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No longer loving Google

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Re: No longer loving Google

#31

Post by pg »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #28
pg wrote: post #23

Like any anti-Google post lately, this one has been reflexively upvoted, but if you look at his reasons for not loving Google, they're pretty thin. The Kenyan episode was obviously one rogue branch with insufficient oversight; as soon as the guys in Mountain View found out what was going on, they stopped it, and with a minimum of the sort of corporate doublespeak you'd expect from most big companies. The changes to p…

I buried this in the post, but of all the things Google's done this month the promotion of Google Search Plus Your World (aka Search+) is what concerns me the most. The other negative stories are less significant, I only mentioned them because they're part of the trend I'm feeling. I think it's interesting that anti-Google posts are reflexively upvoted. Ten years ago that would have been Microsoft.

I agree that's the most worrying sign. In the past Google won by making what people needed. But it seems clear that was not their primary motivation for SPYW. Their primary motivation was clearly fear of Facebook. That hasn't made Google evil yet. It's just the first step down the road to mediocrity. Which may lead to evil in the long term, because to make lots of money despite being mediocre, you generally have to do evil things.

I don't think it's that interesting that anti-Google posts get reflexively upvoted though. The cause is one of the more common and least discriminating aspects of human nature: whenever any person or organization is successful, there are a lot of people who want to see them cut down to size.

Re: No longer loving Google

#32

Post by gaelian »

pg wrote: post #23

Like any anti-Google post lately, this one has been reflexively upvoted, but if you look at his reasons for not loving Google, they're pretty thin. The Kenyan episode was obviously one rogue branch with insufficient oversight; as soon as the guys in Mountain View found out what was going on, they stopped it, and with a minimum of the sort of corporate doublespeak you'd expect from most big companies. The changes to p…

I upvoted this post not because it really brings anything new to the list of grievances against Google, but because I feel its important that the existing grievances not be forgotten.

Also, this is one of the few places on the web where I am sure people from Google frequent. Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic and naive, but if highlighting posts like these help to shift Google back even just a little towards "Don't be evil" then it was worth my upvote.

Re: No longer loving Google

#34

Post by thaumaturgy »

pg wrote: post #23

Like any anti-Google post lately, this one has been reflexively upvoted, but if you look at his reasons for not loving Google, they're pretty thin. The Kenyan episode was obviously one rogue branch with insufficient oversight; as soon as the guys in Mountain View found out what was going on, they stopped it, and with a minimum of the sort of corporate doublespeak you'd expect from most big companies. The changes to p…

I found something more interesting in his post: that Google has maybe been regarded still as a startup, even though they are far, far from it. "Don't be evil" seems like a motto that would guide a startup; it's hard for me to imagine any company of Google's size and position seriously trying to follow such a screed.

The end of his post is perfectly salient: let's reserve our enthusiasm and defesnes and cheerleading for actual startups, which no longer include Google.

Re: No longer loving Google

#35

Post by cromwellian »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #13
fady wrote: post #5

some very good thoughts indeed. it's interesting to see your point of view, especially the part about how they're just worrying about market position, etc. i'm curious to know from current employees, if the change of ceo has made things better, worse? how are things internally these days with larry running the show?

Hi, I wrote the linked blog post. I don't have many friends left at Google but from what I've heard there's a lot of internal debate about the direction of the company now. There's been years of grumbling about how big the company has gotten, but more lately there's a lot of dissent around the outsized role of Google+. If you believe this story, the debate is quite heated: http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/24/larry-page-…

I wouldn't trust everything you see on PandoDaily if I were you.

You're never going to find any large organization that satisfies all of your wishes, even a non-profit has internal political struggles.

But on a relative scale of evilness, which big companies would you want to work for? For example, Apple (Doesn't trust employees, has them work on fake products, super-compartmentalized secrecy on campus, has agents spying on people to stop leaks, abusive douche-bag boss (Jobs) of shitting on people when the demo doesn't meet expectations, squeezing all partners for every last nickle, super-controlled closed proprietary ecosystem, on and on)? Apple sounds like a place to work on amazing products, but shitty otherwise.

Google made a mistake by coining "Don't be evil", because they are held to a much much higher standard now than any other company because of it. The smallest change or transgression is hyper-analyzed by a cadre of people just waiting, sometimes wishing, to find a mis-step, anything they can run to the blogosphere with and claim "See! Evil!"

Basic cynicism in people seems to relish those who preach superior ethics to fail. A guy who talks about "Don't cheat on your wife" will be scrutinized much more than someone who doesn't. And if he is seen in public having a business dinner with an attractive lady, of course the stories will be "See! Mr White Knight is unfaithful!"

Re: No longer loving Google

#36

Post by cooldeal »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #28
pg wrote: post #23

Like any anti-Google post lately, this one has been reflexively upvoted, but if you look at his reasons for not loving Google, they're pretty thin. The Kenyan episode was obviously one rogue branch with insufficient oversight; as soon as the guys in Mountain View found out what was going on, they stopped it, and with a minimum of the sort of corporate doublespeak you'd expect from most big companies. The changes to p…

I buried this in the post, but of all the things Google's done this month the promotion of Google Search Plus Your World (aka Search+) is what concerns me the most. The other negative stories are less significant, I only mentioned them because they're part of the trend I'm feeling. I think it's interesting that anti-Google posts are reflexively upvoted. Ten years ago that would have been Microsoft.

>I think it's interesting that anti-Google posts are reflexively upvoted. Ten years ago that would have been Microsoft.

Ten years ago? How about now? The hate for Microsoft around here is so bad that winsupersite.com (the premier inside and latest Microsoft related news site) is completely banned from even submitting to HN, probably because of excessive flagging by haters [1]. Google hate is nothing compared to that.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3408883

Re: No longer loving Google

#37

Post by landhar »

fpgeek wrote: post #30
NelsonMinar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I buried this in the post, but of all the things Google's done this month the promotion of Google Search Plus Your World (aka Search+) is what concerns me the most. The other negative stories are less significant, I only mentioned them because they're part of the trend I'm feeling. I think it's interesting that anti-Google posts are reflexively upvoted. Ten years ago that would have been Microsoft.

I'd say Search Plus Your World is a cause for concern, but not for the reasons most people think. I'd say SPYW isn't evil, it is an admission of failure . In particular, I think it is an admission that Google believes that without new kinds of input (i.e. social signals) it will not be able to stay ahead of SEO spam and the like over the long haul.

> Google believes that without new kinds of input (i.e. social signals) it will not be able to stay ahead of SEO spam and the like over the long haul

Assuming you're right, I am very curious as to what research led them to believe that social signals would be that much more beneficial for search results.

My own experience with what's on my social dashboards (facebook, google+, and the like) is that it's at best useful for discovery (HN is really good at it and sometimes there are a few gems in the others) but most of the time it's noisy and mediocre content, and more to the point: it's an ecosystem that values popularity above everything else.

I'm not trying to sound like a hipster here, and I understand that SEO is also about having your content show as popular in the search engine rankings. But except for communities like HN, most social streams are not regulated by any means.

My main concern with SPYW is that I don't want to start having to curate my social graph in order to avoid getting articles from theOnion when I make a query about foreign politics.

Re: No longer loving Google

#38

Post by cageface »

darkandbrooding wrote: post #22
dataminer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been trying duckduckgo since last week for search, so far over 95% of my queries are resulting in good results, its my default now in pentadactyl. I will be installing Zimbra ZCS opensource edition on one of my servers for mail, calendaring. Haven't found any alternative for youtube yet.

I've been using duckduckgo for about a week now, and I'm very happy with it. I managed an in-house instance of Zimbra at my last job, and I remain a vocal, enthusiastic supporter of that product. If your organization's requirements list aligns with Zimbra's feature list, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

For personal email, I've been happy with fastmail.fm so far, although their spam filtering doesn't seem to be as good as gmail's.

Re: No longer loving Google

#39

Post by pyre »

robert_nsu wrote: post #20
mahmud wrote: post #7

Is there a check-list for Google products & alternatives? I was just thinking of going through this exercise last night. Don't feel comfortable with them anymore.

I'm wondering how many down votes I would get for suggesting Bing as an alternative to search.

I wouldn't say that jumping ship to Bing would be a bad thing, but I would want the alternatives to be of a wider variety then just "Google or Microsoft."

Re: No longer loving Google

#40

Post by cageface »

pg wrote: post #23

Like any anti-Google post lately, this one has been reflexively upvoted, but if you look at his reasons for not loving Google, they're pretty thin. The Kenyan episode was obviously one rogue branch with insufficient oversight; as soon as the guys in Mountain View found out what was going on, they stopped it, and with a minimum of the sort of corporate doublespeak you'd expect from most big companies. The changes to p…

When a single company has a record of almost everything I do online I have to hold them to a much higher standard than other companies. Arguments about Google's intentions tend to swing to the emotional because the nature of their business requires that we trust them indefinitely. And the way they've handled a handful of these issues recently signals to me that they're feeling more and more comfortable straining that trust if it suits their agenda.

So the increasing frequency of these posts is, I think, barometer of the growing, gut-feeling discomfort among the geek community.

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