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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

#251

Post by OOPMan »

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 smaller the company you work for, the less likely there is to be nasty shit going on you're not aware of...

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#252

Post by grappler »

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 don't know about a big company, but my answer would be "the companies building decentralized and privacy-friendly tech". The ones pushing toward solutions to the problems now associated with 'big tech'.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#253

Post by throwaway29303 »

jeffbee wrote: post #246
throwaway29303 wrote: post #107

Online advertising is enormous. Google's Exchange process processes 11bn online ad spaces / day. We can now understand the motivation behind Google's wish to move the whole internet ecosystem (QUIC, BBR, AMP et al) into a huge optimized and abstracted Remote Procedure Call (RPC) system. From the outside people will see this as something new, shiny and as an improvement (which it is!) but at the same time they'd profi…

Oh no, God forbid anyone would profit from faster software!

There's no problem with profiting from (faster) software. However, there's clearly a HUGE problem profiting from monopolizing the market the way Google is doing.

Moreover, it shows that Google's motives were clearly never about the end user but their ad exchange instead.

Two birds, one stone. (But leave out the ugly and shameful details to the public until now.)

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#254

Post by ibn-python »

captainmuon wrote: post #231

If the margins are so high for an ad exchange (~20%), I don't understand why nobody opens a new independent one. Sure, such a thing is hard to get off the ground, but if you have VC backing or contacts with a few classical media sites and industry associations, it seems definitely possible. Also, I don't think the advantages of targeted advertising and ad auctions are as big as people think. Maybe people should start…

I believe The Trade Desk is the alternative ads exchange platform to Google and Facebook. But I agree, we need more.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#255

Post by beepbooptheory »

eclipxe wrote: post #232
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…

Work where you want and don’t feel bad because of HN opinions. HN hates everything eventually, except RSS.

Interesting and a little funny to read the question this way.

A certain peculiarity of our time I think is a constant ambiguation (or confusion) between moral conscience and social impressions, social consequences even. social media gives us the illusion sometimes that they are one in the same, leading to confusions like this.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#256

Post by harry8 »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #134
heavyset_go wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Google from 12 to 16 years ago was found guilty[1] in an antitrust suit of colluding with other industry leaders to keep tech employee compensation artificially low. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Yeah I don’t think people understand the extent to which public relations influences our beliefs. Google was able to maintain a polished image in well known areas while silently behaving poorly in others and we believed it for a long time. I remember about ten years ago meetings Eric Schmidt had with US military generals. That didn’t even register on mass media so most people probably never heard of it. I wonder how…

Not only PR.

Compared with what came before and what was competing with it in those days google search was terrific. Finding more of what you wanted faster. Clean interface. Ads off to the side clearly identified. People just felt good about using google product. That's a great place to start any PR. People's affection for polish of Apple Product compared with horrible machines most have been forced to use in pod farms etc worked the same way for Steve Jobs.

Assange has been claiming for a decade that Google is now "big and bad." Not sure if I believed him then. He was also claiming the US desperately wanted to put in him in jail while being dismissed by Hilary Clinton. He was right there. And that many people in the US govt and military industrial complex wanted to kill him and it was a lot more than just an idle thought. Right there too. His PR is shockingly bad.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#257

Post by zdragnar »

OOPMan wrote: post #251
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 smaller the company you work for, the less likely there is to be nasty shit going on you're not aware of...

I have an unofficial policy of only working for small companies. I broke that rule once, and I was consistently miserable. Completing features consistently took 3x longer than they should have, and the team was too big to be able to make the necessary changes to fix the accumulating problems that caused it.

Additionally, people I hadn't met during the interviews but were in my direct chain of command were obnoxiously political. I am pretty much done with working at places where I dont have a direct line to the owners, and meet the owners before I accept the job.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#258

Post by pjmlp »

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.

Apparently I touched a nerve....

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#259

Post by kilbuz »

true_religion wrote: post #178
throwaway6734 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I mean, if they were still paying us all handsomely like stock brokers then I bet popular opinion would be on their side. Aren't FAANG salaries still absurd?

Faang salaries are pretty good when you are starting out, but they level of pretty quickly. After say twenty years, my friends on Wall Street are mysteriously richer than I am. Of course the ones who didn’t survive the early treadmill aren’t included, but I guess that’s the trade off. Engineering is fairly stable and well paying, but you don’t get million dollar payouts unless you are a founder.

My mid-career rank-and-file friends at FAANG have W2 income of $700k-1m a year. These are not high-powered individuals within their org, not even close.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#260

Post by staticautomatic »

heavyset_go wrote: post #28
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 Google from 12 to 16 years ago was found guilty[1] in an antitrust suit of colluding with other industry leaders to keep tech employee compensation artificially low. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

They’re weren’t “found guilty.” They settled both the criminal and civil cases.
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