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To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

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Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#251

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

WalterBright wrote: post #233
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. This is hardly new. I have been at Google since the mid 2000s and this stuff has been around at least since then. There was also a similar training when I was at Microsoft. Btw, in the trainings I've taken, it's not just about avoiding specific words, but avoiding the thoughts behind those words. Our goal shouldn't be to "dominate the competition/market." The goal should be creating compelling experiences and pr…

> it's not just about avoiding specific words, but avoiding the thoughts behind those words. People are always trying to control the thoughts of others by banning certain words. Is there any evidence it works? I've seen plenty of evidence it does not, as the new word simply takes on the meaning of the old one. Then that new word gets banned as well.

The intent was not to control the thoughts by banning the words. The intent was to discourage action based on thoughts of domination, because it is illegal. "These are some things you should not do. Writing down these words would indicate you are doing one of the proscribed actions do don't do that either."

Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#252

Post by monadic2 »

ytdytvhxgydvhh wrote: post #241
monadic2 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that make sense? On paper they just lose the revenue of the Fit without gaining any new revenue elsewhere. That’s just a loss. It takes some magical thinking to argue that these lost customers will move over to the more popular model, a qualitatively different car.

If you’re Honda and you’ve got a factory that can make 100000 cars a year, would you rather make 100000 cars that make $2000 profit? Or 50000 cars that bring $1000 profit and another 50000 cars that bring $2000 profit? If you’re Google and you can only find N top notch software engineers, do you want to put any of them on marginally profitable projects?

I mean, you still need to convince people to buy the cars to get any profit, so I'm not sure what your point is.

>If you’re Google and you can only find N top notch software engineers, do you want to put any of them on marginally profitable projects?

Presumably this depends on what kind of work is needed. I've never worked at a place where profit is correlated to engineering talent, including and especially at Google.

Again, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#253

Post by dodobirdlord »

heavyset_go wrote: post #206
d1zzy wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engineering effort required to split up a mammoth code base where everything has been written based on those assumptions about the rest of the codebase is making such a split extremely unlikely to succeed. We're not talking about a few millions lines of code, we're talking about billions[1] of lines of code. It would take more than a decade of having thousands of engineers work only on this and not do anything el…

Companies with millions of miles of physical infrastructure have been broken up before. You're missing the forest for the trees if you're fixating on the code.

Breaking up physical infrastructure is a lot easier than breaking up something like Google's monorepo, and that's not to mention all of the physical infrastructure Google has all over the world that would have to be divvied up as well.

Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#254

Post by 627467 »

d1zzy wrote: post #168
Afforess wrote: post #8

Google (okay, Alphabet) is the only big tech company that I can imagine would ultimately _benefit_ from an antitrust breakup. Google keeps killing low-to-medium profitable smaller product lines and tools because it can't spin them off successfully. Google can't spin off tools successfully because their internal codebases are deeply reliant on assumptions about Google's infrastructure and Google internal libraries, et…

The engineering effort required to split up a mammoth code base where everything has been written based on those assumptions about the rest of the codebase is making such a split extremely unlikely to succeed. We're not talking about a few millions lines of code, we're talking about billions[1] of lines of code. It would take more than a decade of having thousands of engineers work only on this and not do anything el…

Id like to think that if younger versions of sergey and larry (and other relevant eng working with them) suddenly time traveled to our times they wouldn't think its impossible to build a good search product that doesn't involved "mammoth code base"

Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#255

Post by dodobirdlord »

acituan wrote: post #133
Afforess wrote: post #8

Google (okay, Alphabet) is the only big tech company that I can imagine would ultimately _benefit_ from an antitrust breakup. Google keeps killing low-to-medium profitable smaller product lines and tools because it can't spin them off successfully. Google can't spin off tools successfully because their internal codebases are deeply reliant on assumptions about Google's infrastructure and Google internal libraries, et…

> Google can't spin off tools successfully because their internal codebases are deeply reliant on assumptions about Google's infrastructure and Google internal libraries, etc. (for example: Google Reader could not be spun off This is a not a likely speculation. Did reader really require anything special that doesn’t already exist as a Google Cloud API? Or majority of their killed products honestly? Or to look another…

> This is a not a likely speculation. Did reader really require anything special that doesn’t already exist as a Google Cloud API? Or majority of their killed products honestly?

Yes, absolutely. The Google software stack is custom end-to-end, down to a customized Linux kernel and a customized C++ compiler. If you stripped out all of the Google-specific code of something like Reader there wouldn't be anything left at the end.

> Or to look another way, do you think anyone who has a cloud services platform (Microsoft, Amazon, Google) can really afford having a separate, divergent infrastructure internally?

All three of the companies you mentioned had an internal platform before they had a cloud offering, and all three still have an internal platform that is widely used.

> Haven’t these services started for utilizing excess capacity and economies of scale of existing infrastructure?

No, the "excess capacity" part is a myth. It's a pervasive myth, especially about AWS, but it's not actually true.

Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#256

Post by dodobirdlord »

acituan wrote: post #247
lrem wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really missed the point. It does not matter if the "secret sauce infra" is better than equivalents. What matters is that the code you have is based on it. And since literally everything is based on Stubby, which has a hard dependency on Borg, once you remove the bits of the backend's code that are secret-sauce-dependent you're left with a Makefile ;) Disclaimer: I work in Google, but the above is easily inferred…

> It does not matter if the "secret sauce infra" is better than equivalents. That is what the OP suggested. > What matters is that the code you have is based on it It is the nature of infra structure is to be independent from business logic. I’m not saying any migration would be trivial, but it is also not as cost prohibitive as you seem to be arguing for. RPC is a very old and generic concept, so unless reader was d…

The distinction is less important at Google, where all of the code is in a monorepo and all of the infrastructure was custom-built to support the products.

Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#257

Post by jmole »

jpxw wrote: post #242
danans wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't sound corporate to me at all. Corporate to me is things like "increase synergy". Respecting the opportunities available to you by showing respect for your competitors who are just like you at the end of the day seems like a pretty real and relatable recommendation.

If you need to remind yourself that you need to “respect the competition”, you’re probably a monopoly.

i disagree - to me, "respect the competition" means don't grow complacent.

ebay, for example, doesn't respect the competition (and has grown correspondingly complacent), and it's why sites like reverb are popping up and serving niches far better than ebay does.

Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#258

Post by post_below »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #113
FrojoS wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The search engine alone is a money printing machine even without sophisticated ads. As an example, if I search for 'nike' right now, the first result is an ad payed by Nike leading to nike.com, the second is an ad for an independent webshop selling Nike products and the third is the first actual search result (almost not on the screen anymore), again leading to nike.com So, effectively Nike is paying Google (a lot) t…

I am shocked this isn't illegal yet. Basically what Google is doing in your example is selling Nike it's own trademark, with the subtle threat that if they don't, Google will use Nike's trademark to direct to a competitor instead. The idea that Google can charge Nike to be the top result on a search for Nike is a form of subtle extortion, and I'd have to imagine trademark infringement. It's definitely a form of rent-…

Using Nike as an example it's really just a judgement call on their part. If the next top bidder is a Nike retailer, they lose nothing if they don't bid on the term.

But they do it anyway, their call.

Of course there are examples where a company does stand to lose if they don't bid on their own name, and that sucks, but what's the solution? Give companies free top position on their name? How many variations of their name? Do they get related phrases too? What about when (as with Nike) the word can mean other things? What about when there are multiple claims on the same name? Does Nike the shoe company get a free spot over an educational page about Nike the goddess?

And so on... It's not an easy problem to solve, whereas letting companies choose what they want to bid on is simple.

Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#259

Post by pwinnski »

shadeslayer_ wrote: post #117
pwinnski wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not easily, because how do you separate the now-two uses of "people prefer Google search?" Sometimes they mean "market share" and sometimes they mean "people prefer Google search," and there's now no way to tease them apart reliably.

If it were so, how is it possible for the Google employees to tell them apart?

Right, exactly. They don't want employees talking about market share or dominance at all!

Re: To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo

#260

Post by acituan »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #255
acituan wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google can't spin off tools successfully because their internal codebases are deeply reliant on assumptions about Google's infrastructure and Google internal libraries, etc. (for example: Google Reader could not be spun off This is a not a likely speculation. Did reader really require anything special that doesn’t already exist as a Google Cloud API? Or majority of their killed products honestly? Or to look another…

> This is a not a likely speculation. Did reader really require anything special that doesn’t already exist as a Google Cloud API? Or majority of their killed products honestly? Yes, absolutely. The Google software stack is custom end-to-end, down to a customized Linux kernel and a customized C++ compiler. If you stripped out all of the Google-specific code of something like Reader there wouldn't be anything left at…

> The Google software stack is custom end-to-end, down to a customized Linux kernel and a customized C++ compiler.

Are you really suggesting that the existence of an RSS aggregator hinges on custom linux kernels and C++ compilers?

> all three still have an internal platform that is widely used.

And your point is? None can afford running two divergent platforms simultaneously.

> No, the "excess capacity" part is a myth. It's a pervasive myth, especially about AWS, but it's not actually true.

Citation needed. (Also I didn’t say only excess capacity, also economies of scale.)

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