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Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

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Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#601

Post by mr_woozy »

zaarn wrote: post #592
chenning wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but there certainly is evidence out there that suggests Google in fact does respect user privacy. For example, activity.google.com. They are also pretty up front about their privacy policy, how they use cookies, data retention policy, and so forth on policies.google.com. There is a lot of information there. There's a case to be made that Google is trying to do the right thing.

What Google does is try to look like they're respecting privacy and following the privacy laws only to the minimum amount possible. Google of course cares a lot that your data doesn't get into the hands of other companies, after all, it's THEIR data. That's were their care ends.

this ++

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#602

Post by gtirloni »

warent wrote: post #83
gtirloni wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This meme has to die. It's time.

When the entire culture of a multibillion dollar megacorporation has become one big meme, there's not much that can be done

I remember Google's earlier days when they shutdown projects and people praised them for iterating fast, not carrying weight, etc. The only difference now is that they have more users but I think they have given enough warnings about their shutdowns, IMHO.

Now that Google Is Evil (tm), we don't seem to appreciate that behavior as much as we did in the past.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#603

Post by sbarre »

linza wrote: post #562
sbarre wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying "they fully respect their users privacy" is also blunt and not nuanced. They are a huge company with thousands of teams pursuing their own agendas and made up of people of varying degree of scruples and viewpoints with regards to privacy. I've worked for large companies that handle sensitive user data, and they all have at least some teams of people trying to figure out how they can respect the letter of priva…

What i meant was that i believe they try to follow the law around privacy. The law might not be "good enough", but that's in us not them (modulo the lobbying). I'm not trying to say larger companies are innocent. Saying they don't respect privacy insinuates to me that they intentionally violate the law, and i don't think that that's true.

If you only base good/bad actions around the law (which I understand is really the only _real_ reference point we have), then that's part of the problem.

Technology moves faster than the law, we all know this.. What we need are ethical companies who not only respect the law but also respect the data owners.

We need a company with a motto like "don't be evil" or something like that.. if only, right? ;-)

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#604

Post by stopads »

koheripbal wrote: post #540
dragonwriter wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea behind that originally was that all of these other projects were going to become so significant that it wouldn't make sense to have them or their management coupled with Google. No, the idea was that they were high risk speculative efforts and that it didn't make sense to have their branding mixed up with Google, which is a stable, established industry leader.

That's a semantic distinction. All major corporations have highly speculative projects that they aren't certain will succeed. With (relatively) minor investments most don't form an umbrella corporation to distinguish them. In this case, I dont see anything else coming out of non-Google alphabet of meaningful significance, and this org change kind of highlights that. In my personal opinion, the Google founders probabl…

In the past major corporations used to launch speculative research projects and risky ventures, but that rarely happens any more. All the resources are being shifted to stock buybacks, everything else is a secondary priority.

Some companies like Chevron and Texas Instruments have even committed in writing to "returning 100% of all cash flow in perpetuity" to buybacks and dividends. So yes, they have legal contracts saying they won't agree to invest in future growth or investments or research no matter how much money they make, they are so committed to this buyback first model.

Google is a true leader in the buyback wars, they were the first company to commit to $25B in buybacks per quarter, which used to be a shockingly large number for these programs. Lots of other companies have followed that pattern since.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#605

Post by arrosenberg »

ALittleLight wrote: post #424
arrosenberg wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug abuse and obesity are generally a response to chronic stress. America has a chronic stress epidemic due to our work culture and lack of social safety nets. Philanthropic billionaires are people (or progeny of those) who successfully exploited this system. Ergo, the existence of one is correlated with the other, and they share a common cause.

Has our work culture recently become more stressful or our safety nets diminished?

Both, but probably more of the latter. Since the 70s the entire economy and society has been built for consumption and price optimization. That has resulted in both higher life stresses (more two income working households, most Americans have no savings, etc.) and encouraged politicians to cut safety nets which might have diminished the negative effects.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#606

Post by spudlyo »

hordeallergy wrote: post #574
auiya wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dont see anything else coming out of non-Google alphabet of meaningful significance YouTube. But in general I agree with you.

Does anyone know how the subscription YouTube is working out? They sure are putting a good effort into getting me signed up.

If you love YouTube and hate advertising, then Premium is a very easy decision to make. I'm more than happy to pay Google $12 a month so I can have an ad-free experience on my TV, iPad, phone, and computer.

I have both Netflix and HBO-Now as well, but I'm thinking about canceling them, as 90% of my viewing time is spent on YouTube.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#607

Post by summerlight »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #532
danso wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the big tech companies have avoided "wading into politics" since 2016. Tech is far too big and inextricable a part of society for any competent CEO to think they could hide on the sidelines.

There's a big difference between "hiding on the sidelines" and maintaining a neutral stance in public. Apple's Tim Cook is an example of the latter.

In fact, Tim Cook has been actively engaging with politicians (including Trump) and that is a part of his magic sauce for "maintaining a neutral stance in public".

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#609

Post by DubiousPusher »

tsimionescu wrote: post #481
juanbyrge wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say the exact same things about the supposedly 'innovative' companies. Did Apple invest desktop computers? No, they copied the concept from Xerox. Same story with the iPod (Rio), the iPhone (Blackberry) and Watch (Garmin).

Sure, there are no completely innovative products. But the difference I see is this: going from a clunky, ugly, essentially business-only phone like the Blackberry to ubiquitous smart-phones is a more close to a difference in kind. Essentially, before the iPhone, most people did not believe they needed a smartphone. On the other hand, most people before Gmail did know that they need a mail provider, Gmail was 'just'…

> Essentially, before the iPhone, most people did not believe they needed a smartphone.

I think that's way overstating it. Long before iPhone people were asking for more software features out of their phones. Browsing, email, music, etc.

Even the touchscreen and the development model were things tried in the past with many attempts by various companies to make the PDA a success.

Apple did exactly what you say. They took a few ideas whose time had come, ideas that just happened to be in their wheel house from the work they did on iPod and presented them better than anyone had before.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#610

Post by dhimes »

tyre wrote: post #586
endorphone wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way this seems like an admission of the failure of the "Alphabet" thing. The idea behind that originally was that all of these other projects were going to become so significant that it wouldn't make sense to have them or their management coupled with Google. But a half-decade later, it's still 99.9% Google, so just double-up the Google guy to lead both tiers. Same as it ever was.

> The idea behind that originally was that all of these other projects were going to become so significant that it wouldn't make sense to have them or their management coupled with Google. This isn't entirely true. A major consideration was fear of anti-trust litigation. If all of these are the same company/orgs/departments, then you could reasonably say that this "search company" is far too powerful. If there's a se…

This was my understanding as well.
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