Live data from Hacker News

Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

gomox.medium.com

131–140 of 558 posts

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#131

Why can't companies like google just have a warning and review period before taking actions like this?

Because malware sites are practically ephemeral, pop up and disappear on short time frames. A review period wouldn’t do much except let them game the system even better.

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#132
post #23

After years of seeing developments like this, getting worse and worse, it fills me with rage to think about how clearly nobody in power at Google cares. I naively used to think, "they probably don't realize what's happening and will fix it." I always try to give benefit of the doubt, especially having been on the other side so many times and seeing how 9 times out of 10 it's not malice, just incompetence, apathy, or…

Author here. I don't think it's malice on their part, but their hammer is too big to be wielded so carelessly.

They have the option of not wielding the hammer. I for one never appointed them the guardian of the walled internet.

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" and all that, but after the events and the almost perfectly orchestrated behavior we've seen in the past and last couple of weeks it's becoming increasingly difficult, at least to me, to not attribute this to malice. Probably deliberate negligence is a better term. They know their systems can make mistakes, of course they do, and yet they bui…

"Consciously malicious" is not a good rule of thumb standard to measure threats to yourself or your business; it only accounts for a tiny bit of all possible threats. GP isn't claiming that Google is consciously malicious, they are claiming that you should prepare as if they were. These are not the same thing. A lion may not be malicious when it's hunting you, it's just hungry; look out for it anyway. A drunk driver…

Yes, exactly what I meant, thank you.

And very well said I might add. I don't mean to leave a vapid "I agree with you" comment, but your analogies are fantastic. They are accurate, vivid, and easily understandable.

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#134
Well, as long as you are spending 6 or 7 figures a year on advertising with Google, you'll have a account rep at Google that you can always reach out to. Your ad spending level works as Google's filter for which websites on the internet that they actually give any care about not killing.

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#135

I run https://neocities.org , and safe browsing has been my nightmare overlord for a long time. No way to manage reports via an API, no way to contact support. I haven't even been able to find a suggestions box, even that would be an upgrade here. Digging to find "the wizard" gets you into some official google "community support" forum where you learn the forum is actually run by a non-employee lawful neutral that wa…

> If things ever got extremely horrible, I used to have a friend that worked at google but she no longer works there. The other person I knew that works at google stopped responding to my tinder messages, so I'm pretty much doomed the next time they do something ultra crazy and I need emergency support.

Doing good for the sake of the web, even while dating, that's some next level dedication. :)

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#136

After years of seeing developments like this, getting worse and worse, it fills me with rage to think about how clearly nobody in power at Google cares. I naively used to think, "they probably don't realize what's happening and will fix it." I always try to give benefit of the doubt, especially having been on the other side so many times and seeing how 9 times out of 10 it's not malice, just incompetence, apathy, or…

Your clients will hate you for this as you are creating false positives. Sure, Google is sometimes unethical, but calling them a malicious actor? Really?

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think the stupidity and laziness is exacerbated by their ill will towards customers and users. This is also what prevents them from reforming. The general good will and sense of common purpose was necessary in Google's early days when they portrayed themselves as shepherds of the growth of the web. Now they are more like feudal tax collectors and census takers. Sure they are mostly interested in extracting th…

I was thinking about this this week in the context of online shopping with in store delivery. My wife recently waited nearly half an hour for a “drive up” delivery where she had to check in with an app. Apparently the message didn’t make it to the store, and when she called half way into her wait she wasn’t greeted with consolation, but derision for not understanding the failure points in this workflow. It seems that…

Very poignant observation. I have run into this as well in situations in meat-space everywhere from the DMV queue to grocery pickup.

Empathy and understanding for fellow humans is at an all time low, no doubt exacerbated by technologies dehumanizing us into data points and JSON objects in a queue waiting for the algorithm to service.

As wonderful as tech has made our lives, it is not fully in the category of "better" by any stretch. You're totally right about margins being too high, but I do hope it opens up possibilities that someone is clever enough to hack.

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think another take away from this article is “don’t allow users to upload malicious files to your domain” I disagree, at which point did we all accept Google's role as defacto regulator and arbiter of the Internet? Why should we tacitly accept the constraints they deem as appropriate and modify the way we build the web? In other words, those are our domains, our apps, our systems and we'll do as we please; that i…

When you installed their browser.

I didn’t install their browser.
Post reply on HN