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> informed consent Sidenote, and completely off topic: Is there a non-high-horse way to word this? I understand the meaning, but the same phrase can be used to be completely dismissive as well. It's a potential moral high ground, where if you don't agree you must be uninformed. I'm not saying OP meant it that way, it just brought up the honest question from me.
I think it's medical/clinical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informed_consent "Express permission" is also a little jargony but I think it avoids the problem you mentioned?
To answer the parent, I wasn't trying to say everyone who knows what Google does with their data would not actually consent. There are people who argue that "privacy is over" and that it's entirely okay for Google to know everything about them. Most Googlers fall into that category, along with a large number of extremely liberal tech people. I'd say most people on HN understand at least in large part how Google operates.
But I'd argue the majority of society does not understand the extent to which Google collects and uses their information, nor grasps how that may affect their lives in the future.
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Which does seem like sort of a loophole. Don't companies have to add perks over a certain amount to the employees pay so that it gets taxed? Wouldn't feeding an employee every day qualify? It would be sort of weird if we turn back into having sort of 'company towns' where your employer provides a lot of what you need except they pay for it. It's not just Google this would be beneficial for, even if you run a factory…
The IRS rule is that these kinds of perks are allowed if it is for the company's benefit. For example, if a free lunch allows an employees to have a lunch meeting, the IRS considers that for the company's benefit. Whether all of Google's perks actually satisfy that test is a different issue, but that is the IRS's rule.
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I don't buy it. Many companies are able to get the perks, culture, and autonomy right without being a multi-billion dollar company. It does enable Google to do certain things (like moonshot projects) that smaller companies can't do, but a lot of the perks I've seen are replicated in other companies. In fact, I think your comment "Google doesn't do what it does to be successful, it does it because it is successful" is…
I tried to clarify the wording. I'm specifically trying to call out the structure of Google's management and the general way they approach problems. For example, even within the profitable Google portion of the business, they often have many competing projects. There will be competing search features, competing chat applications, competing cloud services. Google will make big speculative bets or internally competitiv…
This sounds exactly like how Microsoft works. They (famously) even had 2 versions of Windows 95.
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Indeed, it's amazing how profitable vacuuming up users' private data without their informed consent and monetizing it can be.
Just stop using Google if that is a concern. Personally I use DDG.
If you use Android, virtually all apps rely on Google Play Services, and interestingly you it will autoupdate even when you explicitly tell it not to.
Using google maps to navigate (now even Waze is theirs), people sending links to google docs, google pictures etc.
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Which does seem like sort of a loophole. Don't companies have to add perks over a certain amount to the employees pay so that it gets taxed? Wouldn't feeding an employee every day qualify? It would be sort of weird if we turn back into having sort of 'company towns' where your employer provides a lot of what you need except they pay for it. It's not just Google this would be beneficial for, even if you run a factory…
I one spoke with a woman from the Netherlands who was surprised that these perks are not taxable. According to her, in the Netherlands perks like shuttles to work or company-provide food are taxable.
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Which does seem like sort of a loophole. Don't companies have to add perks over a certain amount to the employees pay so that it gets taxed? Wouldn't feeding an employee every day qualify? It would be sort of weird if we turn back into having sort of 'company towns' where your employer provides a lot of what you need except they pay for it. It's not just Google this would be beneficial for, even if you run a factory…
The IRS rule is that these kinds of perks are allowed if it is for the company's benefit. For example, if a free lunch allows an employees to have a lunch meeting, the IRS considers that for the company's benefit. Whether all of Google's perks actually satisfy that test is a different issue, but that is the IRS's rule.
Sounds like a rule that is hard to impossible for the IRS to enforce. I hate rules like that, we ought to create a better rule or get rid of it altogether. Because I'm guessing if a factory lowered their wages while providing the same perks as google the IRS would probably say something.
So many companies try to emulate how Google works. There are multiple books, hundreds or thousands of articles. People speculate on the perks, the review structure, the hierarchy, the autonomy. However, when other companies try to imitate Google they always fail because they're missing a crucial piece: Billions of dollars in ad revenue Google doesn't work the way it does to be successful. It works that way because it…
When you have a lot of money, a lot of things work because you have a lot of money. You often see the same thing with people trying to emulate pro-athletes training methods. A genetically gifted pro-athlete can often succeed in spite of their training, and not necessarily because of their training.
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> Google doesn't do what it does to be successful. It does it because it is successful. Those things aren't mutually exclusive and almost certainly are both true
The most pointed quote in the article is “No one wants to face the reality that this is an advertising company with a bunch of hobbies.” But without search, without Gmail, without Chrome, without Android, without the moonshots and all the "hobbies" Google's brand would wither, and its access to data at massive scale would be crippled, and its access to eyeballs would be curtailed, and the talent would walk. Others ha…
This is absolutely accurate.
Google is what it is because google.com is the best search engine in the world and because GMail is the best web-based mail client -- free or otherwise.
All of their products are still based on their end-user being the product since everything is free and people expect it to be that way.
I don't see anything changing because they are literally printing money from their monopoly on online advertising. They have no serious competition and no, Facebook is not really great for targeted advertising unless you are a big brand.
Without any real external pressure as a result of their own success, it's beginning to look a lot like Microsoft of 2005.
Even from a developer's point of view, Amazon has usurped the cloud space with Azure now playing catchup and winning.
Much as Satella realized that Microsoft needs to stop being like Google and more B2B like Oracle, Google needs to find it's new place.
Vast majority of the public is unlikely to give a shit about their privacy in return for free productivity and entertainment but demographics change.