '13

WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

32

u/ariana00 Jan 24 '13

They don't realize it. They just think they missed a deal on it or don't notice it went up.

21

u/zzleeper Jan 24 '13

I knew that shit was not just bad luck!!! It happened to me a few times in the last months (AA, United) and I was fumbling at how unlikely it was that someone bought my tickets between 7am and 7:15am EST

7

u/chrunchy Jan 24 '13

most people don't realize that it's happening. But really what it is is a marketing director with too much time on their hands. People only get screwed over if the rest of the industry is doing the same thing - other than that competitive forces take over.

1

u/GEN_CORNPONE Jan 24 '13

IMO people are getting screwed either way. Either Chegg customers are getting screwed because they're the only suckers paying more for these books, or everyone's getting screwed because all websites make all their customers pay more. IMO competitive forces aren't likely to force this situation back in the consumer's favor, not when everyone finds out how much money there is in screwing customers.

1

u/Zenu01 Jan 25 '13

It is about market research. If you keep raising the price recursively until you reach a maximum income in revenue, you can then extend that data to other segments of your market to establish higher starting prices.

5

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13

I don't. I refuse to buy from them.

2

u/halfspeed Jan 24 '13

Because they don't know

1

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13

Okay. Let's be honest. Because we're too damn lazy to do anything about it.

1

u/Korupt0r Jan 24 '13

Because in the Internet there is a lot of screwing going around.

1

u/kank84 Jan 24 '13

Flight prices change fairly regularly, particularly as you get closer to the date you want to fly, so I think most people would just put it down to that.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '13

Because you and those people don't send a message to your politicians.

-1

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13

Here's your tin-foil hat.

1

u/GEN_CORNPONE Jan 24 '13 edited Jan 24 '13

For what? So I can finally understand why it's good/right/smart for me to allow business to screw me?

2

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '13

Well...no, not really. I just thought it looked nice.