71–80 of 88 posts
In case anyone didn't know, Matt (the blog author) was the head of Webspam at the time, and a Distinguished Engineer at Google (and semi-official spokesperson for Google web spam issues). He left Google eight years after writing this, and went to the USDS for a few years, and then retired I believe. Would be curious what Matt thinks of today's Google.
This isn't simple, of course, hence the confusion that prompted you to reach out to legal and publish a dismissive clarification
Mozilla is sooo fucked here. On one hand, it would take them approx ~1 sentence of blog to say "We won't sell your input info to anyone" and this drama goes away. OTOH: if the currently pending court case on anti-monopoly bars google from making payments to mozilla (which is about ~90%++ of their revenue), mozilla truly, and well is fucked. Meaning -they need to diversify, and they know it; they can't sell browsers,…
I wouldn't count on it.
A pinky promise isn't legally binding, but the contract terms are. Too many companies have screwed over their customers in the past. It's 2025, nobody is going to trust any "promise" a company makes. If you give them a finger, it's all but guaranteed they are going to try taking your hand.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope this is true. I don't know how to maintain a web browser, hopefully those that do are willing to do the work to keep it running.
Does a web browser need maintenance beyond security fixes?
One takeaway of the Mozilla debacle is that software as a non-service is dying if not dead. What I mean is the concept that software could be a thing that someone just obtains , like a pencil. The things you write with a pencil belong to you. The pencil belongs to you. You don't have an ongoing contractual licensing agreement with the pencil manufacturer that gives them a worldwide non-commercial right to reflect lig…
Since they produce hardware, they have are in a fairly unique place to push on device computing. Since their products are expensive, they don’t need to chase down every bit of extra “as a service” revenue at the long term expense of the product.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
important fact missing in the article (maybe even from title): matt never spoke for google and didn't work at google since the mid 2010s i think. he's an early hire who became a star Obama-era DOGEdepto-esque (mostly for good) technocrat, which then caused most of his peers to be hired left and right in hopes to get access to that cadre.
The article is from 2008...
Mozilla is sooo fucked here. On one hand, it would take them approx ~1 sentence of blog to say "We won't sell your input info to anyone" and this drama goes away. OTOH: if the currently pending court case on anti-monopoly bars google from making payments to mozilla (which is about ~90%++ of their revenue), mozilla truly, and well is fucked. Meaning -they need to diversify, and they know it; they can't sell browsers,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked at deviantArt back in the early 2010s, they notably had a user agreement that did not claim any rights more than necessary, and it was revocable by the user without jumping through hoops. So it's not necessary to do things this way, companies do it intentionally because they don't care about the rights of their users.
But didn't DeviantArt ultimately decide to opt-in every work hosted on the platform to train its generative AI?
In case anyone didn't know, Matt (the blog author) was the head of Webspam at the time, and a Distinguished Engineer at Google (and semi-official spokesperson for Google web spam issues). He left Google eight years after writing this, and went to the USDS for a few years, and then retired I believe. Would be curious what Matt thinks of today's Google.
I've always felt that when he stepped back at Google was when things took a turn for the worse.
This sort of agreement keeps on popping up. Again and again. The most forgiving reading of the intent of this sort of agreement is that "it is the basic function of a web browser to transfer your stuff across the internet, and it is the basic function of a website to do stuff like make thumbnails of your images and send them to people looking at your stuff, and you are cool with us doing this" but it always ends up b…