I would contend that those equations are a bit more nuanced than you give credit.
Let's say I hypothetically give you that the Customer sees ad tracking as "bad" (whatever that means ...let's just accept it for argument.)
(1) Then the [Customer] utility function is: (Value from free services) - (Negative experience from ad tracking) + (Possible positive experience from learning about a new product or service from better targeted ads)
(2) The [Company] utility function is: (Value from ad revenue alone) - (Negative feedback on ad targeting) + (Revenue gained from higher ROI on marketing spend resulting in more purchases/subscriptions/whatever.)
In (1), I think people on average don't care about "privacy" related news because users don't see the negative experiences outweighing the other parameters.
In (2), the negative feedback on ad targeting isn't really that large at the [Company] level to warrant much change (at least if you leave the echo chamber of HN every now and then.)
In the case of Yahoo, I still hold the hypothesis that they underestimated the (Negative feedback on a breakdown in security) as well as (Positive revenue gained from trust in security.) Then again, I doubt myself because if this were true, Box would be lightyears ahead of Dropbox; sometimes the coefficient on UI _really is_ larger than that of security...?
> In the case of Yahoo, I still hold the hypothesis that they underestimated the (Negative feedback on a breakdown in security)
Yahoo's stock is up (+53% since February, with a small dip in late June). Where is the miscalculation?
Volkswagen is back to positive sales growth, and their stock has recovered 50% since their discovery last September. Their calculation was correct, too.
Ah good point - at least for Volkswagen...Yahoo has other confounding factors (their sale, etc.) but overall the impact is probably a short-term shock with few longer-term lagging effects.
Let's say I hypothetically give you that the Customer sees ad tracking as "bad" (whatever that means ...let's just accept it for argument.)
(1) Then the [Customer] utility function is: (Value from free services) - (Negative experience from ad tracking) + (Possible positive experience from learning about a new product or service from better targeted ads)
(2) The [Company] utility function is: (Value from ad revenue alone) - (Negative feedback on ad targeting) + (Revenue gained from higher ROI on marketing spend resulting in more purchases/subscriptions/whatever.)
In (1), I think people on average don't care about "privacy" related news because users don't see the negative experiences outweighing the other parameters. In (2), the negative feedback on ad targeting isn't really that large at the [Company] level to warrant much change (at least if you leave the echo chamber of HN every now and then.)
In the case of Yahoo, I still hold the hypothesis that they underestimated the (Negative feedback on a breakdown in security) as well as (Positive revenue gained from trust in security.) Then again, I doubt myself because if this were true, Box would be lightyears ahead of Dropbox; sometimes the coefficient on UI _really is_ larger than that of security...?