Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

zyppy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 309 posts

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#101

Post by leepowers »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #7

Forget about "competition" and "who provides the service" for just a moment. (I'll return to them below.) I'm saying all of this as someone who doesn't use Google search . I would like to see more competition in search engines. But anyone seeking to work in that space needs to think about how users actually use search engines, and stop thinking in the conceptual model of "finding sites for the given search terms". "6…

I've always been fascinated by people who spend huge chunks of time creating and maintaining Wikipedia articles. Are they driven by a simple love research and curating information? Or maybe knowing their articles could potentially inform and educate millions of people.

I wonder how driven content creators would be if they believed no one would read their articles; if the information they carefully curated was mere bot food, digested and summarized on a Google search results page. The summaries may have greater utility for search engine users. Yet at the same time the ecosystem as a whole would be degraded if the incentives for creating rich detailed content are degraded.

Google relies on free and open access to a vast sea of information. Most of this information exists due to the labor of other people. If any company wants to use this information to create a free and open source search engine, voice assistant, etc., I say more power to that company. But when a company uses free and open data to power proprietary walled gardens, we should consider the regulatory implications and the effect on the ecosystem as a whole. And Google is large enough that when it creates a walled garden (keeping visitors tied Google properties and products) that it could have a significant negative impact.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#102

Post by judge2020 »

delusional wrote: post #53
tytso wrote: post #25

When I was at IBM 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a monopoly, since there were plenty of competitors in the hardware space (HP, Sun, Dell, etc) and in the software space (Oracle, SAP, etc.) and in the Services space (Accenture, PwC, KPMG, etc.) employees still had to complete annual legal training that was very similar to what was described in the post. Any large company with half-way competent legal counsel is…

I agree that others do the same, but the observation that vocabulary somewhat affects thought is still interesting. As an example, the sentence about "defensive rationale" didn't just reformulate the sentence, it completely changed the meaning. If people aren't allowed to talk about "crushing competition" they also can't think about it. If they can't think about it they also can't recognize it when it happens.

The policy isn't to avoid crushing competition or becoming a monopoly in some market, it's to avoid specifically setting out to do so. Unless Google intentionally slows development/cuts resources, the amount of capital and level of talent they put into products makes "make the product better for users" a plan very likely to result in naturally taking over the market.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#103

Post by eunoia »

eunoia wrote: post #24

Sometimes I wonder how much of the push against remote work from certain large companies comes down to the increased discoverability (in the legal sense) of employee communications over Slack/Teams/etc vs in person...

Can't edit anymore, so replying. Can anyone tell me why this is apparently not a concern? Genuinely curious especially in light of this article.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#104

Post by easton »

jollybean wrote: post #94
gumby wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They also have a corporate email policy where mails get auto-deleted after 18 months Eric Schmidt’s retention policy was 72 hours .

I doubt that because it's probably illegal. Execs have to keep copies of things they write around. EDIT: For those who are wondering, here is a quick summary [1]. Eric Schmidt's emails are definitely kept around a very long time, for very legal reasons, and whatever he happens to do with his own personal 'inbox' is not relevant to the subject at hand, and amounts to a kind of personal email/habit choice. To suggest '…

Execs themselves don’t, they just have to be kept around. The policies are most likely enforced through Gmail’s retention settings which are set by IT, who can view all of the mail (regardless of whether it was deleted from the user’s mailbox) in Vault.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#105

Post by dredmorbius »

AlbertCory wrote: post #46

I was in Google Ads from 2008-2010. At that time, there was a limit of 3 top ads and 8 right-hand-side ads. The top ads generated the vast bulk of the revenue. They were also in blue or yellow (I forget which, but one was WAY more lucrative than the other!) so it was very easy for the user to distinguish an ad from a search result. I just did the canonical $$$ search "flowers" on my Macbook. The entire first page was…

I very rarely click on Google Web Search ads.

I very rarely use Google Web Search.

Poor relevance and ubiquitous tracking is a key condern. But the ad-spamming is also tremendously out of hand.

I'd switched to Google from AltaVista in 1999. I ditched GWS effectively by 2013.

Yes, I'll still occasionally run a "!g" bang search. And there are Google services I find genuinely useful --- Google Books and Ngram Viewer most especially.

But the bloom hasn't been anywhere near that rose for a long, long, long, long time.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#106

Post by owisd »

titzer wrote: post #89
pixl97 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If its part of the institutional memory it should be documented on an internal site and kept. Not stuck in an email format to disappear.

Personally, I often refer back to emails of what people sent me in order to have proper context, both technical, logistical, etc. Instructions on how to do things, how we debugged something or other, etc. That makes me more productive and useful as well as other people. If we gotta write every email over again and put it up on a wiki, that just won't happen.

Write it on the wiki first then just email the link to the wiki. No additional effort and then the guy who joins two years after everyone on the email chain has left and now has to maintain it also has that info.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#107

Post by ggm »

ehsankia wrote: post #96
_2d30 wrote: post #79

It's hilarious to me that someone thinks this is about controlling thought and not a defensive legal maneuver.

It's also absurd to me how the answer to "how can folks with whom I generally respect have reached such a significant gap in thinking?" is basically "they must be brainwashed by their Communicating Safely training"... That's such terrible way of dismissing someone who has a different opinion than you.

You just dismissed them yourself didn't you? "thats a terrible way" is an emotional cast to disregard the logic in the argument. Its lawyer speak. HOW DARE YOU style rebuttal.

Or.. maybe you're just using english with its rhetorical richness? the quality of emphasis is not meant to imply actual dislike or distain? In which case.. why can't you ascribe the same motive of language style to the original author?

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#108

Post by smhost »

judge2020 wrote: post #102
delusional wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that others do the same, but the observation that vocabulary somewhat affects thought is still interesting. As an example, the sentence about "defensive rationale" didn't just reformulate the sentence, it completely changed the meaning. If people aren't allowed to talk about "crushing competition" they also can't think about it. If they can't think about it they also can't recognize it when it happens.

The policy isn't to avoid crushing competition or becoming a monopoly in some market, it's to avoid specifically setting out to do so. Unless Google intentionally slows development/cuts resources, the amount of capital and level of talent they put into products makes "make the product better for users" a plan very likely to result in naturally taking over the market.

That's the policy that the Biden team is trying to change. Following from what you said, do you expect Google to change its behavior once the natural monopoly policy loophole gets fixed?

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#109

Post by vxNsr »

minsc__and__boo wrote: post #36
titzer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also have a corporate email policy where mails get auto-deleted after 18 months, unless you apply labels or are on a litigation hold (which would make such policy completely illegal). The email policy has no other purpose than to limit legal exposure. There is no legitimate business reason for that policy. In fact, it actively harms institutional memory and is frankly Orwellian, IMHO.

That's not just Google though. Most companies have an email deletion policy that auto-deletes emails after a certain about of time, on the premise that they eventually lose all value and only pose a potential liability and litigation risk. Even U.S. government officials have used private email servers to avoid having to serve them up via requests.

> Even U.S. government officials have used private email servers to avoid having to serve them up via requests.

And when that failed they destroyed the hard drive that contained the exchange server db. (See IRS scandal)

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#110

Post by jollybean »

smhost wrote: post #77
simcop2387 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logic is that this isn't a sign of google being a monopoly and that it has more implications than just being there to avoid anti-trust actions.

That doesn't follow. You can read it in the exact opposite direction, that every other company culture is already behaving as if it is a monopoly.

It's much more simple once you realize that 'language is not reality'.

People can use all sorts of language, colloquially, and it can be interpreted in many ways.

You could absolutely use language within the company like 'crush the competition' wherein the culture is fully product oriented, great quality, support etc. and 'win the market'. That's perfectly legal and frankly ethical.

Legal's job is to protect from scrutiny and litigation, in which case, they will, among other things, say 'don't use this language'. Because it could be used as a kind of evidence, even if it's totally contextualized and misunderstood.

They will also obviously advise the CEO and product leadership on materially illegal activities, but it's unlikely that rank and file are going to hear about that.

For example, colluding with your industry partners on hiring practices ... you're not going to be privy to that.

If the company is not getting sued, legal is doing it's job. The rest of the equation mostly up to the rest of the executive team.

Post reply on HN