41–50 of 173 posts
So far, I've only been disappointed by these troll posts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I actually had a cable subscription, I would totally agree with you, too. I have a TV hooked up to my computer that I use for Netflix/Hulu/Amazon Prime Instant rather than deal with Comcast. Unfortunately, if I were setup like this in the UK I'd still have to pay the BBC licence. Actually, I say "unfortunately", but I would actually be okay with it. The Beeb has some amazing content. But there are definitely more…
IIRC, you only have to pay for a TV license if you watch BBC stuff as it's being broadcast. You have the option of saying you don't need a license, in which case they send someone around to make sure you aren't lying. This is how it is currently at my place (althought they never got around to sending their van over..)
That's the whack part I was alluding to.
It's strange to have some moral objection to advertising because advertising is, ultimately, a form of discovery, a way of connecting people who want or need something with those that supply it. Ad revenue on the Internet, almost by definition, means someone found something they wanted. How exactly is it bad to connect people with things they want and need? The problem with advertising is when it gets too obtrusive,…
In the case of Google ... that purpose is to serve ads. It's like saying that human's purpose is to consume food. Food is our way to get energy we need to do something - anything, actually. We would die without food, but are we limited to that? (Okay, some people actually are, but these are few). Google did A LOT - probably more than any other company - to organize and structure data, make it more accessible - THAT i…
Google's mission statement is: "Google’s mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
Nothing in that statement necessarily presumes the use of ads to pay for it. If users said "we'd rather pay 1c per search than see ads" (and the math added up) Google would change to that instead.
I'm currently an intern at Google. Everyone knows where the money comes from, but day-to-day, engineers talk about what's best for the users, not about what's going to help connect ads. That's what the ads division is for, and that's only one of 7 product groups.
Everyone else is trying to make products to help people, and even ads feels like its helping too by finding you the products you want more quickly.
So I do strongly think that no matter how interesting the problems, and no matter how good the pay one should avoid working in areas that do cause harm to others.
Unfortunately the world we live in is a bit more complicated that than one the Buddha lived in, so answering the question "Does what I do cause harm to others?" is a bit trickier to answer. I personally don't know if selling ads meets that qualification, I certainly don't think that merely making a profit does, and I don't know enough about the field to know about HFT and the like. But I do think the important thing to do is ask yourself that question, and if you aren't happy with your answer then it may be time to look elsewhere.
If you happen to take a wider view, almost our entire society is frivolous. Banks, politicians, salesmen, lawyers... very few people actually do anything that improves peoples lives in meaningful ways. Farmers, scientists, teachers, and construction workers are maybe the exception.
Many farmers, scientists, teachers, and construction workers lead meaningful careers. But think about McDonalds. The food is grown by "farmers", the buildings were built by construction workers, the people who work there were taught by teachers, and the food was created by scientists. Some, but not all, of those people are doing meaningful work. Now consider the banker that renegotiates mortgages with long time custo…
I happen to work for Facebook, and a large fraction of my friends and family are expatriates. A place to easily keep in touch, share photos of kids, chat with abuelita, all that boring stuff, directly improves our quality of life. When I recommend Linux for my friends, the top two "programs" they care about are Skype and Facebook. After that, maybe Youtube. As for the ads, yes, that's a source of revenue. If that is…
I was going to comment that Google, Facebook and Twitter are platforms for search, connections and communicating respectively. Ads are simply a revenue model. If Facebook charged $20 per month, would you work for them then? However, after seeing comments like: I work for facebook - "advertising is itself a worthwhile problem." and... I work for google - "People in non-advertising teams hardly ever ask 'how will this…
The OP has a point: most advertising is a waste of time for both the advertiser and the recipient. There are many perverse incentives that skew outcomes, even leaving aside spam and scams. It's totally fine to hate bad ads.
But condemning advertising per se because most ads don't work is like condemning programming because most strings of characters don't compile.
In the case of Google ... that purpose is to serve ads. It's like saying that human's purpose is to consume food. Food is our way to get energy we need to do something - anything, actually. We would die without food, but are we limited to that? (Okay, some people actually are, but these are few). Google did A LOT - probably more than any other company - to organize and structure data, make it more accessible - THAT i…
Absolutely. Google's mission statement is: "Google’s mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Nothing in that statement necessarily presumes the use of ads to pay for it. If users said "we'd rather pay 1c per search than see ads" (and the math added up) Google would change to that instead. I'm currently an intern at Google. Everyone knows where the money comes fro…
Yeah. Show me one company which doesn't have a mission statement like helping people, curing diseases, feeding the hungry...