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Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

blog.ecosia.org

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Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#141

Post by toast0 »

iregina wrote: post #27
stavros wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the GP, but I pay for Fastmail because it's just so much better than Gmail, and I pay for Kagi sometimes because it's generally better than Google.

How is Fastmaol? Is it inconvenient to not use Gmail?

I never found gmail particularly convenient. I still have a google account with an @gmail.com address, because Android basically doesn't work without that (you can make a personal @whatever else address, but that doesn't work with Android; you can also make a workspace @whatever else address, but that requires payment or time travel, and doesn't address the core issue).

The only inconvenient thing is people know how to spell gmail.com and have to be told how to spell my personal domain, but my preference is to use my personal domain anyway, I've been using my personal domain for email since before gmail launched; if I used gmail, I'd be forwarding my mail to it, rather than using my gmail address. Fastmail for mail just works, and I don't remember if I had to turn conversations off, but I only had to turn it off once (I detest the conversations feature, but if you like it, I can't tell you if Fastmail has a good one or not :P). Actually, the second inconvenient thing is the Android app doesn't really do offline content; I think gmail is better at that; I griped about this for a long time, but now I just accept it --- offline content is a good match for email, but it doesn't bother me enough to do anything about it.

I do use my gmail address for something things where I feel it's a good thing to "present as a normal person", or where my email domain might be embarrassing (I have some other email domains, but one of them is a .is, which is even worse for getting people to spell). I used to use my yahoo address for that, but I got tired of logging into yahoo just for that, and google has successfully tied me into their account system.

I do not use the Fastmail calendar. Android calendar is convenient, and tied to google calendaring.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#142

Post by fweimer »

rendx wrote: post #107
fadesibert wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how much that's creating outsized income for the founder... There are between 98 (2022 annual report number) and 120 (ZoomInfo) and 133 (LinkedIn number). German filings are notoriously opaque vs Europe or UK. So that's 637k EUR / 120 employees (although the payroll number jumps around between 450 and ~640 - weird, but who knows, # of employees shifting around or some paid quarterly or on commission?). T…

> German filings are notoriously opaque vs Europe or UK. German company filings (for-profit and non-profit) are public at the registry of commerce (Handelsregister) but not easy to parse.

And you can view many of them for free at unternehmensregister.de.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#143

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

roughly wrote: post #116

There’s a thing we tend to do as engineers where we hear a thing and then start thinking through the implications and design, which is normal, but also we seem to assume we’re the only ones who’ve ever thought about it, and therefore our concerns must be unaddressed, and we’re brilliant, so clearly nobody’s ever thought of them before, so we’ve gotta share them. If you’d like to see this behavior in action, this is t…

I really wish you would say outright what you're referring to, because to me right now your comment comes off as a bit of cryptic snark. Perhaps there were some comments along the lines you mean earlier, but scanning through the top 6 or 7 comments now, none of them appear to display the kind of arrogance you are implying.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#144

Post by mrweasel »

jefftk wrote: post #140
mrweasel wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really struggle to understand your confusion. How do you think normal companies work? Ecosia is profitable, they take some percentage of that profit and use to plant trees. In a "normal" company that money goes straight into the pockets of the company owners. Profit is measured after investments into R&D, salary, marketing everything that come with running a business. Sure they could "just" spend more on developing…

> In a "normal" company that money goes straight into the pockets of the company owners. Only if the company returns money to its shareholders (ex: pays a dividend or does a stock buyback). Many growth-focused companies don't do this -- Amazon didn't do it for its first 22y, Google for its first 17, Netflix for 24, etc.

Ecosia isn't an stock based company (AG), it's a GmbH.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#145

Post by pyrale »

Blackthorn wrote: post #117
roughly wrote: post #116

There’s a thing we tend to do as engineers where we hear a thing and then start thinking through the implications and design, which is normal, but also we seem to assume we’re the only ones who’ve ever thought about it, and therefore our concerns must be unaddressed, and we’re brilliant, so clearly nobody’s ever thought of them before, so we’ve gotta share them. If you’d like to see this behavior in action, this is t…

That sort of arrogance is absolutely out of control in the tech industry and it's bizarre because I've never seen it at the remotely same level anywhere else.

> I’ve never seen it at the remotely same level anywhere else.

To be fair to the other ones trying, we’ve set a fairly high bar recently, with "Let me show you how to run the world’s first superpower".

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#146

Post by jacobgkau »

idiotsecant wrote: post #78
stavros wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the only difference I noticed was that it was faster. I still use Maps and have my Google account, but I don't use Gmail (or Google calendar). I made the transition years ago and it was really painless for me.

Transitioning from Gmail was painless? What approach did you take? I think I would have hundreds, if not thousands of services I would need to change email on.

My approach has been simply signing up for new services on my non-Gmail addresses, and occasionally switching important ones over. Nobody's making you delete your Gmail account, so you can still keep it open for legacy stuff as long as you need to (especially since it's free).

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#147

Post by tehjoker »

yifanl wrote: post #120
Blackthorn wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sort of arrogance is absolutely out of control in the tech industry and it's bizarre because I've never seen it at the remotely same level anywhere else.

The proliferation of Hanlon's Razor has been one of the most damaging things to society. People as a whole are not incompetent, every individual (and every grouping of individuals) have goals and will take appropriate actions to achieve them with intent, but somehow a neologism has tricked people into believing this is the exception and not the norm.

It's because most of the time people see mostly powerless people trying to do their jobs and messing up. They don't have as much of a frame of reference for how powerful people act, especially because there is so much mystification in the media (literally owned by the said powerful people). The rule you apply to your friends and co-workers isn't suitable for the maniacal supervillians running society. Of course, those guys also fuck up in bizzare and stupid ways too, so people will point that out and be like look, they're just bad at their evil jobs!

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#148

Post by BurningFrog »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #114
fsckboy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> headlines like this always make me a little suspicious. Non profits make a lot of money for their founders without it ever being "profit" or more to the point, profits are not "bad", they are a measure of "good". profits mean you are providing something of value that people want, that without you is otherwise scarce. your profits attract competition/substitution, driving the price down and the value up to consumers…

Profits are bad when they exist due to unethical cost cutting. Profits are bad when they artificially lower the cost of the good by exporting the costs to other people. If a clothing company is profitable because they use slave labor, that is not good profit. If an oil company is profitable because they do not address the environmental impact they have, that is not good profit. If an insurance company is profitable b…

If a clothing company is profitable because they use slave labor, the use of slave labor is bad.

The profit is not the problem. It wouldn't be any better if the company made no profit.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#149

Post by gdubs »

dwedge wrote: post #8

I'm sure Ecosia are a good company, but headlines like this always make me a little suspicious. Non profits make a lot of money for their founders without it ever being "profit". Ecosia are reporting just over 600K euros a month in wages, I'd love to see the split and what % of that goes to the CEO. You don't need to sell a business if you have plenty of income from it every month - especially if now that can't be ta…

Nobody wants to see grift, but we should also normalize non-profit employees and CEOs making a good living.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#150

Post by johnisgood »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #125
Blackthorn wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sort of arrogance is absolutely out of control in the tech industry and it's bizarre because I've never seen it at the remotely same level anywhere else.

It can make it difficult to work in the industry because you find yourself surrounded with expert beginners who (generally privately) think they're geniuses. I love working with people who aren't afraid to solve problems, but are also firmly in the camp of recognizing how clueless we usually are. We shouldn't be terrified of failure, anxious about what we don't know, etc. But man, some humility goes a long way. The a…

I only feel like a genius after I solved a hard problem[1].

https://programmerhumor.io/programming-memes/the-two-stages-...

[1] Otherwise I have a serious impostor syndrome.

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