Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 365 posts

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#201

Post by MandieD »

bsenftner wrote: post #136
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…

The moment I saw "Don't be evil" as their motto/slogan back in the 90's. I rolled my eyes and said out loud "What a load of shit, I bet they are evil incarnate."

As my (devout but quietly Baptist) boss at my childhood town’s local ISP told me, “if you ever run into a businessman who is eager to tell you what a strong [Christian] believer he is, or has a [Jesus] fish on his signs or business cards, watch your wallet!”

(Things in [square braces] as added context for people who didn’t grow up as Evangelicals in the South)

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#202

Post by belter »

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…

Maybe inverting binary trees and real intelligence are not related?

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#203

Post by saxonww »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #195
FabHK wrote: post #128

Wow. We've just had a thread on how Facebook chooses profits over people ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28955579 ) and here's Google complaining that FB "at times" doesn't choose profit... > Google was frustrated @Facebook was not aligning with it to reduce users’ privacy. “We’ve had difficulty getting FB to align on our privacy goals and strategy, as they have at time[s] prioritized winning on reputation ove…

Personally, I don’t care that FB puts profits over people. That’s what I expect. They are a public corporation. FB’s board has a legal obligation (fiduciary responsibility) to make money for shareholders. Capitalism may suck, but it’s the law. Speaking of the law, Google’s abuses listed in this thread are what gall me. In Gulliver’s travels, the Lilliputians don’t strongly punish a common thief. You can just build a…

> FB’s board has a legal obligation (fiduciary responsibility) to make money for shareholders. Capitalism may suck, but it’s the law.

This is often repeated but is (generally) incorrect. There's a lot of writing out there about how this is bs, e.g. [0].

People certainly think and act like this is the case, so the end result is often the same, but this is not good-natured corporate governors being helpless before the law, it's profit-motivated people being ruthless.

[0] https://evonomics.com/maximizing-shareholder-value-dumbest-i...

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#204

Post by MandieD »

awild wrote: post #155
p2t2p wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, look at me. I’m an immigrant. My wife’s useful skills would probably give her salary of about 5th of what we need, so she doesn’t work and takes care of the kid, house and engages in her hobbies, like making custom teddy bears. If I were put on a project like that I can easily imagine being quiet about it as I put well being of my family waaaay above any ethics. I can imagine that a lot of people do. So the onl…

> So the only real way to solve it is robust regulation and good channels for whistleblowers. And probably some sort of minimal unconditional financial security denying corporations to practically take people hostage.

Decoupling health insurance contracts from employment is absolutely necessary, though not sufficient. Do it like the UK, do it like Germany, or do something else, but as long as the health insurance contract itself (not just the payment of some or all of it) is through one’s employer, a lot of otherwise financially stable people in the US are utterly at their employers’ mercy.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#205

Post by ctvo »

belter wrote: post #202
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…

Maybe inverting binary trees and real intelligence are not related?

Tell us you bombed the on-site without telling us.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#206

Post by olegious »

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…

The dropping of higher bids is the biggest revelation here. I would guess that higher bids would be dropped if they didn’t meet a max response time, maybe bids from Google were given a speed advantage to get under this max time.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#207

Post by zksmk »

worrycue wrote: post #122
melomal wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing that when you consider most tech companies based their entire perks strategy off the back of free food, beers, playgrounds, sleeping pods etc all in the name of keeping workings in the build at all times a la Facebook and Google. A little like the casinos tricks where you will never see a clock or the time inside one. There's a slight tilt on all pavements in Las Vegas that slowly push you towards the bu…

> There's a slight tilt on all pavements in Las Vegas that slowly push you towards the building, Wouldn’t that cause rain water to flow into the casinos?

I don't know if what that person wrote is true, but drains exist and it's not like Vegas gets a lot of rain, it's literally in a desert, floods aren't really a big concern.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#208

Post by ArtTimeInvestor »

p49k wrote: post #168
ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't use another ad exchange without Google? Why? Can you give an example?

> Why? Because Google requires it. Google is the only major ad network that requires that you use their own ad serving product (GAM) in order to have full access to their inventory. So your options are to use GAM and have Google inventory plus those of all other companies, or use any other ad server and have access to inventory of all companies except Google. The latter is essentially financial suicide since Google c…

It seems you are looking at it from the perspective of an advertiser?

Why would it be financial suicide to only advertise on non-google inventory? Isn't that like saying advertising only on certain media and not on other media (say only newspapers but not billboards) is suicide?

I am sure there are companies out there who never advertised on Google property but did not die?

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#209

Post by aj3 »

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…

I'm not the company I work for. If they're doing unethical stuff, fuck them.

Never understood, why others are so keen to protect employer given company will throw under the bus any of us in a blink of an eye.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#210

Post by bfrog »

ctvo wrote: post #205
belter wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe inverting binary trees and real intelligence are not related?

Tell us you bombed the on-site without telling us.

The best part of consulting/doing your own thing? People only look at your portfolio of work, you know, like every other profession
Post reply on HN