To head off regulators, Google makes certain words taboo • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by unishark » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 2:44 AM UTC

compiler-guy wrote: post #57

If you think this rule is silly because the lawyers ought to know that when an engineer says something that uses a term used colloquially that the lawyers will interpret legally, you aren't allowed to be pedantic when a non-programmer uses a programming term incorrectly either. Like, you can't complain when someone says "growing exponentially" when they mean "growing really fast." It's the same sort of problem, and i…

All of these miscommunications are not a problem ultimately because this is the nature of communication. And lawyers especially know this.

The rule is silly because the idea was silly from the start. Some companies got themselves in trouble in the news due to their work emails. Let's pay someone (too much money) to establish some rules. That overpaid person now has to come up with something to justify getting that money. Result: a bunch of silliness and common sense wrapped up in a new training hassle for everyone.

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

#262

Post by acituan » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 2:48 AM UTC

dodobirdlord wrote: post #256

acituan wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Monorepo doesn’t mean a monolith, it is about code repositories, not about the extent of software reuse. You could convert the entirety of open source code into a monorepo too, but it wouldn’t mean they magically reuse each other.

> all of the infrastructure was custom-built to support the products.

That tells me you might not have experienced software development in a large company. I don’t know the specifics of Google, but custom tailoring infra is a combinatorially explosively problem if you have hundreds/thousands of products you need to “custom tailor” to. And if you could, would the result be really custom tailored anymore or general enough to have universal use? Your argument is self contradictory.

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

#263

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 2:54 AM UTC

ytdytvhxgydvhh wrote: post #184

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…

I’m not sure that it’s insane to kill off profitable products. Some folks were upset recently that Honda is discontinuing the Fit subcompact hatchback in the US. That’d be easily understandable if it were an unpopular, unprofitable product. But the Fit was well-loved and dealers struggled to keep them on the lots. So why did Honda kill it? The HR-V subcompact SUV based on the Fit has been produced for the US in the s…

But in the long term you'll hit saturation on the more popular model, so you should still invest in any model that clears some ROI bar. Especially when that car (or that google product) is already designed and in production!

And an already-working piece of software is much easier to keep running than a car production line. It needs servers but Google has a nearly infinite supply of servers for sale. The constrained resource is coder hours, and keeping something going with a few improvements requires only a sliver of those.

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

#264

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 3:07 AM UTC

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-…

You can use a trademark as long as it's clear that you are not the owner of the trademark.

Sometimes there's an argument that a competitor buying an ad would be infringing. But google's definitely not infringing. The layman would never see this link and think it means that google search is a service from nike.

Definitely extortive though!

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

#265

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 3:11 AM UTC

Stick a fork in it, it's done. Once a corporation starts lying to itself and employees are expected to participate, it's doomed. I agree that a breakup would be the best thing for the individual units at this point.

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

#266

Post by monadic2 » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 3:22 AM UTC

ummonk wrote: post #216

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.

What I got from that comment is that they're supply constrained, and gain new revenue elsewhere by producing more of the HR-V.

Why would they think that demand of the HR-V is likely to increase if they remove the fit? I understand removing unprofitable lines, but if it’s making money why fix something that ain’t broken?

If they’re worried about competing with themselves, they’ve blatantly told you as a customer the car you want is too desirable for you to have it. Wtf?

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

#267

Post by Nasrudith » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 3:36 AM UTC

mthoms wrote: post #105

Nasrudith wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't a lie it is more a memento mori sort of thing and well founded paranoia. Take MySpace as an example. If they really messed up do you think bing or duckduckgo wouldn't eat their lunch? The graveyards are filled with indispensable men.

It seems intentionally worded to provide plausible deniability. It's one thing to say "don't assume we will always dominate search" and another to say "don't assume we currently dominate search". The latter "assumption" is an outright falsehood (in the context of the overall search market).

Bizzarely heurestic delusions and self-deception can be useful for taking to heart something which isn't literally true.

Take "the gun is always loaded" rule. Now nobody thinks it means that if they pull the trigger repeatedly on a gun with no ammo they will cause an empty gun to occasionally fire a shot or two after cycling through it many time. It means always treating it as such to avoid any slipups from when it is "not loaded" when it has one in the chamber even after removing the magazine, one loaded from the magazine after clearing the chamber before removing the magazine, etc. The costs of treating an empty gun you don't intend to use as loaded are nothing compared to a mishandling so it is perfectly rational.

In this case it could be argued a similiar thing for the company. Assuming they currently dominate search when there are up and coming ones, subsections which don't technically fit the same category and can take them by surprise (voice assistants like Alexa taking that role is quite optimistic but plauisble enough that consumers could wind up preferring it), or similiar?

It would be "monopolistic" in that it helps keep them on top but "anybody" can self-delude to drive their actions so it isn't anticompetitive any more than say being the only jeweler in the country with fifty years of experience is.

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

#268

Post by ocdtrekkie » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 3:38 AM UTC

post_below wrote: post #258

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Simple... and very profitable for Google. ;)

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

#269

Post by okennedy » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 3:39 AM UTC

edmundsauto wrote: post #226

heavyset_go wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google keeps killing low-to-medium profitable smaller product lines and tools because it can't spin them off successfully It's worse than that, Google releases products for free killing competitors in the markets they enter, and once those competitors are gone, Google pulls their products.

I feel like I agree with this statement, but I can't think of any examples. Google Fiber doesn't seem to fit, or Reader, or Wave, which are the most commonly cited examples of popular products that got killed.

Google Reader?

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

#270

Post by joshuamorton » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 3:42 AM UTC

acituan wrote: post #260

dodobirdlord wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 myt…

Pick a piece of infrastructure: server (k8s), container (docker), RPC protocol (GRPC), user auth/ACLs, etc. and now understand that the internal version is different, and you need to replace it.

At that point, you're rewriting the entire system, except for some of the business logic (and even a lot of the business logic will need to be rewritten).

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

I think what they're saying is that all three do run divergent platforms simultaneously, today, right now. So clearly they can afford it.