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Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

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

#211

Post by jklm »

bouncing wrote: post #129
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #83

Good riddance. Among other problems, Schmidt was one of the organizers of the "no poaching" scandals: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Role_in_illegal... He also wrote this, to make it clear that he knew he was doing wrong: [let's share this with competitors] "verbally, since I don't want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later?"

That wasn't just him, it was the whole valley.

It wasn't the whole valley, it was specifically Adobe, Apple, Google, and Intel. Absent were Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Microsoft.

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

#212

Post by firebones »

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…

The forces of capitalism and most existing forms of government are anathema to decentralization (inherent in the crypto-blockchain premise). The idealism of decentralization exists only until it meets the overwhelming real world gravity of money. At which point blockchain tech and crypto could only thrive if carried out by hand-calculated hashes on paper transported by motorcycle and carrier pigeon.

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

#213

Post by Cyclone_ »

jnbiche wrote: post #190
dyoo1979 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

> Your point is?

Probably that the "everything wrong with tech" statement was a bit strong if I could speak for the person you responded to. I'm not sure I'd go as far to say he's "everything wrong with tech", would you? He's certainly done lots of good too, along with bad.

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

#214

Post by apetresc »

lugg wrote: post #206
KeenFox wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is 99% woo, but the 1% is interesting. The interesting stuff isn't world-stompingly amazing, so it gets less press. I like the idea of someday being able to take pennies worth of payments from places where transaction fees alone at traditional payment processors represent a huge % of income. Bitcoin won't be the one to do it, but some of the coins that depend on something other than proof of work might. At lea…

Penny payments will never* be viable. * Never say never. Basically I don't think it could possibly be viable because it would require the total cost of transaction to be less than pennies. That includes the shopkeepers time to manage the automated store, the electricity used in the transaction, and a bunch of other non zero components. Hell even transactions with real pennies today are almost a net loss. We eradicate…

> We eradicated 5c coins in NZ because they cost something like 6c to make.

Why would that matter? A 5c coin is spent thousands, millions of times. Why would there need to be any connection at all between how much it costs to make the coin and the value that coin represents in a transaction?

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

#215

Post by icelancer »

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…

Conveniently you (and everyone else who quotes that line) left out the following part.

"But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And [...] we’re all subject, in the US, to the Patriot Act, and it is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."

His whole point is to NOT use their services because they are bound by law to turn over that kind of data. Not to shame you.

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

#216

Post by klyrs »

chacham15 wrote: post #203
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.

I disagree, I wouldnt send a nude photo to a single stranger (even if they wouldnt send/show it to anyone else).

Strangers, sure. Would you send one to a sexual partner?

Medical records are another good example. Most people are squeamish about reproductive and sexual health... but share such info with a doctor.

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

#217

Post by dnr »

paganel wrote: post #73
dekhn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other big thing was Larry pushed social on the company without really understanding social as a product, and was absolutely unable to handle the huge negative response both internally and externally to that push. This all happened at the same time Microsoft and Amazon committed to Cloud (which Google has only tepidly adopted). The one time I met with Schmidt to explain my cloud project, he was delighted and encou…

I think Page had the right idea, because if you look nowadays at people under 30 for them the Internet is represented by social networks, be it Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or even Snapchat, the internet/web represented by the browser and by visiting different websites via Google is no longer that important. I think Page realized that if Google doesn't hop on the social train they'll end up looking from the outside…

But Google completely failed at "hopping on the social train". Are they now irrelevant? It seems now that that "realization" was just wrong.

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

#218

Post by PakG1 »

icelancer wrote: post #215
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…

Conveniently you (and everyone else who quotes that line) left out the following part. "But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And [...] we’re all subject, in the US, to the Patriot Act, and it is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities." His whole point is to NOT use their services…

I'm not making fun of you, I'm just guessing that the value you get from my service is worth more than the concerns you have about your privacy. Come join me. I promise I won't hurt you so much. You'll enjoy it.

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

#220

Post by mrb »

plorkyeran wrote: post #154
UncleMeat wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's market cap is 850B. The existence of some very successful companies in crypto does not mean that Google made a mistake by not jumping on that train.

Raising a bunch of money at a high valuation isn't enough to make a company "very successful" either.

Coinbase grew from zero to an $8B valuation in just over 6 years. If that isn't "very successful", what is? ;)
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