"Don't be Evil" was just code for "Don't be Microsoft."
But, today even Microsoft has enough sense to not be Microsoft.
“Google: it is time to return to not being evil”
91–100 of 253 posts
Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”
#92Isn't vivaldi just another branded chromium? Seems a bit disingenuine for them to be complaining about the company that built their product.
Isn't Chromium just a repackaging of KHTML from the KDE project?
Is it really? The last time I played with that it was almost unusable. (must've been more than a decade ago).
Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I interned at Google once. And the first thing they told us at the orientation is that they put the users first. Is that a lie then? Because what you said seems to imply Google puts the convenience of the developers first.
Adword/Doubleclick clients are their users, not you and me.
I'm not so sure. I've witnessed their adwords team plunder a startup marketing team's budget with false promises and bad advice.
Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”
#94Really sounds like some sort of RICO or extortion charge should be filed against Google, assuming this is all 100% factual.
it is probably not RICO https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico-... (a bit salty on the language)
I've actually got a little experience with this particular subject.
The specific part you would charge Google under would be "It shall be unlawful for any person employed by or associated with any enterprise engaged in, or the activities of which affect, interstate or foreign commerce, to conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity or collection of unlawful debt."
Specifically, collection of unlawful debt.
As noted by the Vivaldi man: "We made effort to understand their explanations and to work with them on their various unreasonable demands (some of which they don’t follow themselves, by the way). After almost three months of back-and-forth, the suspension to our account has been lifted, but only when we bent to their requirements."
If any of those requirements involved a monetary payment, you can very-well guarantee Google violated RICO. It was literal extortion.
A RICO trial was one of my most fun days in court as a juror. Armenian Power Gang.
Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”
#95I wish I could use Vivaldi, it seems like a nice browser for power users. Unfortunately it's closed source (besides the Webkit parts). Considering how much sensitive information goes through a browser nowadays, I would never consider something closed source. I'm sure Vivaldi has no intentions of becoming "evil" like Google, but because of its closed source nature it wouldn't be hard to slip a tracker or two in the br…
I don't know what browser you're using, but assuming chrome : it's not open source either. Chromium is open source, but Google Chrome is proprietary, much in the same way vivaldi is. If you want a truly open source modern browser, the only options are chromium or firefox these days, AFAIK ? (If you know an alternative I'm interested !)
I don't think it's fair to assume that someone who is calling for a browser to be open sourced is using Chrome rather than Chromium.
Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”
#96I wish I could use Vivaldi, it seems like a nice browser for power users. Unfortunately it's closed source (besides the Webkit parts). Considering how much sensitive information goes through a browser nowadays, I would never consider something closed source. I'm sure Vivaldi has no intentions of becoming "evil" like Google, but because of its closed source nature it wouldn't be hard to slip a tracker or two in the br…
Closed source sometimes is better than an open source. With open source code, certain agencies can find exploits and use them to track every move you make, months and years before anyone spotted it. With closed source, you have more chance, at least if you believe in humans, that you will stay anonymous.
But to be honest, as soon as such company would go public, get major funding from one of the big companies, or get a new, famous CEO - run away.
Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like companies are stuck in a losing game. We constantly push small companies to capture more market share. Any companies that fold during that effort, we bring out the pitchforks because the services they ran get shut off. Any companies that succeed , we bring out the pitchforks because they own too much market power. It seems a bit much that we ask for companies to constantly grow and simultaneously ensure…
Do "we" really push companies to capture market share? I mean sure, stockholders do, but "we" as the general public don't really care about a companies size until they become too big.
Yes "we" do, because "we" use the services and abandon smaller less integrated self service software.
Of course everyone (on HN) says "Oh, well not me." Everyone who complains about users think that everyone needs to be Richard Stallman and only connect with the internet by faxing HTTPS requests and then reading forum threads printed off of a dot-matrix printer.
In reality anyone who is using a smartphone or modern software is pushing AGFAM to be bigger and more consolidated and anyone who doesn't totally blow open one of those segments is a wannabe, trash or should just join one of those.
Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”
#98>The idea of the Internet turning into a battlefield of propaganda is very far away from the ideal. Too late, it already happened, and had nothing to do with data collection. When television was invented, people had much the same visions of utopia: it'll be used to educate people. The internet is now flooded with propaganda from think tanks banked by billionaire wingnuts to the Putin Troll Army.
And think tanks banked by Google, who will pressure them to fire people if they say the wrong thing.
Nice try, but no one's complaining about the Web being flooded with propaganda from Open Markets, nor can really call Eric Schmidt saying he is displeased as "pressure", then every time Steve Jobs threw a fit about a less than 100% positive iPhone review, we'd have to be talking about Apple's control of the media, the blacklisting of reporters, and the withholding of "access".
The kinds of think tanks I'm talking about are things like the Scaife's funding of the Project for A New American Century, you know, the guys who masterminded the Iraq war? Or how about the Koch brothers funding of climate denial? You know, things which actually are fucking up our world and getting people killed.
I would imagine the kinds of propaganda the Vivaldi CEO is worrying about is the kinds that get hate groups out in the streets with Nazi signs, not the kinds that try to lobby the government to protect net neutrality.
Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”
#99"Seems to work" is not the same thing as "Working As Intended". I work on Gmail/Inbox (previously GWT). When we released Inbox, it started out as Chrome only, people discovered they could get it to load and seemingly work on Firefox by spoofing, but the reality was, it was still broken, and would eventually consume all memory, because Inbox relies on sparse Javascript array behavior for protobufs, and something like…
>There was no ill will or evil plan, just finite engineering resources.
Some users seem to think companies have dozens of highly paid programmers sitting around waiting for work day in and day out. My cos programmers are full time working on new features and patches for bugs that have been back logged for weeks or months
Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”
#100"Seems to work" is not the same thing as "Working As Intended". I work on Gmail/Inbox (previously GWT). When we released Inbox, it started out as Chrome only, people discovered they could get it to load and seemingly work on Firefox by spoofing, but the reality was, it was still broken, and would eventually consume all memory, because Inbox relies on sparse Javascript array behavior for protobufs, and something like…
> So you have only a few choices: hold up your release until everyone catches up, ship everyone the same lowest common denominator triaging out the advanced stuff, shipping an app with all kinds of workarounds and fallbacks, or shipping a native mobile one instead. It seems like the article is complaining more about suspension of its adwords campaign than Chromium. Do you have any insight to that?
No, but I imagine that Google's systems are highly automated with lots of false positives. You see this on YouTube channel flagging and demonetization too.