Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
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Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
291–300 of 366 posts
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You're free to make your own choices. Schmidt (and Google) make no such promise. Use ProtonMail and DDG if you care so much, others will use Google, life moves on. No one is coercing anyone else.
"No one is coercing anyone else" - in a way they are. As a software developer I don't think I have the choice not to use one of the big clouds. Protonmail and DDG I do use, but I can't use Hetzner instead of AWS or GCE if I want to remain competitive. (Offtopic: I am actually starting a new project and this is what I'm struggling with.)
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Once upon a time money was in producing stuff, now stuff and people are so much varied so that the main problem is that of pushing adds No, this is a very misleading comparison. Schmidt (and others) have found a way to commodify your personal information and how to transfer ownership of your data, and as such wealth, from you to Google. They're not the 21st equivalent of Henry Ford, they haven't unleashed new modes…
pushing adds is a service that means it is a 'product' that advertisers are buying. Of course google is also buying our data: its the price for using free products such as search, android and gmail; google is then reselling this data; this takes place either by reselling it directly or by using it as part of their service .
well the whole 'product' is a net loss for humanity in long term and made the whole internet worse for everybody probably forever, so no tears shed for this a-hole
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Is avoiding using "their services" sufficient or even possible/plausible? I may be being overly cynical here, but I think it's relevant. "The homepages of popular sites placed cookies for 275 third-party hosts. In just visiting the homepage of popular sites, we found 32 websites placed 100 or more cookies, 7 websites placed 200 or more cookies, and 6 websites placed 300 or more cookies. We found that Google tracking…
At the time of the comment it was quite possible.
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s been over 15 years and their net income was down year over year, their traffic acquisition costs were up and their margins were down. The “eyeballs” they are creating are less valuable and are more expensive to acquire. Isn’t that the same business plan of every startup? Get “eyeballs” and worry about profit later? What’s going to happen as more people start using ad blockers? They are still just a one trick pon…
>> They are still just a one trick pony. Nothing wrong with that when it got them to a trillion dollar valuation. And Google Cloud has the potential to be even bigger than their entire ad business.
Well “valuation” is just what the stock market thinks. Whether a business is sound is based on things like net income.
If “valuatoon” is all that counts, Uber is a successful company.
Google Cloud isn’t exactly capturing the hearts and minds of most companies compared to AWS and Azure.
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#296Earlier 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.
Privacy is also about solidarity with those who do have something to hide. We want to create a society with herd immunity for dissidents, free thinkers, and even the less controversial yet somehow still controversial; fetishists, (closet) non-traditional-sexuals, or simply those who engage in behaviour that we have only learned to condone, not yet accept. Even if you are not any of those, it is our duty to provide a…
I think your second quoted sentence is a perfectly fine attitude. You have to pick your fights and caring about every possible issue that may affect every possible person is a road down to insanity.
(I say this while I agree with your post otherwise.)
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
Corporations are not meant to disrupt themselves. It just doesn't happen.
Apple disrupted itself at least twice. macOS are the Apple II series iPhone clobbered the iPod.
Both of those are examples of parallel product groups that eventually migrated one set to the other.
The Apple II product line lasted until 1992, by which point the Mac product line had become affordable to the people at which the apple 2 line had been marketed.
The iPod continued as the iPod classic and iPod touch products until 2015, nearly 10 years after the iPhone was released.
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
The comment was "he represents everything wrong with tech", not "everything he's ever done is wrong". There statements are not identical.
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Once upon a time money was in producing stuff, now stuff and people are so much varied so that the main problem is that of pushing adds No, this is a very misleading comparison. Schmidt (and others) have found a way to commodify your personal information and how to transfer ownership of your data, and as such wealth, from you to Google. They're not the 21st equivalent of Henry Ford, they haven't unleashed new modes…
pushing adds is a service that means it is a 'product' that advertisers are buying. Of course google is also buying our data: its the price for using free products such as search, android and gmail; google is then reselling this data; this takes place either by reselling it directly or by using it as part of their service .
If a fast food chain recorded all customer conversations at its tables and then mined that information for profit, most people would consider that unconscionable - even if the conversations were anonymised.
Similarly most people wouldn't be too happy about a physical newspaper or a TV that tracked their eyeballs as they read/watched it - at least not without an opt-out option.
And yet this is very close to what Google does, albeit hidden behind the distancing effect of a search engine and a web browser.
Should we really be grateful?
Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
Through Chrome, which was started internally in 2006 and launched externally in 2008. Though that also was one of those projects where Larry sponsored a couple of talented engineers behind Eric's back and they put out something awesome.
Behind Eric's back? A company that has tens of thousands of employees and you think the co-founder would have to hide a small initial implementation of a project he believed in?
Absolutely. If it isn't hidden, the developers will have to deal with management, credit taking, metrics, attempts to squash the project, jealousy from other employees, unreasonable pressure (surely a browser can be written in 3 months ...) and being treated as a cost center.
All this would happen even if backed by Larry.
It is a miracle that new projects happen at all in companies, though Google of course actually bought many successful projects.