Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by nnq » Wed, May 01, 2019, 8:52 AM UTC

ok-repl wrote: post #271

throwaway6497 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will always remember him as the guy who would willingly collude with other mentees of Bill Campbell to not hire engineers from each others companies. Willingly trying to keep the salaries of engineers low is pure evil. They even tried to rope-in Zuckerberg into this gentleman's agreement. Zuck asked them to buzz off. When Eric is involved in shady practices like these, how do all other leaders on twitterverse who a…

Those poor underpaid Googlers

...higher salaries in one place tend to pull up salaries elsewhere too. And conversely, if you push down the top, you also push down the middle (under the optimistic assumption that the bottom can't go any further down...).

Also, it's easy for other industries to then justify with: "hey, even Google is doing it, and they were they guys supposed to 'do not evil', amirite?".

That's the problem with unethical behavior, we're all into copying and generalizing stuff :|

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

#302

Post by icedbergs1 » Wed, May 01, 2019, 9:01 AM UTC

apetresc wrote: post #214

lugg wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Possibly the bullion value trending in such a way people might be tempted to start scrapping them in the foreseeable future :)

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

#303

Post by sneak » Wed, May 01, 2019, 9:13 AM UTC

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?"

To me, the big story is not so much that he attempted it, or that he tried to cover it up, or that he got busted doing something totally illegal, or that he was never prosecuted criminally, or that the judge threw out the initial settlement for being hilariously low, or that the revised settlement was still a small fraction of the billions estimated that the conspirators cheated away from staff...

It is that all of this happened, was well documented and publicly reported... and Google’s board did absolutely nothing. He continued in high ranking positions there for another ~decade. They sent a clear message that they find this sort of criminal conspiracy to be A-OK, nothing worth firing the guy over, or indeed reprimanding him in any meaningful way whatsoever.

To me that’s a bigger story than the Andy Rubin thing.

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

#304

Post by lapnitnelav » Wed, May 01, 2019, 9:14 AM UTC

Beldin wrote: post #273

lapnitnelav wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one would like to thank Larry for messing this up. While current situation is far from perfect (looking at you Mark Z), I don't think having the Borg being the top dog on both Search and Social would have been a great thing at all.

You mean: "the top dog in search, online videos, web analytics, web ads, and social". It could have been a bit worse. It could have been a lot better as well: google already has one of its fingers on about half the pages of the Internet.

Exactly, thank you for fixing my mistake.

Uncle G has already too much grasp on the web as it is.

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

#305

Post by _khau » Wed, May 01, 2019, 9:16 AM UTC

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #235

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…

> Eric Schmidt was the anti-privacy leader who dismissed privacy concerns. Well, he did understand how to turn the customers data into a product. He is one of the key persons who formed the whole data economy thing; that's quite a big deal - he formulated the way of making money for the 21st century. Once upon a time money was in producing stuff, now stuff and people are so much varied so that the main problem is tha…

> Well, he did understand how to turn the customers data into a product. He is one of the key persons who formed the whole data economy thing; that's quite a big deal - he formulated the way of making money for the 21st century.

You keep repeating this as if it is somehow axiomatically good.

The surveillance capitalism business model is not one we should be proud of in any way.

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

#306

Post by icelancer » Wed, May 01, 2019, 9:18 AM UTC

patkai wrote: post #292

icelancer wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

The companies aren't the ones that are the problems here if you're worried about the clouds here and privacy.

It is the United States government, their laws, and enforcement.

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

#307

Post by lsc » Wed, May 01, 2019, 9:22 AM UTC

rapsey wrote: post #263

throwaway6497 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will always remember him as the guy who would willingly collude with other mentees of Bill Campbell to not hire engineers from each others companies. Willingly trying to keep the salaries of engineers low is pure evil. They even tried to rope-in Zuckerberg into this gentleman's agreement. Zuck asked them to buzz off. When Eric is involved in shady practices like these, how do all other leaders on twitterverse who a…

Sorry but this is just hopelessly naive and one sided. Sillicon valley is more then google and apple, and if the competition is only between them with regards to salary then those engineers have nothing to complain about.

>Sillicon valley is more then google and apple

It is... but the top tier companies pay dramatically more than the next tier down. Like, we're talking 30-50% difference once you count total comp.

(it's interesting, base salary is somewhat comparable... but stock and bonus are a big part of comp if you work at a FAANG company, and those... largely don't exist at third-tier companies.)

The top-tier employers also do a lot to bring up salary pressure on the lower tiers; if the FAANG companies didn't pay so much, the most desirable people wouldn't leave the lower paying companies, wouldn't make room for someone less desirable, etc... That's how I got my start; I didn't go to college, but I did work my way up through those smaller companies, into larger companies that paid better and better.

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

#308

Post by sirkneeland » Wed, May 01, 2019, 9:24 AM UTC

systemBuilder wrote: post #141

m0zg wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Larry doesn't get a pass on this one. I was there at the time, and this (unlike, say, Cloud) clearly was one of "his" projects, something he pushed relentlessly and cared about a lot. That's why G+ was where you went if you wanted a quick and easy promo: you could launch a total embarrassing turd and just because Larry liked G+ that turd would be promotion worthy nevertheless. Seeing the FB revenue figures today…

Google is not going to sell every g*damn email you ever sent for $$$, but Facebook will and does. So there was never as much profit there for Google as for Facebook because Google was run more ethically.

Wait, how does FB have my sent emails? I'd think sent emails were one of the few things they don't have access to

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

#309

Post by ionised » Wed, May 01, 2019, 9:34 AM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #191

inapis wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 signi…

There's no law against that, and we (USA) try to be a country of law.

That's why you add new laws to prohibit things you find damaging to society.

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

#310

Post by Expez » Wed, May 01, 2019, 9:34 AM UTC

apetresc wrote: post #214

lugg wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If the extra cost is labor it's fine, but not if it's material cost. People have been know to melt down coins and sell the metal when the intrinsic value of the coin exceeds its face value. This practice is illegal most places, but avoiding the situation altogether is probably better!