121–130 of 481 posts
LoL, this "Think Tank" is literally a propaganda office; but since NYT largely shares their political biases, they're not willing to admit that it was a dishonest venture before it was directly influenced by Eric Schmidt.
this "Think Tank" is literally a propaganda office Is that really different from any other think tank or the NYT itself?
The key point of the article is this: “Google is very aggressive in throwing its money around Washington and Brussels, and then pulling the strings,” Mr. Lynn said. “People are so afraid of Google now.” Honestly, the only thing shocking about any of this is that people thought Google was "special". The reality is, when its revenues are threatened, it's going to reach like any other corporation, which it should. Googl…
The key point of the article is this: “Google is very aggressive in throwing its money around Washington and Brussels, and then pulling the strings,” Mr. Lynn said. “People are so afraid of Google now.” Honestly, the only thing shocking about any of this is that people thought Google was "special". The reality is, when its revenues are threatened, it's going to reach like any other corporation, which it should. Googl…
I started with an attempt to leave Google products for political/moral reasons and ended up finding superior products on the way.
Personally, I'm glad Google is behaving this way: it is tiring to tell people over and over again that one should not put absolute trust into any company and be met with bewilderment and references to the "Don't be evil" motto ( the one that they finally got rid of).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have I awoken in an alternate universe? Once 21 million dollars was accepted there isn't an "independence" theoretical or otherwise. It's ludicrous to existentially attack the company giving this money and expect not be removed from the group. If you want true independence it has to be something like citizen grass roots funding. And even that probably has a bias. But it would be a start. Expecting anything but specia…
Eh, I don't know why you're being hammered for saying this. Both your comments seem pretty accurate. And it's not like you were being crass or something. I wonder if the idea simply bothers people?
This idea bothers people because it calls in question everything that they believe in -- in the West the so called educated population believes in the idea of abstract "good" and idea of people/entities being "good" compared to the extreme cynicism coming from say Eastern Europeans.
In my, not very humble, opinion it is caused by Western population of the last sixty years living a rather easy and lazy life, which breeds a total disassociation with say possible drivers other people. So they want to destroy everything and anything that pierces their bubble. In HN it means flagging/downvoting such articles/opinions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is, these sort of situations (creating dependence) are very hard to pick apart and point out who is at fault. Say an organization 'A' funds another organization 'B' (maybe non-profit, maybe not), and over time 'B' becomes very dependent on the donations they are getting from 'A'. Then say they start to have a conflict of interest, and 'A' drops funding(which probably kills 'B'). Who's the bad guy here? How…
It's a simple issue, bar entities that should not have conflicts of interest from accepting gifts/investment/etc that could create a conflict of interest. It is appalling how US senators are allowed to receive gifts or be compensated in creative ways by companies.
Google might want to look at the history of Standard Oil and the old US wide singular Bell Telephone. If you get so big that you can abuse your power, you will probably start to do so (power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely ...). They tend to get broken up into less powerful pieces. How you break up Google, I don't know. They are an ad tech company with the best search engine and a bunch of money loosing…
Gmail and Drive and such predominantly need to be ad-funded to survive, I suspect, and I think allowing an online services company to run ads is fundamentally okay. The monopolizing power of losing Chrome and Android would over time relegate them to losing monopoly status by default.
The thing is that Google has absolutely gone down questionable path from their early days. It is a little unfair to think this problem exists only within Google. Time and time again we are reminded why corporations will evolve to become as greedy and as protective of their turf expansive of their power and monopolistic as they can get, even if good people are running them. It is the system itself that does this, corp…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is, these sort of situations (creating dependence) are very hard to pick apart and point out who is at fault. Say an organization 'A' funds another organization 'B' (maybe non-profit, maybe not), and over time 'B' becomes very dependent on the donations they are getting from 'A'. Then say they start to have a conflict of interest, and 'A' drops funding(which probably kills 'B'). Who's the bad guy here? How…
It's a simple issue, bar entities that should not have conflicts of interest from accepting gifts/investment/etc that could create a conflict of interest. It is appalling how US senators are allowed to receive gifts or be compensated in creative ways by companies.