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“Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

vivaldi.com

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Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#121

Post by studentrob »

_tulpa wrote: post #74
sandov wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me: When a company treats its users badly, users can stop using Google and Whatever Corp treats them badly. If users voluntarily subject themselves to mistreating, then I don't see why governments should intervene.

This is just the stupid 'vote with your wallet' argument again. Which is stupid because 1) the average user/consumer wallet is 3/10ths of nothing in terms of economic voting power. 2) the average user/consumer can only vote for stuff which exists, and google has done a great job of making sure that there are no competitive alternatives In this case you're "paying" with your data, which has even less voting power beca…

> In this case you're "paying" with your data, which has even less voting power because you can't even opt out of that payment just by not using their services. You'd pretty much have to stop using the internet entirely.

Huh? You can use Firefox, Bing and another email provider.

Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#122

Post by deadowl »

freedomben wrote: post #66
chki wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I respectfully disagree that "we the general public" don't really care about a company's size. I know a lot of people who will not adopt an app or product until the company has proven and/or established itself in the market. I think this describes a lot of Apple users who won't adopt new products until Apple gets in the game (the Apple watch being a recent example). A lot of people want a seamless and connected exper…

And the XMPP Federation couldn't provide that ideal?

Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#123

Post by ryukafalz »

shmerl wrote: post #89
vram22 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving aside XMPP federation (though that is a good point), killing Google Talk itself was a bad idea. It was very good and useful, both the text chat and the voice calls feature, and Hangouts, its replacement, sucks heavily.

I'm using neither, but for me the worst thing were cut off XMPP contacts who were on Google Talk (and later Hangouts). I was reaching them through XMPP federation, and Google really messed things up.

Yeah, it was pretty bad - contacts who were "upgraded" to Hangouts just had me disappear from their contact lists, and on my end it looked like they were constantly in "away" status but they never got my messages.

With no announcement of any of this ahead of time.

Complete mess.

Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#124

Post by andosa »

askafriend wrote: post #85
nialv7 wrote: post #54

Earlier 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.

You have to look at opportunity cost. There is significant dev time that is spent supporting those configuration mixes that relatively few people will use. If that dev time could be spent on other features that will be appreciated by more people, then that is a decision you can make while still adhering to the principle of "users-first".

So a multihundred billion dollar web company doesn't have the dev resources to support Firefox? Even though it already works when you spoof the agent string?

Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#125

Post by namlem »

akerl_ wrote: post #13
tryingagainbro wrote: post #3

Vivaldi CEO – “Google: it is time to return to not being evil” Me: that train has left the station. When you have monopoly power (70%-98% of market share) the governments should return Google and Whatever Corp to not being evil.

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…

The market is only efficient when it's competitive. It is necessary to break up monopolies in order to maintain that competitiveness.

Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#126

Post by reilly3000 »

rasz wrote: post #79
nialv7 wrote: post #54

Earlier 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.

Ive been on both sides and used most google ad products. For a solid 1.5 years we had to use Opera to function in DBM due to Angular memory leaks. I live in DFP now and have to reboot my machine after 3-4 hours in their interface using Chrome and Safari. Maybe they are just a really, really unfathomably big company that always see as users do across every team.

Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#127

Post by jiggunjer »

freehunter wrote: post #110
akerl_ wrote: post #13

Earlier 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…

It's completely possible for someone to have immense market power and not use it for evil. I mean Apple is the richest company in the world but they choose to compete in very niche markets, and hasn't actually completely dominated a market since the iPod even though they easily could with their massive stockpiles of money. Instead of trying to bend the Internet to the point of breaking, Google could just... not do th…

Apple is in a niche market? You mean Starbucks clients?

Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#128

Post by askafriend »

andosa wrote: post #124
askafriend wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to look at opportunity cost. There is significant dev time that is spent supporting those configuration mixes that relatively few people will use. If that dev time could be spent on other features that will be appreciated by more people, then that is a decision you can make while still adhering to the principle of "users-first".

So a multihundred billion dollar web company doesn't have the dev resources to support Firefox? Even though it already works when you spoof the agent string?

Even with all the resources in the world, opportunity cost plays into every decision. To remove that context would be missing my point.

And as always, resources dedicated to a project are finite. The “X billion dollar company can’t do trivial Y thing” isn’t as straightforward as it seems and the argument rarely holds up to scrutiny in my opinion.

We’re missing a ton of internal context here, and to have a real discussion we’d need that context. Otherwise there are tons of valid reasons why the opportunity cost calculation might not have worked out.

Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#129

Post by ucaetano »

tryingagainbro wrote: post #3

Vivaldi CEO – “Google: it is time to return to not being evil” Me: that train has left the station. When you have monopoly power (70%-98% of market share) the governments should return Google and Whatever Corp to not being evil.

Google has >70% market share of ads? In which universe?

You don't seem to understand the definition of monopoly...

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