An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion • Hacker News Board

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#171

Post by mips313 » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 11:49 AM UTC

Regarding companies putting profits above all else, which companies are doing things better, and how we create better cultures, I thought I might have something valuable to add to the discussion:

I work at one of Elon's companies and, yes, he cares about profitability, but I really appreciate the way he frames it, which is to use profitability as a forcing function for getting things done and as a feedback signal about whether you are working on and doing the right things. If you aren't profitable you should ask yourself, "Why don't other people find value in what I'm producing?" Additionally, we view profitability as a mechanism for allowing us to keep working on the ambitious ideas that we care about.

In part because of the people who are attracted to his companies, and his particularly strong influence on company culture compared to most founders, I think his companies have a pretty healthy (thought not perfect) perspective on profitability in the grand scheme of things.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#172

Post by sseagull » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 11:51 AM UTC

throwaway4good wrote: post #160

Is this what caused the big sell off in the sector Friday? If half of what is alleged is true, it will be enough to bring down big companies (but perhaps maybe not as big and powerful as Google).

I think that was more Snapchat’s earnings and realization that Apple’s privacy changes can actually cause significant problems for these companies.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#173

Post by throwaway6734 » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 11:52 AM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #149

heavyset_go wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Google from 12 to 16 years ago was found guilty[1] in an antitrust suit of colluding with other industry leaders to keep tech employee compensation artificially low. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Wasn't that the beginning of the end of FAANG's reputation? Having your company put billions into the bank every year because they "don't know what to do with it" while you're not even a millionaire is disheartening. I mean, if they were still paying us all handsomely like stock brokers then I bet popular opinion would be on their side.

>I mean, if they were still paying us all handsomely like stock brokers then I bet popular opinion would be on their side.

Aren't FAANG salaries still absurd?

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#174

Post by dccoolgai » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 11:54 AM UTC

kypro wrote: post #156

willvarfar wrote: post #5

I remember when google was the shining light of “be nice company” that we all dreamed of working for, at odds with the evil that was M$crosoft. And, from reading all the “why I left google” posts and hearing about them leaving China, the old google of 20 or even just 10 years ago was the good or even just a better google. With how google went from “do no evil” to this, with how Facebook has always been profits over e…

Company policies like “don’t be evil” probably need to be directed by founders. You can’t expect others in a company to put their morals over profits because at the end of the day no one gets fired for making money, but you can if your morals get in the way of profit. The incentives always pushes on the side of profit. As a company grows the founders who originally directed the company’s ethics either step down or ha…

> Generally I think the world would be better off with less super massive companies who no longer have a founder with morals and a vision to guide the company away from a purely profit motivated future.

I think that's the crux of what Google got caught doing here. You don't need an Ivy League law degree to understand that what is laid out here is a slam-dunk case on collusion/anticompetitive grounds. I hope they have to face some kind of accountability for it. I hope these attorneys in Texas can deliver that for all of us at a level above "slap on the wrist".

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#175

Post by christophilus » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 11:56 AM UTC

davedx wrote: post #133

rambambram wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> given that they're not a glorified advertising company They're still an advertising company, just on a level people are less aware of. And they might not 'advertise' the usual products.

No they're not. Customers pay Netflix subscriptions.

There is certainly product placement. But I’d agree Netflix doesn’t feel as egregious as GOOG or FB.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#176

Post by EdwardDiego » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 11:59 AM UTC

munchbunny wrote: post #164

EdwardDiego wrote: post #124

> Google's response - "secretly made its own exchange win, even when another exchange submitted a higher bid," complaint alleges. Their competitors knew this was happening. It's pretty easy to see occurring when you run a system that competes in Google header bidding for a publisher you also control.

Google being on both the sell and buy sides and the “advantages” of using Google for both were things practitioners just sort of knew and had to live with, like “npm is a mess” and “A/B testing is often more storytelling than rigor“. I suspect the reason it wasn’t a bigger bombshell is that ad exchanges are hard to understand beyond the surface level “it’s an exchange for ads”, and other ad exchanges were also dirty.…

> and other ad exchanges were also dirty

Bingo.

I'm glad to be out, tbh. I built some cool stuff, but Jesus.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#177

Post by phendrenad2 » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 12:00 PM UTC

eecc wrote: post #12

I wonder how that code managed to stay secret so many years. How did they keep all the mass of data, the tickets, the user stories and pitch decks from being spilled online and get publicly dressed down? I guess that’s the one single major threat to effectively WHF: the need for maximum security secrecy and infrastructure control.

Google is known to develop stuff in an RPC-first kind of way. Makes me wonder if higher-ups are able to just write a quick script to do this, without lower level employees even knowing.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#178

Post by true_religion » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 12:00 PM UTC

throwaway6734 wrote: post #173

true_religion wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't that the beginning of the end of FAANG's reputation? Having your company put billions into the bank every year because they "don't know what to do with it" while you're not even a millionaire is disheartening. I mean, if they were still paying us all handsomely like stock brokers then I bet popular opinion would be on their side.

>I mean, if they were still paying us all handsomely like stock brokers then I bet popular opinion would be on their side. Aren't FAANG salaries still absurd?

Faang salaries are pretty good when you are starting out, but they level of pretty quickly.

After say twenty years, my friends on Wall Street are mysteriously richer than I am. Of course the ones who didn’t survive the early treadmill aren’t included, but I guess that’s the trade off. Engineering is fairly stable and well paying, but you don’t get million dollar payouts unless you are a founder.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#179

Post by actually_a_dog » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 12:04 PM UTC

FabHK wrote: post #128

Wow. We've just had a thread on how Facebook chooses profits over people ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28955579 ) and here's Google complaining that FB "at times" doesn't choose profit... > Google was frustrated @Facebook was not aligning with it to reduce users’ privacy. “We’ve had difficulty getting FB to align on our privacy goals and strategy, as they have at time[s] prioritized winning on reputation ove…

> Wow. We've just had a thread on how Facebook chooses profits over people (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28955579) and here's Google complaining that FB "at times" doesn't choose profit...

These are not incompatible statements. Any corporation, once it gets large enough, inevitably veers toward "profits over people," if only in the more benign sense of "if it doesn't make money, it doesn't make sense." Yes, I know, "goodwill" is a thing that corporations strive to cultivate, but, even the concept of "goodwill" has been financialized in modern corporate finance.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#180

Post by csomar » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 12:05 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #45

flyinglizard wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see at least five entirely separate units with very little synergy: 1. Search + Maps 2. GSuite + Gmail 3. GCP 4. YouTube 5. Android + Chrome Each can probably support its own P&L sheet, other than perhaps the last (not sure about that one). Such a move would surely limit innovation (I can’t see these smaller entities doing things like mobile ASIC development, although if TPU is under Search it would continue),…

The only two of those I’m pretty sure could survive on their own is search and YouTube. Android and Chrome pretty much doesn’t have a business case. GCP might be big enough at this point, but is still just burning ad money. GSuite/GMail is again a maybe, but can it afford the infratructure? They would at least have to cribble the free tier.

> Android and Chrome pretty much doesn’t have a business case.

Seriously? The most used browser and mobile operating system in the world can't finance their operations? If that's the case, then there could be no browser.

Firefox is still able to finance its operations and so does many other browsers. Google can still contribute to WebKit as an open source project.

Android can start charging a fee for every mobile device (not sure if they already do that?) and cover its development expense. It'll be a saner world where you pay for the services you are using.