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Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

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Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#51

Post by Teever »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #40
Teever wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One time I saw a fascinating article about how scientists were working to grow skin complete with natural looking hair from stem cells for burn victims and such. I thought the article was really neat and I was in a hurry so I emailed a the link to myself. The next time I logged into my gmail to read it I happened to be at a machine without adblock and I saw that google was serving me ads for garbage treatments for ma…

The ad probably promoted a product that could regrow hair for bald people. You just took that B̶a̶n̶k̶s̶y̶ Sean Tejaratchi quote and applied it to them. You chose to be offended by it. Sure baldness isn't wrong. But a lot of people like hair better and therefore a market exists for this type of product. Nothing wrong about that.

Repeated viewing of these kinds of ads is precisely what introduces the insecurity in people that makes them seek out the kinds of products being advertised. It's the same thing with skinny models and anorexia in girls.

Advertising is the cause of the 'problem' that they can conveniently solve. Besides some of these 'cures' for baldness have alarming side effects and there should be regulations around advertisement for these products. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merck-propecia-suicide-ex...

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#52

Post by mcv »

elcomet wrote: post #3

Very interesting story! The title (Google being able to kill facebook) seems a bit exagerated though. If this app was so important (25 to 50% of all facebook revenues), and so important to customers (most powerful editor to manage ads), I'm sure if Google had disabled websql, they would have forked some older chrome / electron with websql support and bundle it with the app.

A hit of 25-50% of revenue would certainly have hurt, but probably not killed Facebook.

That people will find a workaround is absolutely true. I once worked on a system to order mobile phone subscription from a website that only worked on IE6. So we had a website that accepted orders from customers, created jobs that would be sent to one of 10 VMs that ran IE6, where a watir script would steer IE6 to enter the order into the old website.

It's the most horrible hack I ever worked on, but it worked.

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#53

Post by username90 »

rvba wrote: post #35
ForHackernews wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that people want to work at Facebook or Google but don't want to work on ads. In other companies, everyone wants to work near the profit center and avoid cost centers.

Because those projects are hard. It is much easier to make a greenfield project that will get 70% done and cancelled before anyone even asks to fix bugs.

Can't have been that hard if half an engineer was enough to do the job.

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#54

Post by yyyk »

hoten wrote: post #26
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not that, though. I heard this story from people involved at the time, and it's not exaggerated in any way, shape or form.

But isn't it? I can believe people inside Facebook really thought it was a critical problem, but I don't see how it could have become any more than an inconvenience. - There's a websql polyfill. I don't have experience with it, but it looks like a drop in replacement. This is such a strong counterpoint, the rest almost doesn't matter. - Features tend to be disabled in Chrome with some advanced warning. Not overnight.…

- Safari supported websql until safari 13 (september 2019), long after this issue stopped being relevant. How many people in an organization need to use PE? Probably only a few in marketing. Surely these few people could have just bought a macbook. A few macbooks must be a very small expense compared to facebook advertising.

- Or IT could have arranged a VM with an old version of Chrome.

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#55

Post by simonh »

username90 wrote: post #53
rvba wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because those projects are hard. It is much easier to make a greenfield project that will get 70% done and cancelled before anyone even asks to fix bugs.

Can't have been that hard if half an engineer was enough to do the job.

The half an engineer was just the last team member around, only doing essential maintenance to keep it working.

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#56

Post by nojokes »

daniellarusso wrote: post #44
baybal2 wrote: post #33

Google actually had a successful social network project, Orkut, they just continuously marginalised it for it to be too NIH for US headquarters.

Wasn’t it very popular in Brazil for some time?

Yes it was. Source - old Orkut user but not from Brazil.

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#57

Post by Pelic4n »

mcv wrote: post #52
elcomet wrote: post #3

Very interesting story! The title (Google being able to kill facebook) seems a bit exagerated though. If this app was so important (25 to 50% of all facebook revenues), and so important to customers (most powerful editor to manage ads), I'm sure if Google had disabled websql, they would have forked some older chrome / electron with websql support and bundle it with the app.

A hit of 25-50% of revenue would certainly have hurt, but probably not killed Facebook. That people will find a workaround is absolutely true. I once worked on a system to order mobile phone subscription from a website that only worked on IE6. So we had a website that accepted orders from customers, created jobs that would be sent to one of 10 VMs that ran IE6, where a watir script would steer IE6 to enter the order…

Absolute cringe, thanks you for this.

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#58

Post by spacemanmatt »

mcv wrote: post #52
elcomet wrote: post #3

Very interesting story! The title (Google being able to kill facebook) seems a bit exagerated though. If this app was so important (25 to 50% of all facebook revenues), and so important to customers (most powerful editor to manage ads), I'm sure if Google had disabled websql, they would have forked some older chrome / electron with websql support and bundle it with the app.

A hit of 25-50% of revenue would certainly have hurt, but probably not killed Facebook. That people will find a workaround is absolutely true. I once worked on a system to order mobile phone subscription from a website that only worked on IE6. So we had a website that accepted orders from customers, created jobs that would be sent to one of 10 VMs that ran IE6, where a watir script would steer IE6 to enter the order…

When BBSes started telling me to call back when I could connect faster than 300 baud, I discovered they would let me in at 110 baud.

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#59

Post by llarsson »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #6
arthurcolle wrote: post #2

That so many smart and talented people choose to work on AdTech or systems that support AdTech is such a shame. That being said, I love these little anecdotes, they are super fun to read.

There are so many aspects of adtech that are ethically neutral. Just as advertising itself - there are even ads created by great creators that are works of modern art. It's only when it's abused adtech becomes evil.

There is a difference between the medium (ads) and the targeting and distribution technology (adtech).

A great ad evokes some kind of feeling, can live with you for a long time, and even bring back memories that you cherish. Yes, I agree with you, it can be a form of art in that regard.

Adtech, however, is an intentionally invasive technology that exploits any means necessary and technologically feasible to more narrowly target potential consumers.

You can have ads without adtech. But you can't have (commercially successful) adtech without invasion of privacy.

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#60

Post by neodymiumphish »

> This became a closely held secret in Facebook Ads leadership. We didn’t want to take any chance that word our this vulnerability could get back to Google.

Considering the tracking Google does with Chrome, I suspect they recognized the traffic still occurring over WebSQL and left it active for exactly this reason. It's highly unlikely that nobody at Google was able to recognize this. Alternatively, maybe Google didn't know about Facebook's reliance on it, but was aware of other services/corporations that still relied on it for some time, and waited until they had an alternative.

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