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Google Internal Comics

goomics.net

81–90 of 227 posts

Re: Google Internal Comics

#81
post #69
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any human organization that is not making the world worse in one way or another? Its pretty much relative in any case, hardly purely evil or purely good unless you are very naive or very young.

Public broadcasting/public radio seems like a pure public good. Along with the people working on disaster.radio [0] [0] https://disaster.radio/

public broadcasting? you mean state sanctionned propaganda disguised as news?

Re: Google Internal Comics

#82
post #13

I'm not saying this with the intent of harshly criticizing the author, but I admit it's surprising to me that someone (who had other options) would work for 14 years at a company they clearly came to believe was making the world a worse place.

I had an initial reaction when reading this comics of, "Man, this guy has become very cynical about the company!" I remember reading some of the earliest comics and having a little laugh, but I kind of lost track of it and hadn't checked up on his stuff for a while.

But then I looked back to the earliest comics and even most of those come off as fairly critical of the company. There doesn't seem to be so much of an attitudinal shift as this guy has been focused on criticism from day 1. (Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Every big organization can benefit from reasonable criticism.)

Re: Google Internal Comics

#83
post #49

Lots of good comics in there. A few I haven't seen highlighted yet: https://goomics.net/127/ - poor, poor Google Plus. Somehow it wasn't a warning sign that the big executive-supported project to Win Social was a laughingstock internally. https://goomics.net/202/ followed years later by https://goomics.net/294/ - everybody expected TGIF to get worse over time, and apparently it did. https://goomics.net/118/ - the las…

What's TGIF at Google? Is it a weekly event where you can ask exec questions in an open forum?

That was the original intent

Re: Google Internal Comics

#84
post #77
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any human organization that is not making the world worse in one way or another? Its pretty much relative in any case, hardly purely evil or purely good unless you are very naive or very young.

Most food banks are pretty easily in the "unequivocally good" category, unless you're a Malthusian. Charity Navigator is a great way to find the best-managed and highest-impact food banks.

I volunteer all the time at a food bank.

A lot of the work is sorting the incoming goods. Much of this work is done by volunteers. As a result it isn't uncommon for spoiled food to accidentally be stocked and distributed to people. It is a rare but not infrequent occurrence to have someone get sick and report back to the food bank.

Not unequivocally good! :]

Re: Google Internal Comics

#85
post #81
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public broadcasting/public radio seems like a pure public good. Along with the people working on disaster.radio [0] [0] https://disaster.radio/

public broadcasting? you mean state sanctionned propaganda disguised as news?

Are you sure you know what "public broadcasting" is? It's broadcasting funded by the public, mostly through private donations and some funding through competitive grants.

EDIT: I see from your profile you're not in the US, which is probably the source of the confusion. Examples of Public Broadcasting are https://www.npr.org and https://www.pbs.org.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#86
post #13

I'm not saying this with the intent of harshly criticizing the author, but I admit it's surprising to me that someone (who had other options) would work for 14 years at a company they clearly came to believe was making the world a worse place.

(Opinions are my own) An alternate way of looking at it: When you work at a place you can help influence the culture to move it in the right direction. When you aren't working there you can't .

An employee cannot realistically hope to change the morality of a publicly traded corporation.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#87
post #81
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public broadcasting/public radio seems like a pure public good. Along with the people working on disaster.radio [0] [0] https://disaster.radio/

public broadcasting? you mean state sanctionned propaganda disguised as news?

I'm curious what country you're from to have that point of view. In the US the public radio is extremely clearly not a state sanctioned propaganda; some of the corresponding private news corps are much more.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#88
post #78
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the hardware produced by Google direct users towards Google services that contain advertising? Or are they producing non-consumer hardware?

My Nest devices don't have even tenuous links to advertising.

Nest isn't exactly a profit center for Google though. Presumably it makes sense as a foothold into the smarthome/IOT industry which might become a big surface for ads and they wouldn't want to lose that opportunity (like how some companies have been late to web or late to smartphones to their detriment).

Re: Google Internal Comics

#89
post #59

https://goomics.net/329/ This one has a lot of meme opportunity. Imagine a third pane ("Oracle" or something) with guns pointed both inward and outward!

Related: https://goomics.net/62/ (probably his best-known one).

Considering number of chat apps by Google, they should adopt former MS's one.

Re: Google Internal Comics

#90
post #88
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Nest devices don't have even tenuous links to advertising.

Nest isn't exactly a profit center for Google though. Presumably it makes sense as a foothold into the smarthome/IOT industry which might become a big surface for ads and they wouldn't want to lose that opportunity (like how some companies have been late to web or late to smartphones to their detriment).

That's some very generous speculation. I'll grant you that ads is quite obviously (based on our public filings) profitable, but that doesn't mean every venture seeks to insert ads.
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