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Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

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Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#201

Post by aaron-lebo »

oneshot908 wrote: post #196
aaron-lebo wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, there's a lot of us who don't want to join the 1% in the valley. We don't want to join these parasitic companies which are turning the industry into a boring clone-the-other-big-co greedfest. So for a lot of us, just work hard and join the crowd isn't really a solution. Not to mention, if you find Trump a true threat, please realize he is a threat made possible through the echo chambers of SV tech, whic…

So GTFO of Silicon Valley then? The place is feeding on itself at this point IMO and I'm just about ready to leave myself because happiness > $$$$$$$ past a point. See also my libertarian friends who live in SF, constantly kvetching about the politics, but who all refuse to live somewhere else. Meanwhile, Austin's nice and it's still affordable on a moderate six-figure income. Not to mention the relatively undiscover…

Good words.

Side note based on your personal experience; I was taking to my friend last night. He's got serious ADHD and only recently has realized that and been treating it at 35. He barely graduated high school and while not especially educated is very intelligent, especially socially. He's finally experiencing what it's like to unlock his potential.

It's a bit of a tragedy that it took 20+ years for him to get diagnosed and receive proper treatment, and it makes you wonder how many millions of people are in a similar boat.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#202

Post by cidibe »

0x737368 wrote: post #152
crowbahr wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But none work together so seamlessly. I'm with that guy: the ease of life is amazing with Google. I'll buy movie tickets online then get an alert about driving conditions and when I need to leave to arrive on time. That's something your open source maps program can't do because it doesn't have access to my email. And if it did I wouldn't use it because it'd be sitting there combing my email constantly which isn't eff…

But you need to consider the amount of data Google is amassing from people using solely their services. And then sells that data to advertisers. If this trend continues eventually they'd be able to know more about you than even the closest of your friends. Is this really such a great price to pay for your privacy? For it to be easier to look up your friend's phone number from your email list?

I trust Google for privacy a lot more than I'd trust 10 different little specialized services that are fighting for their lives financially and don't have the decade of experience as the biggest target on the planet with no bad breaches.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#203

Post by joshuamorton »

kbwt wrote: post #192
friedman23 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if we assume that allowing Google to exist as a monopoly does bring better services How is google even a monopoly? Bing exists, yahoo still exists. In Asia Google isn't even the most popular search engine. Want me to show you how google is not a monopoly? A company with monopoly power would be able to raise the price of its service to the price the market can bear . If google put search behind a pay wall, Bing…

> A company with monopoly power would be able to raise the price of its service to the price the market can bear. The 30% share Google takes from sales of Android applications is completely arbitrary and they could probably even increase it further without suffering any consequences beyond negative PR.

So then under this definition, apple is also a monopoly, as is pretty much any walled garden app store company (ie. Valve, arguably Amazon, Microsoft, and any other company with a platform that allows third parties to use that platform for a cut)?

To be clear, in the US, there is at least one major competitor to Google in that space (Apple), so a price increase would lead developers to leave the platform. And in much of the rest of the world, sideloading APKs is a very, very common way of installing, so google taking 50% or 99% would lead to more third party app stores (note some of these already exist) and users sideloading APKs without Google taking any cut whatsoever.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#204

Post by paulsutter »

acdha wrote: post #174
paulsutter wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is making tremendous strides in AI research, they're betting the company on it.

This is the same Google which was started to commercialize the NSF-sponsored work that Larry Page and Sergei Brin did? The same one which hired many of the DARPA grand challenge winners to work on self-driving cars? The one whose AI efforts are being performed by a number of prominent researchers whose work and training was significantly supported by federal research grants? Google is great but I see them as an examp…

I was responding to this particular question:

> Are you thinking google would be willing to risk their ad revenue for a cool new tech?

University and government research is also super important. Google publishes papers not code, whereas universities often publish their code and that's doing more to move AI forward than Google.

But Google is willing to make large research bets too.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#205

Post by [deleted] »

acdha wrote: post #174
paulsutter wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is making tremendous strides in AI research, they're betting the company on it.

This is the same Google which was started to commercialize the NSF-sponsored work that Larry Page and Sergei Brin did? The same one which hired many of the DARPA grand challenge winners to work on self-driving cars? The one whose AI efforts are being performed by a number of prominent researchers whose work and training was significantly supported by federal research grants? Google is great but I see them as an examp…

[deleted]

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#206

Post by joshuamorton »

0x737368 wrote: post #152
crowbahr wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But none work together so seamlessly. I'm with that guy: the ease of life is amazing with Google. I'll buy movie tickets online then get an alert about driving conditions and when I need to leave to arrive on time. That's something your open source maps program can't do because it doesn't have access to my email. And if it did I wouldn't use it because it'd be sitting there combing my email constantly which isn't eff…

But you need to consider the amount of data Google is amassing from people using solely their services. And then sells that data to advertisers. If this trend continues eventually they'd be able to know more about you than even the closest of your friends. Is this really such a great price to pay for your privacy? For it to be easier to look up your friend's phone number from your email list?

I'm just curious, what data do you believe google gives to advertisers? I work at google, and I see this trope on HN a lot, and I always like to see what data people think is given away, since a lot of the time they seem to be under the impression that either Google's privacy policy is different than it actually is, or that Google's privacy policy isn't actually something that Google follows, or that it doesn't protect them from something for some reason. So, what data do you think google gives to advertisers/third parties, and what do you think Google does with the data it does have about you? (and by you I mean the generic you if you personally stay away from Google, and by Google I mean Google, but fwiw, you could probably replace Google with Facebook or Microsoft and ask the same exact question)

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#207

Post by gigatexal »

659087 wrote: post #171
gigatexal wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read that out loud and tell me you really think you'd rather someone starve than create a social network for mass surveillance when it's use is entirely optional whereas NSA surveillance is not.

Only if starvation is the only option to prevent it from happening. Inclusion in Facebook's data collection is no longer realistically optional, thanks to their collection of data about non-users from friends/family, public records, data brokers, web trackers, etc. Being subjected to the effects of Facebook on society is also not something you can opt out of.

I view it like a private school. If you don't like the school then one option is to leave. No one is forced to use facebook. Leaving though is hard. And I'm assuming you'd rather use it but have some sort of do not track. I don't see that happening because their main source of revenue is you the user. So if you want to change the world by limiting Facebook's reach then leave the service. And convince others to do so as well. Or innovate a model whereby a social network could sustain itself without monetising it's users.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#208

Post by jedmeyers »

l5870uoo9y wrote: post #167
TulliusCicero wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I work at Google > The world is a better place with lots of smaller companies. [citation needed] A lot of things Google does -- a lot of the things people actually like about Google -- are possible only because it's a huge monolith. Divorce the ad-making money machine, and say goodbye to all the services consumers like that are nowhere near as profitable: gmail, maps, photos, chrome, android, translate, y…

If you look at China, they have because of their protectionist policies practically thriving clones of many big US tech company. It seems likely that the same would happened in other regions if some of Google services were blocked.

Yeah, USSR also had clones of European and US cars produced. Ask anyone who lived there whether they would prefer Lada to a Mercedes.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#209

Post by kuschku »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #115
camillomiller wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They push society forward along THEIR agenda. That agenda can be the most open, inclusive and diverse agenda ever, but it's gonna be the agenda of a corporation nonetheless. In my ideal world, you know who should be in charge of such a push? American friends, please, breathe deeply: The State should.

I'm largely a social democrat, but LOL if you think the government would be even a quarter as competent as Google at pushing technology forward. Just read any description from people who've worked at both normal government IT shops (really anywhere that's not 18F or the USDS) and private industry how they feel about governmental technology culture and processes. Like okay, investing in infrastructure, like putting fi…

> I'm largely a social democrat, but LOL if you think the government would be even a quarter as competent as Google at pushing technology forward.

> Just read any description from people who've worked at both normal government IT shops (really anywhere that's not 18F or the USDS) and private industry how they feel about governmental technology culture and processes.

The governments brought us MP3. (Fraunhofer is funded entirely by their own patents and the German government).

The governments brought us many more technologies, standards, algorithms, etc.

Alone the projects funded by the German government have brought more to the tech world than Google ever has, or ever will.

Then look at the projects the US has funded.

For fucks sake, the US Government gave us the Internet!

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#210

Post by acdha »

paulsutter wrote: post #204
acdha wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same Google which was started to commercialize the NSF-sponsored work that Larry Page and Sergei Brin did? The same one which hired many of the DARPA grand challenge winners to work on self-driving cars? The one whose AI efforts are being performed by a number of prominent researchers whose work and training was significantly supported by federal research grants? Google is great but I see them as an examp…

I was responding to this particular question: > Are you thinking google would be willing to risk their ad revenue for a cool new tech? University and government research is also super important. Google publishes papers not code, whereas universities often publish their code and that's doing more to move AI forward than Google. But Google is willing to make large research bets too.

Yeah, I'm definitely not saying Google isn't doing important work. I just think this highlights the key role government funding plays in ensuring that businesses don't have to pay for all of that basic research and training.

That's basically the answer to that question: Google isn't risking their core business on this because so much of the foundation has been set. If, say, in 2003 they'd gone to investors and asked for money to fund AI research it'd have been seen as too risky, especially since the collapse of the 1980s AI bubble was still well within living memory. Once NSF, DARPA, et al. had continued to fund the scientists, however, things matured to the point where it has a more acceptable level of risk to get in on a huge field.

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