111–120 of 271 posts
The availability of free email services is a wonderful thing. But if email is important to you, it probably shouldn't be in Gmail.
It's nigh-necessary for communicating with government and participating in the economy—USPS ought to do email.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are we still getting surprised by this? I feel like I've read a version of your comment on posts like this for the past couple of years.
And still we have sooo many devs who praise and glory their Google overlords. Chrome can do No Wrong. Android is Fantastic. Etc. It’s quite amazing actually.
I wondered why the old mobile web interface suddenly has an un-dismissable banner at the top pushing the app.
Google now seems deep into the enshittification [1] process. Of all the big tech companies, they seemed the most customer-friendly, the least constrained by the need to optimize their money hose. But I guess the economic logic of tying executive compensation to short-term share price simply overwhelmed other considerations. The stock must go up, so revenues must grow, so Google must monetize everything to the maximum…
Am I naive to think that when you make $226 million in a year like Pichai that money should stop being your major driving force and that your reputation is more important? Like what else could he buy? But his reputation is taking severe hits. Maybe I just don't understand ultra rich people though. Maybe money is everything.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honest question: why would you expect hate for using Yahoo mail?
>Honest question: why would you expect hate for using Yahoo mail? Because every time I read about yahoo on HN it seems to be only negative opinions and in general people look funny at you when they see you with an yahoo email address instead of a Gmail one which has become the norm for average joe consumers. I mean I know they're not a sexy company anymore and they didn't have a competent CEO but their e-mail offerin…
That's the only problem I have after migrating to Fastmail: it takes serious effort to make people over the phone understand that I have an email in a different domain. I can spell it letter by letter, but people often still can't figure just where this funny thing I'm dictating should be put. There's a problem with @ sign, too - somehow, people tend to forget it exists. Well, it exists to separate user from domain, and since they don't know the domain part exists, they don't need to know about the separator I guess.
TLDR: if not on GMail, you need to make a habit of sending the address in an SMS, forgo all hopes of giving it to someone over the phone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Am I naive to think that when you make $226 million in a year like Pichai that money should stop being your major driving force and that your reputation is more important? Like what else could he buy? But his reputation is taking severe hits. Maybe I just don't understand ultra rich people though. Maybe money is everything.
Wouldn’t half of that go to tax, though?
I liken this to a sesame seed bun manufacturer. After some experimentation, they realize that shaving roughly 10 sesame seeds from each bun means they save one cent every 100 buns. They continue to sell the buns at the normal price and consumers are none the wiser: After all, who's going to notice 10 sesame seeds missing? But the sesame seed bun manufacturer continues the experiment. They continue to remove the seeds…
That analogy doesn't hold up. Because if consumers genuinely don't notice the sesame seeds are gone, that means they never cared in the first place, and this is a better outcome for everyone. Why were farmers growing useless sesame seeds in the first place? Now they can switch to blueberries or whatever and the world is better off. It's kind of like, thank god those nasty canned olive slices finally disappeared from…
> The idea that a company can keep removing something consumers want to pay for, but they won't notice, just doesn't exist in the real world.
Have you heard of shrinkflation?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're public you must grow, if you're private you can choose when and how to grow based on what makes sense for the business. The only thing really pushing you is competitors and inflation. There are no shareholders/investors breathing down your neck for returns. When you're private you can actually say, "you know what, I'm content where we are being filthy rich."
You can only comfortably say that if all of your co-investors are on board (or you have none - unlikely in Google’s case) and if you will never need to raise any additional capital for any reason. It’s very difficult to run a modern business, especially in tech, without being beholden to anyone.
Google now seems deep into the enshittification [1] process. Of all the big tech companies, they seemed the most customer-friendly, the least constrained by the need to optimize their money hose. But I guess the economic logic of tying executive compensation to short-term share price simply overwhelmed other considerations. The stock must go up, so revenues must grow, so Google must monetize everything to the maximum…
Am I naive to think that when you make $226 million in a year like Pichai that money should stop being your major driving force and that your reputation is more important? Like what else could he buy? But his reputation is taking severe hits. Maybe I just don't understand ultra rich people though. Maybe money is everything.
Google now seems deep into the enshittification [1] process. Of all the big tech companies, they seemed the most customer-friendly, the least constrained by the need to optimize their money hose. But I guess the economic logic of tying executive compensation to short-term share price simply overwhelmed other considerations. The stock must go up, so revenues must grow, so Google must monetize everything to the maximum…
Am I naive to think that when you make $226 million in a year like Pichai that money should stop being your major driving force and that your reputation is more important? Like what else could he buy? But his reputation is taking severe hits. Maybe I just don't understand ultra rich people though. Maybe money is everything.