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

No longer loving Google

somebits.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 128 posts

Re: No longer loving Google

#111

Post by marshray »

rickmb wrote: post #86
logn wrote: post #65

Whether we love or hate google, we sure love to either love or hate google. Companies like, say, 3M would kill to be "hated" and "evil" like google is. Our hate is really more like us picking on that girl we like.

3M has no influence over my life. 3M could disappear tomorrow and I couldn't give a toss. 3M doesn't know enough about me and mine to harm me, and I don't depend on 3M in a way that would hurt me if I could no longer use their products. At worst, it would be slightly annoying. Google has the power to seriously fuck with my life. I neither love nor hate Google, but I do care about what they do more than most companies…

I think I understand your point, but 3M is probably not a great company to compare to. My understanding of their business is that most of their revenue does not come from retail products.

Wikipedia:"With over 80,000 employees, they produce more than 55,000 products, including: adhesives, abrasives, laminates, passive fire protection, dental products, electronic materials, medical products, car care products (such as sun films, polish, wax, car shampoo, treatment for the exterior, interior and the under chassis rust protection), electronic circuits and optical films"

So unless you influence the purchase of these products, 3M will be perfectly happy for you not to care about them. In fact, they may prefer it that way. Manufacturers in the US seem to be quite shy.

Perhaps a better example would be Sony. They would love it if you couldn't live without your Sony pictures, BluRay, Playstation 3, Sony cellphone, VAIO laptop, Sony Camera, Sony Camcorder, Sony video editing software, etc.

Re: No longer loving Google

#112

Post by marshray »

magicalist wrote: post #103
abruzzi wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is its not just who has the most votes, but in the US, companies have a legal obligation to do what is in the best interest of the shareholders (even minority shareholders) over all other claimants. California just created a new corporation type that allows 'public benefit' to take precedence over shareholder interest: http://www.alston.com/environmentalandlandblog/?entry=4488

no they do not. not only is this not established in law (in fact, congress has made it harder for civil suits to be filed), they are almost never brought unless there has been a large drop in stock price (not for tepid or slower-than-desired growth), the ones that are brought are usually dismissed, and the ones that are not dismissed are almost universally settled. take a look at, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.or…

Perhaps, but it's still such a widely held belief among businesspeople and shareholders that it's probably not a battle that would be wise to pick (very often).

Re: No longer loving Google

#113

Post by ImprovedSilence »

pg wrote: post #23

Like any anti-Google post lately, this one has been reflexively upvoted, but if you look at his reasons for not loving Google, they're pretty thin. The Kenyan episode was obviously one rogue branch with insufficient oversight; as soon as the guys in Mountain View found out what was going on, they stopped it, and with a minimum of the sort of corporate doublespeak you'd expect from most big companies. The changes to p…

I think there is a lot of "hate" for Google these days, but I believe every bodies reasoning is different. This is OK, they have alienated so many of their users, but many in a different way. My current "hate" for google stems from them taking the social away from Google reader,I don't give two Sh!t$ about the policies being merged, I actually think that's a good thing. Someone else "hates" the new social merged into search. Honestly, I enjoy diversity in the services I use online. I want my music to be independent from my email to be independent from my "social network" (not to be confused with my "personal network", of which, email is a part of) I don't like what google has become, and if I wasn't firmly planted and reliant on gmail, I'd be google product free. RSS, search, and cloud storage are all now solved for me elsewhere, and social always has been. I'm sticking with gmail, because I'm not anti-google, and it's a fantastic product, but I've left google products because somethign better came along (dropbox killed any need for google docs, google killed their RSS as far as I'm concerned, and G+ never really did it for me (or any of my actual friends, although I've got thousands of followers, they're all from the HN circle...) Did I mention that I revel in diversity to keep my mind engaged and learning new things. I don't want my entire experience to be from google or facebooks window, I want wide open spaces of internet and applications. If you know what I mean.

This is going to turn into a larger rant on the the course of "social media" and their networks. When I'm with certain groups of friends, I act and talk in a certain way, and by no means should some of that ever be public. I want to talk and communicate with some of the social group of mine online, but in no way shape or form should any of that be public as well. Many people can't make that distinction (hence the UK people being deported because of tweets) and I think the big companies are trying to ruin that divide between public and private.

Re: No longer loving Google

#114

Post by jrockway »

marshray wrote: post #74
thebrokencube wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Search Plus Your World and Google+ are, like every Google product, works in progress. I don't understand why so many people don't get this, and especially here on HN of all places (maybe I'm missing something, I dunno). Isn't that how startup products work? Release early, release often? Maybe Google isn't specifically saying this, but it seriously seems like that's the road they take for the majority of their produ…

Google Search isn't a startup product. You can't just tack on big sections of stuff smack in the middle of the top results and claim that it's just a WiP.

Apparently you can.

Re: No longer loving Google

#115

Post by jrockway »

rickmb wrote: post #109
Jgrubb wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my humble opinion, and I apologize to any Facebook engineers who read this, but Facebook has touched off an ethical race to the bottom with regards to users, their privacy, and their information that can be sold to advertisers. It seems obvious in hindsight, but it's too bad nonetheless.

Facebook was always in the game of collecting private data and exploiting it. It's in the nature of their product, you pretty much sign up for that up front. Google offered services that didn't explicitly require users to register personal data (with some exceptions, like Orkut), and only much later started collating and exploiting all the information they gathered by observing. The latter is much creepier. It's the…

Pretty much every company does this. Your phone company keeps a list of all people you call. (And happily give that list to anyone that asks nicely.) They collect information from your phone about dropped calls and keystrokes. Retail stores move stuff around and see if it changes your buying habits. Grocery stores track every item you buy and then have targeted ads print on your receipt. Amazon changes the price you see based on some profile it has built on you. Google does nothing worse than any of these companies -- when you have users, you accumulate user data. You can just leave it lying around for the government to collect, or you can fold it into your product to make it better. Google uses it to make their products better, and they have written policies on when the data gets anonymized and when the data gets discarded completely. Does your phone company or grocery store do that?

Furthermore, Google is one of the few companies that actively tries to educate you on how they care about your privacy. There are ads in the subway. There are ads on TV. There are ads (right now) on the top of every Google property. They really want their processes to be transparent so that you know what you're signing up for when you use Google products. It seems irrational to hate Google when every other Internet company is collecting the same data that Google is, but they hide their policies it behind 300 pages of legalese and Google buys ads to make it easier for you to understand.

I think there has to be some deeper issue than "they changed their privacy policy" or "my friends' pictures show up on the results page" that is causing all the Google hate. Because it just isn't justified for the privacy policy change or Search Plus Your World.

Re: No longer loving Google

#116

Post by jrockway »

cageface wrote: post #40
pg wrote: post #23

Like any anti-Google post lately, this one has been reflexively upvoted, but if you look at his reasons for not loving Google, they're pretty thin. The Kenyan episode was obviously one rogue branch with insufficient oversight; as soon as the guys in Mountain View found out what was going on, they stopped it, and with a minimum of the sort of corporate doublespeak you'd expect from most big companies. The changes to p…

When a single company has a record of almost everything I do online I have to hold them to a much higher standard than other companies. Arguments about Google's intentions tend to swing to the emotional because the nature of their business requires that we trust them indefinitely. And the way they've handled a handful of these issues recently signals to me that they're feeling more and more comfortable straining that…

Arguments about Google's intentions tend to swing to the emotional because the nature of their business requires that we trust them indefinitely.

Actually, you only have to trust them for 9 months after you decide to stop using Google:

http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/faq/

When does Bing or Yahoo anonymize your search data? When does Joe's Random ISP delete your email from all their tape backups after you cancel your account? Google is being honest and open about what they do; other companies hope you don't realize you should care.

Re: No longer loving Google

#117

Post by jrockway »

hrktb wrote: post #81
nostromo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing your search engine is easy. Changing your OS is not.

That's where the android strategy Is paying

That Verizon can change the default search engine to Bing? Let's see a Windows Phone phone ship with Google as the default search engine...

Re: No longer loving Google

#118

Post by jrockway »

waqf wrote: post #25
sek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bullshit. To bring these few examples to discredit Google here. Think of their record: OpenSource, Android, SOPA, Fight against Software Patens and so on. Google is still on our side and we need them against all the Microsoft and MPAAs. To be on so many battlefields and doing so few problematic things is impressive. Did they ever really compromise their core values? Google tries not to compromise them, but th…

What happened to Sun? (Or rather, what are you implying about the causes of its decline?)

They got bought by Oracle, who then sued users of Java and shut down all of Sun's (numerous!) open source projects. Remember Hudson and OpenOffice.org? Neither do I. They're Jenkins and LibreOffice now.

Re: No longer loving Google

#120

Post by fred_nada »

jrockway wrote: post #115
rickmb wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook was always in the game of collecting private data and exploiting it. It's in the nature of their product, you pretty much sign up for that up front. Google offered services that didn't explicitly require users to register personal data (with some exceptions, like Orkut), and only much later started collating and exploiting all the information they gathered by observing. The latter is much creepier. It's the…

Pretty much every company does this. Your phone company keeps a list of all people you call. (And happily give that list to anyone that asks nicely.) They collect information from your phone about dropped calls and keystrokes. Retail stores move stuff around and see if it changes your buying habits. Grocery stores track every item you buy and then have targeted ads print on your receipt. Amazon changes the price you…

@jrockway - I know you just started at Google. Anyway, here are the deeper issues.

1. I had mentioned this in another post to you before. Anyway, some people(not all) are upset because your company said you were better than everyone else. "You can make money without being evil" "What is the best for users?" All that crap Google said to us and continues to say like it still exists. Google was the poster child of the business of the future. Everyone felt you were the ones that were actually going to do good. Facebook/MS/Apple never posed as is this. You did. And that is where the anger comes in. When you are told one thing and the opposite happens people get mad. They should have tried to manage expectations.

2. Thousands of businesses depend on your search engine. With some of them 80% of their business comes from you whether thru paid ads or not. Many of these companies never would have built their websites if Google didn't exist. When your company changes things to place their irrelevant content over the content of other websites/companies people are going to be pissed. What if Apple created their own applications for 50% of the categories in the app store and then placed their apps at the top of each category? Wouldn't you expect some sort of anger? Do you think Zynga would be pissed if Facebook placed all of their games higher than Zynga's games? Its the same thing.

Post reply on HN