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No longer loving Google

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Re: No longer loving Google

#41

Post by mechanical_fish »

untog wrote: post #10
spencernelson wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're big enough to look after themselves for sure, but one way they do so is by convincing people to dedicate a lot of personal energy to defending them. That's one of the benefits of a marketing/PR strategy based on building a small army of feverishly devoted fans. So in a way, actually, those people defending the company really are helping - they're doing active PR work for free, and the main company (like Apple…

So in a way, actually, those people defending the company really are helping Oh, I don't dispute that. But I'm still unsure of why they would feel the need to help- Apple and Google would do fine without them. Just a confusing use of time for me, I suppose.

Perhaps you don't remember that Apple went through a near-death experience in the mid-1990s? They came within months of bankruptcy. Apple needed all the customer loyalty it could get to survive the 1990s, and all the old-time Mac users remember those days a little too well.

Meanwhile, Google is indeed doing fine, but it also hasn't been sorely tested.

Re: No longer loving Google

#42

Post by ry0ohki »

pg wrote: post #31
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 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 d…

I don't believe Google is intentionally being evil, but they are definitely behaving a lot like the company they coined the phrase because of.

In the 90s Microsoft was using it's huge installed user base advantage to push it's less popular and new-to-the-game browser on a group of people, while also keeping out the competition with some unfair ways.

This seems identical to how Google is using it's position as leader of search to push it's late to the game and less popular social network onto it's users, while keeping out the competition.

Re: No longer loving Google

#43

Post by pasbesoin »

cageface wrote: post #40
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…

I find myself agreeing with the last sentence. Gut reaction, but it seems to be a "something doesn't smell right" moment for Google.

(Whether or not such reaction belongs on HN? I don't know; for all the rational thinking in this group, intuition still seems to play a pretty strong role.)

Re: No longer loving Google

#44

Post by jcrites »

cromwellian wrote: post #35
NelsonMinar wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sp…

Has them work on fake products?

Re: No longer loving Google

#45

Post by joebadmo »

pg wrote: post #31
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 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 d…

SPYW certainly seems like the only real, new issue. It seems to me like a clear case of sacrificing a product's short-term quality for long-term quality. I.e. diverting as much traffic as possible to G+ will drive up usage, which will give Google more data on which to optimize search results.

It strikes me as analogous to Apple's move from OS9 to OSX. OSX performed poorly at first, but it was a necessary if painful infrastructure change for the sake of the product's future.

Another reason I'm not worried is that Google's only lock-in is search quality. If a challenger appears and really does perform better for searches, then people will eventually shift over. I think this is ultimately what will keep Google from going completely off the rails vis-a-vis search.

Conversely, I think it's what allows Facebook to get away with a lot. Its lock-in feature is ubiquity/network-effect, which is at best orthogonal to quality of product.

Re: No longer loving Google

#46

Post by icebraining »

Aloisius wrote: post #18
kprobst wrote: post #12

I don't understand why people thought that somehow a publicly traded corporation was going to behave forever in the same way as a garage startup. Once Google reached a certain size, a certain revenue level, and became beholden to institutional shareholders plus (in this case) found itself in a position of largely uncontested market control, I think it was inevitable that it would turn into the all too familiar carica…

Don't Sergey and Brin have 10x voting rights? I was under the impression that common shareholders couldn't do a darn thing to them.

Yes, assuming things haven't changed since 2007:

In particular, as of December 31, 2007, our two founders and our CEO, Larry, Sergey and Eric, owned approximately 88% of our outstanding Class B common stock, representing approximately 67% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock.

https://investor.google.com/documents/2007_Google_AnnualRepo...

Re: No longer loving Google

#47

Post by kelnos »

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…

Agreed. I was expecting to see him mention the no-employee-poaching collusion between Google, Apple, Intuit, etc. That is something that has drastically changed my opinion of Google recently. The other stuff he mentioned, not so much.

Re: No longer loving Google

#48

Post by thebrokencube »

jrockway wrote: post #27

Google's problem is that their public communications only communicate a tiny fraction of the information they have available. For example, people are worried about privacy, so they say "you can choose what to share with these cool buttons" rather than discuss their internal procedures for employee access to user data. The other day, someone on HN wrote, "I trust Google, but what about a laptop with malware?" Google c…

> Search Plus Your World and Google+ are, like every Google product, works in progress.

I don't understand why so many people don't get this, and especially here on HN of all places (maybe I'm missing something, I dunno). Isn't that how startup products work? Release early, release often? Maybe Google isn't specifically saying this, but it seriously seems like that's the road they take for the majority of their products.

Re: No longer loving Google

#49

Post by bane »

pg wrote: post #31
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 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 d…

I think the last year has been fairly tough on Google (ever since Page took over). It's been the first real time that Google has put a concerted effort into

a)making money outside of pure search ads

b)cutting expenses

It's this sudden turn into becoming a real company that has shocked and angered lots of people and burned up most of the good will capital they accrued till then.

As painful as it is for us freeloaders, this might be a good thing for Google as a company that will help ensure long-term viability and growth.

It echoes Bezos's push into uniforming the architecture inside of Amazon http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3102800

Painful, but may ultimately be necessary. Google's far too long been the place of half-finished ideas.

Re: No longer loving Google

#50

Post by cdibona »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #15
pamelafox wrote: post #11

When I first started working at Google, I truly loved them as a user-facing company. And for the first few years, I thought I would work there forever and I could imagine no other place for me. But by the time I left, I was bitter and no longer in love. For various reasons, I felt like I had been betrayed by what I thought Google was at the beginning. It is my fault for having such idealistic expectations for what ul…

Hey Pamela! I fear you had a particularly rough time at Google. Bad project luck, also coming in later. I do look back at my time on Google as fondly as, say, graduate school. Particularly the early years, 2001–2004, it was a truly amazing place to be. That's why I wrote this post up, I just feel sad about where Google is now. Fortunately there's organizations like Y Combinator and places like Hacker News with a lot…

You know, I miss both of you at Google. I'm clearly fine with where Google is (or I'd leave) but I wish that you both felt differently. (edit: I changed we to I, I mean, this is more a personal thing..)
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