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An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

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Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#181

Post by matheusmoreira »

willvarfar wrote: post #5

I remember when google was the shining light of “be nice company” that we all dreamed of working for, at odds with the evil that was M$crosoft. And, from reading all the “why I left google” posts and hearing about them leaving China, the old google of 20 or even just 10 years ago was the good or even just a better google. With how google went from “do no evil” to this, with how Facebook has always been profits over e…

> I remember when google was the shining light of “be nice company” that we all dreamed of working for

Yeah. I remember their "don't be evil" bullshit. It was all just marketing. You can perpetrate all kinds of dishonest acts when you have a reputation for honesty.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#182

Post by caskstrength »

bawolff wrote: post #19
bserge wrote: post #11

GMail's mark as spam feature has become "report spam". Meaning, you just report something as spam to Google. They decide what it actually is. And indeed, it works perfectly. I've marked Twitter/Facebook/Amazon/Freelancer/YouTube as spam and they always come back to the Inbox.

Or you know you could just undubscribe from those. Its not like major tech companies are ignoring unsubscribe requests.

It is 2021 and people are still fearlessly clicking on links in random spam emails?

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#183

Post by throwaway4good »

sseagull wrote: post #172
throwaway4good wrote: post #160

Is this what caused the big sell off in the sector Friday? If half of what is alleged is true, it will be enough to bring down big companies (but perhaps maybe not as big and powerful as Google).

I think that was more Snapchat’s earnings and realization that Apple’s privacy changes can actually cause significant problems for these companies.

I can understand Snapchat getting stuffed by Apple and having trouble against tiktok but Google and Facebook are either not big on apps or require the user to be logged in and thus have enough id on the user not to be effected by apple’s measures.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#184

Post by matheusmoreira »

okusername wrote: post #99
pjmlp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of them, I am quite old to have learned in a capitalist society it is always about the money. Company mottos, cultural values, we are family, and all the marketing garbage that they sell for new hires to feel good is just that, plain marketing. When things get though, the "values" hardly matter to get deals or fire people.

Yeah and communist society is about who has the best connections to the people in the party who decide who gets what. And socialist societies are about not making too much money because you'll lose the subsidies.

Communism is not the only alternative. It still implies an economy and endless human work to sustain it. Capitalism is automating everything and if this continues we'll either end up in a post scarcity society like Star Trek or some dystopian hell where corporations create artificial economies just to maintain their power and wealth.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#185

Post by cletus »

This is pretty damning stuff. Here's the question I have: there are a ton of quotes in here from employees. In what context were these statements made? In depositions? I would guess not. I'd guess they were made in emails, Google docs and presentations that were a result of discovery (or a whistleblower I guess).

If so, I really want to find these people and ask them "what were you thinking?" Any big company has required training on communicating with care. So who are these people who seem to be so careless or oblivious to how those statements might be viewed when exposed? Leadership? Product? Engineering? ICs? Managers?

I'd be interested to know more about the allegation that Google declared itself the winner of an auction even if there were higher bids. If that has any substance, that's... a problem. I really wonder how such a thing could be implemented by engineers without someone raising eyebrows.

Oh and once again can we just kill the meme of Twitter threads? I mean seriously.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#186

Post by izacus »

christophilus wrote: post #175
davedx wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they're not. Customers pay Netflix subscriptions.

There is certainly product placement. But I’d agree Netflix doesn’t feel as egregious as GOOG or FB.

> There is certainly product placement. But I’d agree Netflix doesn’t feel as egregious as GOOG or FB.

Keyword being "feel". Google and FB "felt" nice for a long time. Now, after old media smearing blitz, they don't "feel" as nice anymore.

Key takeaway: "feeling" about a corporation has very little to do with their practices and everything to do with the PR budget and loudness of screaming about them. They're all sociopathic by design.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#187

Post by microtherion »

feanaro wrote: post #30
willvarfar wrote: post #5

I remember when google was the shining light of “be nice company” that we all dreamed of working for, at odds with the evil that was M$crosoft. And, from reading all the “why I left google” posts and hearing about them leaving China, the old google of 20 or even just 10 years ago was the good or even just a better google. With how google went from “do no evil” to this, with how Facebook has always been profits over e…

> Which employers are the “nice company making nice things and you’ll be able to sleep at night” tech companies nowadays? The smaller ones.

I would argue that

* There are plenty of evil small companies as well.

* Small companies can turn evil more quickly than big ones can.

* The evil things big companies do is more likely to be a matter of public record already than the evils of a small company.

* Big companies sometimes have the scale to make a bigger impact at the "nice" things they do than small companies.

That's not to say that there aren't some impactful, ethical small companies out there. I'm just saying that the choice is not as clear cut as it's made out to be.

Sincerely, your BigCo Corporate Drone

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#188

Post by mysterydip »

cletus wrote: post #185

This is pretty damning stuff. Here's the question I have: there are a ton of quotes in here from employees. In what context were these statements made? In depositions? I would guess not. I'd guess they were made in emails, Google docs and presentations that were a result of discovery (or a whistleblower I guess). If so, I really want to find these people and ask them "what were you thinking?" Any big company has requ…

When I started a new job, one thing in orientation was "the 'e' in 'e-mail' stands for 'evidence'."

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#189

Post by nabajour »

torben-friis wrote: post #7
willvarfar wrote: post #5

I remember when google was the shining light of “be nice company” that we all dreamed of working for, at odds with the evil that was M$crosoft. And, from reading all the “why I left google” posts and hearing about them leaving China, the old google of 20 or even just 10 years ago was the good or even just a better google. With how google went from “do no evil” to this, with how Facebook has always been profits over e…

I wonder if the behavior of the largest tech companies is a cause or an effect of their size. Is unethical behavior pushing companies to the top of the food chain? Or is it that other companies feel more ethical simply because they don't have as many chances to engage in unethical behavior? If it's the latter, all the push to split the companies is for nothing and we should just consider "ethics at scale" to be an un…

It might be both, some sort of feedback loop.

My take on this is that in a small company, the individual with his morals and values can still have an impact on the behaviour of a company. Above a certain size, when the company is public, the individual has less impact on the company, and there is an emergent behaviour that is only driven by the incentive to "enhance shareholder value", and all moral values that the company could follow, and that come from individuals in the company, disappears.

A company's social role is to provide jobs and goods for the society to work well. But this is not aligned with the survival incentive of the company, to "enhance shareholder value", which becomes it's only role.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#190

Post by [deleted] »

goalieca wrote: post #151
flyinglizard wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are the services provided to Alphabet subsidiaries taken into account? I’d bet that the cloud bill for YouTube alone would exceed GCP revenue numbers. In other words, if GCP is spun out, and Google services keep using it (with realistic pricing) it’s going to have a revenue far exceeding $4bn.

It’s very common practice that internal customers count as revenue for project. Especially ones that aren’t profitable.

[deleted]
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