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Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

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Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#81

Post by zobzu »

kailuowang wrote: post #61

I agree that Google is becoming a lot more intrusive towards her end users and the incentive behind it is probably profit. But at lease for software developers, from my experience, we as a group benefit from Google MORE than 5 years ago. Chrome AngularJS Go Selenium Webdriver dart Even Google Hangout with screen share helped our distributed team a lot. 5 years ago, what did Google offer? GWT? And, of course, the sear…

arguably half the stuff you listed would be seen as useless or even bad from another point of view.

heck 5years ago at least google results weren't a bunch of advertisements and i'm not talking of the first 5 "sponsored results". That alone, was a huge bonus to humanity in general. Nothing less.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#82

Post by na85 »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #38

What's with the sudden outpouring of Google-hate of late? I totally get that Google is changing, and has been doing so for a while. But I don't see that as "evil," and I'm struggling to see why anybody would. Google around maybe five or six years ago was a wasteland of shoddy, broken, unintegrated products, many with half-assed, confusing interfaces. That's been tightened up - many of their products are now substanti…

>What's with the sudden outpouring of Google-hate of late?

It's because Google is now an established corporation and has run out of "startup cred." Now that they've become a stable, profitable, publicly-traded member of the corporate scene, they're the antithesis of the HipsterNews crowd who want to keep making webapps with no marketabilitiy over and over again.

The Bay Area startup crowd are the definition of hipsters. Once something becomes big and mainstream, they're obligated to hate it because hipsters define themselves as "anti-x" where x is { corporation | government | society | whatever }.

Their only identity is as "not employees of a Big Software Company" and as a result, lately the culture on HN has been consumed by a seemingly neverending series of mediocre posts about startups and the absolutely horrible culture that surrounds them.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#83

Post by na85 »

mathattack wrote: post #53
nostrademons wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) 20% time still exists. I used it to write an HTML parser [1] that's had some modest success, and I have coworkers that have 20%ed on robotics, quantum computation, elementary school education, Project Loon, Flu Trends, and a variety of other interesting things. Google Now came out of a 20% project. It is something that you have to take a lot of initiative on to pull off successfully, but the opportunity is still a…

Does 20% realistically come between 80 and 100%, 100 and 120, or 120 and 140%?

What does that even mean?

edit: Yes, let's downmod the guy who doesn't understand an obtusely-worded question. Well done.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#84

Post by crazy1van »

jdreaver wrote: post #19

> Larry Page worshiped Steve Jobs, who gave him a bunch of bad advice centered around maximizing profit. What is so bad about maximizing profit? If you make a profit, it means people are willingly giving you money for the service you provide. You make more profit when people feel they benefit more from your service. People can complain about Google until the end of time, but as long as the cash keeps flowing then Goo…

> What is so bad about maximizing profit? If you make a profit, it means people are willingly giving you money for the service you provide.

Fantastic point. Forking over money (or not) to a company is how we as consumers signal companies what we want. It is far, far more potent than firing out a tweet or posting on HN.

So if you truly hate what Google is doing, I sure hope that you aren't using Gmail, Android, Adwords, Hangouts, etc, etc. Otherwise your complaining here sends a small signal in the negative, but your actions send a bigger signal affirming Google's actions.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#85

Post by mhurron »

na85 wrote: post #82
matthewmacleod wrote: post #38

What's with the sudden outpouring of Google-hate of late? I totally get that Google is changing, and has been doing so for a while. But I don't see that as "evil," and I'm struggling to see why anybody would. Google around maybe five or six years ago was a wasteland of shoddy, broken, unintegrated products, many with half-assed, confusing interfaces. That's been tightened up - many of their products are now substanti…

>What's with the sudden outpouring of Google-hate of late? It's because Google is now an established corporation and has run out of "startup cred." Now that they've become a stable, profitable, publicly-traded member of the corporate scene, they're the antithesis of the HipsterNews crowd who want to keep making webapps with no marketabilitiy over and over again. The Bay Area startup crowd are the definition of hipste…

> It's because Google is now an established corporation and has run out of "startup cred." Now that they've become a stable, profitable, publicly-traded member of the corporate scene, they're the antithesis of the HipsterNews crowd who want to keep making webapps with no marketabilitiy over and over again.

Yes it has absolutely nothing to do with their recent and current actions. Everyone is just a startup hipster here.

Meh, I was hating on G+ before it was cool. No G+, no Facebook, no MySpace. You ain't got nothing on me.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#86

Post by 1qaz2wsx3edc »

timr wrote: post #65

If you ask me, one of Google's biggest strategic successes was their ability to convince an entire generation of engineers that they were something other than a company. The way many (otherwise intelligent) people talk about it, you'd think it was a religion. What you're seeing here is not the shattering of a dream, but of an illusion -- Google hasn't been a scrappy, idealistic startup for many years. It's a fine com…

You mean it isn't? http://www.thechurchofgoogle.org/

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#87

Post by mbennett »

birken wrote: post #6

Here are 3 pertinent facts related to your post: 1) When I worked there, long before Larry Page was CEO, 20% time barely existed and Google cared a heck of a lot about making money. 2) The share price going up makes employees, former employees, and all sorts of non-"wall street investors" very happy. 3) Your hacker news about section links to your Google+ page

>The share price going up makes employees, former employees, and all sorts of non-"wall street investors" very happy.

Sure it does, but when some of the profit increases are made by deliberately decreasing contrast of the background of the ads and avoiding borders to increase ad clicks, especially from old people who are unable to see contrast [0][1], that's when it crosses the line into "decline" of the user experience. They(along with other search engines) got smacked by the FTC [2], it's an interesting read.

That plus shoving Google+ down the throat of people and making them literally cry [3] (yes I mean literally) in an effort to compete with Facebook at any cost leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and reminds me of how Microsoft got it's M$ moniker.

[0] http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-it

[1] http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentional...

[2] http://www.ftc.gov/os/2013/06/130625searchenginegenerallette...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#88

Post by alaskamiller »

timr wrote: post #65

If you ask me, one of Google's biggest strategic successes was their ability to convince an entire generation of engineers that they were something other than a company. The way many (otherwise intelligent) people talk about it, you'd think it was a religion. What you're seeing here is not the shattering of a dream, but of an illusion -- Google hasn't been a scrappy, idealistic startup for many years. It's a fine com…

While eating my second dinner plate of something delicious on the campus I looked around and saw how many children and families were around.

The company provides, so much, for you, for your family. You wouldn't to ever lose what you have now gotten used to, for yourself, for your family.

So now you become a company man. What's good for the company must be good for you.

What's good about knowing more people, how they think, how they behave, what they want, must be good for the company, which turn must be good for you, good for your family.

It's just a series of intricate goodness being passed around from group to group, people to people.

No one inherently is evil, but the system can end up be directed towards evil inevitably.

Either way, it just was damn good pork chops with quinoa.

We didn't get this kind of chow in the Marine Corps, and I would have killed for it.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#89

Post by kbenson »

Someone wrote: post #25
guybrushT wrote: post #14

Reports of Google's decline are greatly exaggerated :) G+ is annoying, but these days no large company can make all their users happy, with all their products/features/changes, all the time. The so-called erosion of 'Don't be evil' has just become more apparent now, but as long as I have known google, they always made money from ads - and ads are fundamentally evil (IMHO). Search, maps, email etc are quite nice and I…

Ads are _fundamentally_ evil? What mechanism do you propose for bringing new products to the attention of customers, then? Or are new products and/or customers also fundamentally evil, IYHO?

I wouldn't say they are fundamentally evil, but I think as the field of advertising has advanced along with psychology, there's some troubling current and possible future uses we should be wary of. At this point I think having a wary stance towards advertising is not only acceptable, it's prudent.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#90

Post by nostrademons »

shmerl wrote: post #75

> They founded the company with the motto "Don't Be Evil", and the unspoken question was, how long would this last? The answer, oddly enough, was "until Larry Page took over". This is probably very to the point. "Don't be evil" was Sergey Brin's push, and Larry Page doesn't seem to share it.

"Don't be evil" was Amit Patel & Paul Buchheit's push. Sergey, according to them, is the arbiter of what is "evil". Separation of powers and all that.
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