Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 366 posts

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#181

Post by spookthesunset »

nostrademons wrote: post #23
manigandham wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cryptoverse What exactly is this and what business is doing well in it?

The set of companies & foundations centered around blockchain, cryptocurrency, distributed ledgers, and related technologies. Coinbase, Binance, CoinMarketCap are doing great, Bitmain would be doing great except they made a terrible bet on Bitcoin Cash, a number of other organizations (VeChain, IOTA, Ripple, Stellar, Ethereum) are doing "we'll see", and still others (Bitfinex, Tether, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV) are im…

The whole space is a pile of scams the entire way down. As we are just now learning, tether, the "stablecoin" that makes up the backbone of the entire crypto economy was basically a fraud.

The tech has had 10 years and so far it has produced absolutely nothing of value. In fact considering the damage it has done to the environment, it has been only contributing negative value to the planet.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#182

Post by spookthesunset »

nostrademons wrote: post #77
sdenton4 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) Opportunism is good business. b) 'Wasting time' is a part of research. If you never fail, you're missing opportunities. That said, you pick your failures with the hope of getting the right kinds of wins... which brings us to... c) Giant centralized cloud-based businesses have giant centralized and for-the-most-part trusted datastores. There's no reason to use a blockchain if a standard distributed database suits y…

Yeah, I totally agree that for the sort of problems that Google or Amazon faces , blockchains are a terrible solution. There are well-known best practices for scalable distributed computing, and blockchains are not them. I'm equally convinced - and I suspect I disagree with most HNers here - that there are also some problems for which blockchains are the only solution - they just don't work with centralized data stor…

> that there are also some problems for which blockchains are the only solution

Name a single actual problem that is only solved by the blockchain.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#183

Post by fareesh »

vl wrote: post #53
neves wrote: post #41

I'm starting to read "When Google Met WikiLeaks" by Assange. In this book Schmidt is the villain. It will be nice to match Assange's point of view with all the eulogies that we will read about Schmidt now.

Schmidt's involvement with US's politics is strange, especially for the business leader: he met with Assange, he went to North Korea. There was a hilarious moment at the company meeting when rank-and-file learned from the news that Eric and Larry met with Trump. Somebody demanded explanation, as if it is something strange that business leaders meet with the president. Sundar mumbled something like "yes, I didn't know…

Some of those leaked videos of the Google team discussing politics with their top management at one of those meetings, are disturbing.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#184

Post by pishpash »

derefr wrote: post #178
jeffdavis wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy is usually not about things you don't want anyone to know. It's about things you don't want everyone to know.

More specifically, privacy is about things that you want to isolate to one sub-self and its corresponding social circle. Everyone leads a “double life” (or N lives) to some degree, and privacy is the societal etiquette allowing for the continued separation of those lives (without having to go to the effort of using real OPSEC to isolate them.)

Admittedly, Google+ tried with circles but sounds like a bandaid to a problem that didn't exist in the first place until Facebook along with myopic social do-gooders forced everyone to use real names online.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#185

Post by vertline3 »

ehsankia wrote: post #119
vertline3 wrote: post #112

I still dislike that they called the company Alphabet, because it's something that we teach our youngest. Commercialization starts early.

It's meant to be alpha-bet, where alpha is investment return above benchmark.

Ahh that makes sense, like seeking alpha. I was thinking it was due to indexing things from A to Z.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#186

Post by inapis »

rattlesnakedave wrote: post #102
meh206 wrote: post #72

Google is an internet monopoly with data and information. I think the only reason they've come this far without being exposed as such was cooperating with the government (learning from Microsoft's mistakes when they were exposed)

What do they have a monopoly on? The claim that Google, or any FAANG company is a monopoly is absurd. A monopoly is the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service. Google definitionally doesn’t have that, because competitors exist.

While definitely not a monopoly under the contemporary definition, I do not find it hard to believe that these companies are having an outsized influence on markets, society and politics. They end up having monopolistic effects without actually being a monopoly.

Case in point, it’s extremely hard to get discovered on internet without paying google/Facebook. Even if you are not running ads, google can wipe out a significant chunk of your internet traffic with their algorithm changes. Or google’s insane policy for Android OEM manufactures (which EU took a notice of). Amazon controls your retail presence - you can’t have cheaper products anywhere else. If you have a particularly popular product, Amazon will make its own version.

The average consumer still has an abundance of choice and low prices so the current market powers of these companies do not fit the definition of monopoly that was applied to Microsoft in the 90s. I think there needs to be another word or the definition of a monopoly needs to be updated. These companies still have an influence which teeters close the impact created by historical monopolies.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#187

Post by lallysingh »

rusk wrote: post #123
philsnow wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "trouble" with Orkut was the large majority of those users were outside the United States. Brazil and later India made up the majority. Those eyeballs weren't worth as much to advertisers, and I don't think Google valued the product highly because of it.

> Those eyeballs weren't worth as much to intelligence agencies

Where on the 10-Q is revenue from intelligence agencies? I seemed to have missed that line.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#188

Post by dyoo1979 »

basetop wrote: post #160

Eric Schmidt was the anti-privacy leader who dismissed privacy concerns. "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmid... Keep in mind this is the same guy who blackballed CNET reporters for finding personal information on him through google search. https://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology…

He's also a co-author of Lex.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_(software)

It's human nature to demonize folks.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#189

Post by MajorBee »

quixquaxqux wrote: post #130
beenBoutIT wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear that for some people Google has become synonymous with "the Internet".

Wouldn't it need to be "the internet" for _all_ people to be a monopoly?

I don't necessarily see Google as having a monopoly over the internet, but more as "The Gatekeeper" to the internet. Most people around the world go through Google if they're trying to reach somewhere (especially if they don't already have the target site bookmarked). The fact that they're the de-facto curators of content gives them enormous influence over people's perception of the internet.

The question is, do we want a largely unregulated private corporation to hold that much sway over entire populations?

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#190

Post by jnbiche »

dyoo1979 wrote: post #188
basetop wrote: post #160

Eric Schmidt was the anti-privacy leader who dismissed privacy concerns. "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmid... Keep in mind this is the same guy who blackballed CNET reporters for finding personal information on him through google search. https://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology…

He's also a co-author of Lex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_(software) It's human nature to demonize folks.

> He's also a co-author of Lex.

Your point is?

> It's human nature to demonize folks.

Is that criticism of Schmidt or the parent comment? If Schmidt, he was not so much demonizing people as just not giving a shit about them.

And we hold our leaders to higher standards than the common man. In prior generations, our "elites" held themselves to higher standards as well. Not any longer, it seems. Regardless of how high you rise in society, as long as you can claim decent from the middle class, you hold yourself responsible for nothing outside of yourself and your in-group.

Post reply on HN