Google's Decline Really Bugs Me • Hacker News Board

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#241

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Nov 18, 2013, 5:15 PM UTC

elastoplast wrote: post #191

dredmorbius wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a guy who inspired two top-level stories yesterday, a few speculations. For myself, the company I once turned to to provide me useful things, save me time, respect my privacy (and certainly not pester me for personal information or publicly link my activity across entirely independent activities and sites), and get out of the way of doing things, is now proving me increasingly useless, wasting my time, disrespecti…

I work at Google, have done for about 7 years now. This is my first comment at HN. I think your comment about "not coercive" is insightful. The biggest change I've seen over time here is that at the start, people never talked about what users should or should not do. They were treated as people who would use our products, or not, and that was A-OK. The subtle trend that underlies a lot of this recent outpouring of di…

Strangely, if Facebook decided to do a web search product, they could put a serious dent in the engine that powers Google. However to date it isn't something they are interested in.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#242

Post by dorfsmay » Mon, Nov 18, 2013, 5:18 PM UTC

jmillikin wrote: post #135

dorfsmay wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going away from standard and becoming incompatible. They are becoming very much like Microsoft that way. VOIP had a chance to become as ubiquitous and convenient as email, but the drop of xmpp fot voice and video took us back 10 years.... Same with replacing rss by g+. Google exists because of standards such as http and html, but they are slowly moving away from all standards in the name of locking users.

> VOIP had a chance to become as ubiquitous and convenient > as email, but the drop of xmpp fot voice and video took > us back 10 years. XMPP had its chance, and failed to deliver. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebRTC is the modern standard-to-be for VOIP, and the original implementation was created by Google.

Thanks for the link, this is informative. BUT:

- unless I read this wrong, this protocol does not describe how the initial call is initiated, just how the video and audio is negotiated and transferred over the web.

- there is no way to federate with google hangout or other WebRTC services, is there? This is the issue. hHangout is an amazing piece of software, but they give it to us for free to force us to register and use google accounts.

btw, I don't think xmpp failed, what failed is to settle on good standards for voice and video (every time a standard emerged, somebody came up with a better one that was closed source which broke inter-compatibility) and really good clients (only skype and google voice could echo cancellation properly). xmpp, and SIP for that matter, are really about establishing the connection, they don't really care how the rest of the communication is done. What you are saying is like saying email failed because different people interpret html slightly differently.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#243

Post by yapcguy » Mon, Nov 18, 2013, 5:20 PM UTC

tommorris wrote: post #194

swombat wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making the healthcare data public in an anonymised format would not affect people's jobs, unless there is some property of that data that makes it easily identifiable.

Good luck with the anonymisation. It only has to fail once for catastrophic consequences. Look back to how we handled HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. Enormous amounts of fear (understandable) and utter disgust-filled loathing (not so much). There were politicians calling for AIDS sufferers to be rounded up and put in quarantine camps but refusing to engage in public health initiatives because they thought that warning people…

Great post.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#244

Post by philwelch » Mon, Nov 18, 2013, 5:22 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #222

philwelch wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turning into Microsoft means saddling your users with shitty experiences and shitty products because you're focusing more on monopolizing them than on building something great for your users. Google has done this, but Apple and Amazon never did, despite whatever other evils they might have committed.

Users of Maps, iWork and Final Cut Pro might disagree.

I never said Apple never shipped a bad product. Apple still tries to ship good products and falls short. Microsoft and Google neglect that because all they try to do is monopolize. That's why Google pulled their maps from iOS.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#245

Post by narag » Mon, Nov 18, 2013, 5:25 PM UTC

elastoplast wrote: post #191

dredmorbius wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a guy who inspired two top-level stories yesterday, a few speculations. For myself, the company I once turned to to provide me useful things, save me time, respect my privacy (and certainly not pester me for personal information or publicly link my activity across entirely independent activities and sites), and get out of the way of doing things, is now proving me increasingly useless, wasting my time, disrespecti…

I work at Google, have done for about 7 years now. This is my first comment at HN. I think your comment about "not coercive" is insightful. The biggest change I've seen over time here is that at the start, people never talked about what users should or should not do. They were treated as people who would use our products, or not, and that was A-OK. The subtle trend that underlies a lot of this recent outpouring of di…

...unless Larry wakes up and realises Facebook isn't going to kill his business

Or is it? Actually I agree with you. But I also believed Microsoft was exaggerating his fears of Netscape. Now I don't know what to think.

Maybe it's better to err on the side of paranoia after all.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#246

Post by ithkuil » Mon, Nov 18, 2013, 5:31 PM UTC

the funny thing is that Google itself played a huge role into making all of us raise the bar of what can be expected as a good behavior for a company. To get some open standards, get some open source stuff, get some free APIs, get some free services, get some interesting tools without costly subscriptions etc

All the things we didn't get from microsoft. If you were a student from a poor country you were cut off all the good things because you didn't have msdn subscription (and then blame pirating...).

I remember when I though "microsoft has to be stupid, they are walling off potential developers for their platform, if they only made stuff more developer friendly they would benefit greatly". I didn't mind that they were making money, I was concerned that they they got in the way, the didn't let you.

Google is certainly repeating some of these mistakes, but generally feels more friendly to users and developers for its platforms.

Other issues with Google about privacy etc, you cannot really compare it with a company that didn't recognize the value of "the internet" until too late. These are novel issues, and mixing profit with such sensible topics will certainly cause problems, whatever your business model is.

The interesting things is that we demand that from Google, because we know it's possible to do better, and the irony is that Google itself (among others) made us raise the bar of that acceptance.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#247

Post by fit2rule » Mon, Nov 18, 2013, 5:32 PM UTC

pw53 wrote: post #224

nhangen wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad that the Armed Forces are now looked upon with disdain by hackers mere decades after the West wrested the world from Germany's grasp. Say what you want about the military industrial complex, but lets not forget that should any of our countries be invaded, we will be very grateful that those guns pointing at the invaders.

World War II veterans are treated as heroes by damned near everyone in the U.S.A. -- including those who are anti-war/anti-military. Incidentally, in Russia it's largely the same outcome: WWII survivors adored, post-WWII veterans scorned. It's interesting how forced conscription and a global threat causes a civilian population to revere its then-military.

If you've killed Nazi's, you surely can stomp all over a Hippies' rights to express utter disdain of the Warrior class, amiright?

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#248

Post by izolate » Mon, Nov 18, 2013, 5:33 PM UTC

dingaling wrote: post #136

Someone wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Most ads are designed to resonate on an emotional level, rather than being purely informative. It's the sophistication of their design in order to pierce our emotional 'firewall' that makes them 'evil'; they're basically exploits against the human mind.

Such poetic diction. I agree completely.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#249

Post by ollerac » Mon, Nov 18, 2013, 5:34 PM UTC

I still like Google.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#250

Post by overgryphon » Mon, Nov 18, 2013, 5:38 PM UTC

melindajb wrote: post #232

raverbashing wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it looks like that, but that reaction happens often right after it. Of course I didn't like not being accepted (that was in 2007 btw). But based on what now is showing and the opinion of people that have worked there (and the jobs I had afterwards) I see that it didn't matter much in the end, and I believe that even though having Google in your CV is something that's good, not entering allowed me to pursue a l…

I'm with you. I was recruited by them just after the IPO. During the interview process I was also close to an offer from another company, and I mentioned this. I was told the process would take up to six weeks and it wouldn't change. I was then told by the recruiter that "it would be unfortunate" if I had to abandon the recruiting process because I'd gotten another job offer. I said, "unfortunate for whom? Certainly…

I wonder if Google has trouble with college hires for this reason- people near the end of college are often interviewing with multiple companies at once and timing is critical. Many people I graduated with would have taken a job offer from Google over the one they accepted, but were unwilling to turn down offers from Apple, Microsoft, ect in order to wait for Google to make a decision. Only a couple of people continued the job-hunt process long enough to get a hire/no hire decision from Google.