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Google was founded 25 years ago today

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Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#32
post #6
post #4

Google is a great example of "it's difficult to get someone to understand something if their paycheck depends on not understanding it". Even before google was founded and the founders discussed how they could monetize their search, they understood that paid ads create a conflict of interest: the point of search which is to to return the most relevant results, but the incentive in paid ads is to return the best paying…

well articulated. if any of you google employees reading this thread, if you love open and free web, get out of google. you're part of the problem.

Not everyone at Google works on ads.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#33
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well articulated. if any of you google employees reading this thread, if you love open and free web, get out of google. you're part of the problem.

So how do you have “free” without ads?

You start differentiating between free and gratis.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#34
post #32
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well articulated. if any of you google employees reading this thread, if you love open and free web, get out of google. you're part of the problem.

Not everyone at Google works on ads.

[flagged]

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google may not be the worst but it's the biggest offender that reaches consumers. Their BS motto "Don't be evil", it makes me sick thinking of it now. They really made the world a much worse place.

While I understand what you mean, you should state at least one reason of why you think they are deeply evil people. To me, it's the story of how they systematically convince small firms that they want to do business, only to screw them over. Like Google Earth and Terra Vision, for example. Also, from the beginning, the proximity to the U.S. government was very noticeable, such as Keyhole or leasing military land. Ed…

Just judge them by their own supposed goals, organising information. They fail. And they fail not for inability, but for greed. You can quibble about what types of non-good behaviour constitutes evil, but first accept that "evil" was cute language.

They are a distorting middleman and their scale means the cultural damage is incalculable. They create a near monopoly search that offers no user control over it's behaviour and it functions to vanish small independent creators under commercial interests and adverts. Just look at one property - youtube - the inability to find title matched videos by search, the shovelling of shorts, the pruning of valuable user features etc. None of these have been about increasing user experience, user power or the access of information, it's about increasing Google's Smaug like horde of gold.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#36
post #4

Google is a great example of "it's difficult to get someone to understand something if their paycheck depends on not understanding it". Even before google was founded and the founders discussed how they could monetize their search, they understood that paid ads create a conflict of interest: the point of search which is to to return the most relevant results, but the incentive in paid ads is to return the best paying…

Google may not be the worst but it's the biggest offender that reaches consumers. Their BS motto "Don't be evil", it makes me sick thinking of it now. They really made the world a much worse place.

Pure doublespeak

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#37
post #28

Anyone else remember how much better Google was at the beginning than anything else? I had always tried the latest search engines like Ask Jeeves, Altavista, Hotbot, Webcrawler, etc. Once Google came around they all looked like total crap, it was simply a revolution. The clean interface, the performance, the much better results, it was beautiful.

This is basically happen with almost every SaaS. They start with clean interface, performance while being used-friendly running by burning VC money to capture market. Then end up being user hostile products that locked in users to milk them before alternative come out.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#38

I'm curious if there's another company in history that became so pervasive so quickly? Not just in terms of size, but in impact/reach? I realise this question somewhat requires defining what Google is and it's current size and scale, which is quite the challenge. To me Google seems uniquely impactful, uniquely quickly, but I'd love to learn of other comparable companies from history.

Microsoft was a big one.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#39

I'm curious if there's another company in history that became so pervasive so quickly? Not just in terms of size, but in impact/reach? I realise this question somewhat requires defining what Google is and it's current size and scale, which is quite the challenge. To me Google seems uniquely impactful, uniquely quickly, but I'd love to learn of other comparable companies from history.

Apple since Jobs' comeback.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#40
post #4

Google is a great example of "it's difficult to get someone to understand something if their paycheck depends on not understanding it". Even before google was founded and the founders discussed how they could monetize their search, they understood that paid ads create a conflict of interest: the point of search which is to to return the most relevant results, but the incentive in paid ads is to return the best paying…

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