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Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

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Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#201

Post by sbuk »

pron wrote: post #192
alaskamiller wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While eating my second dinner plate of something delicious on the campus I looked around and saw how many children and families were around. The company provides, so much, for you, for your family. You wouldn't to ever lose what you have now gotten used to, for yourself, for your family. So now you become a company man. What's good for the company must be good for you. What's good about knowing more people, how they…

Google fascinates me. I think it is possibly the first organization in history that embodies concepts from dystopic fiction. Putting a real face to those dystopic ideas can give us a sense of what a true dystopia looks like (short answer: it looks deceptively nice; the horror reveals itself only on close inspection). You mention work. As you say, Google does not just want their employees' time. They want their comple…

I'm not a massive fan of Google, but in their defense they dropped the moto in 2009[0].

[0]http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2009/04/goog...

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#202

Post by Khaine »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #41
dictum wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just jaded and never really saw Google as a a nice company with good intentions, but I just can't be sad about Google's new directions. My suggestion to everyone who's worried about Google: other companies would be really happy to service your needs. There are other companies offering e-mail services, ad services, internet search (the one thing there's no absolute replacement for yet[1], but with your patro…

I think what it boils down to is that Google, for its users, used to be all about giving the Internet neat things. But now they're all "more wood behind fewer arrows" and shutting down things (Google Reader, real estate search, whatever) and are little more than an advertising company. The magic is gone, and that's a special kind of disappointment.

Don't forget Eric Schmidt's crazy thoughts on privacy:

* During an interview aired on December 3, 2009, on the CNBC documentary "Inside the Mind of Google," Schmidt was asked, "People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be?" He replied: "I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that information could be made available to the authorities."

* At the Techonomy conference on August 4, 2010, Schmidt expressed that technology is good. And he said that the only way to manage the challenges is "much greater transparency and no anonymity." Schmidt also stated that in an era of asymmetric threats, "true anonymity is too dangerous."

* In 2005 Google blacklisted CNET reporters from talking to Google employees for one year, until July 2006, after CNET published personal information on Schmidt, including his politician donations, hobbies, salary, and neighborhood, that had been obtained through Google searches.

* In 2010 in an interview with the WSJ Schmidt stated that he thinks teenagers should be entitled to change their names upon reaching adulthood in order to separate themselves from the Google record of their youthful indiscretions.

* In 2010 he also stated that "people aren't ready for the technology revolution that's going to happen to them" and that absolute privacy would prove too-unsafe in the future

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#204

Post by mathattack »

timr wrote: post #65

If you ask me, one of Google's biggest strategic successes was their ability to convince an entire generation of engineers that they were something other than a company. The way many (otherwise intelligent) people talk about it, you'd think it was a religion. What you're seeing here is not the shattering of a dream, but of an illusion -- Google hasn't been a scrappy, idealistic startup for many years. It's a fine com…

It's a very fine line between strong corporate cultures that encompass personal identities, and selfish cult-like behavior.

If you look at the leading companies across many industries, one thing that jumps out is that the corporate identity is primary in the employees lives. Generally these companies also prefer molding employees straight out of school. This is true for P&G, Accenture, McKinsey and Goldman Sachs. Look at the leadership - most have been there their entire careers.

I am not saying this is good or bad, but I am saying that it's an attribute of many leading companies.

Full disclosure: I am not a Google employee, nor have I ever been.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#205

Post by josephlord »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #38

What's with the sudden outpouring of Google-hate of late? I totally get that Google is changing, and has been doing so for a while. But I don't see that as "evil," and I'm struggling to see why anybody would. Google around maybe five or six years ago was a wasteland of shoddy, broken, unintegrated products, many with half-assed, confusing interfaces. That's been tightened up - many of their products are now substanti…

People aren't frogs and while the temperature of the water has been rising slowly increasing numbers of people are noticing.

When I was at the BBC in the early 2000's they experimented with Digital TV and gradually reduced the bitrate of the broadcasts until the numbers of complaints grew. The interesting thing was when the bitrates were returned to their original levels the complaints didn't stop as the viewers had been educated in compression artefacts.

I think that the gradual drift in user unfriendliness (privacy, increasing search ads, reader, G+'s pushiness into other areas etc.) is causing pushing various people to their limits of what can be allowed to pass without comment or action. It will be interesting if Google pulls back whether the complaints and departures (if they are actually happening yet - many people seem very tied to Gmail) actually slow or stop.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#206

Post by pron »

sbuk wrote: post #201
pron wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google fascinates me. I think it is possibly the first organization in history that embodies concepts from dystopic fiction. Putting a real face to those dystopic ideas can give us a sense of what a true dystopia looks like (short answer: it looks deceptively nice; the horror reveals itself only on close inspection). You mention work. As you say, Google does not just want their employees' time. They want their comple…

I'm not a massive fan of Google, but in their defense they dropped the moto in 2009[0]. [0] http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2009/04/goog...

I liked this quote:

David Krane, a senior spokesperson for Google, told SVW: "I never liked it. I always felt that it would come back to bite us in some way, that we would end up building concentration camps, or something even worse. The universe seems to love irony, why leave ourselves wide open?"

Well, the universe does love irony, but concentration camps are unnecessary in this day and age. Knowledge is power, and building a company whose purpose it is to collect and use as much personal information as possible is bad enough.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#207

Post by philwelch »

pjmlp wrote: post #138
philwelch wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was never illusioned about Google in the first place. This is not disillusionment. I just never expected them to turn into Microsoft .

All companies do when they reach a certain market size. I still remember the days when almost all geeks I knew would dream for a job at Microsoft.

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.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#208

Post by silverlake »

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…

If we assume that Larry and his execs are fairly smart, then what is their rationale for pushing G+? I think they figured that G+ is just like FB, so no one would have a problem with it. All that social data can only improve Google's services. And G+ blunts any advantage that FB has. All good things. The downside is that people (particularly devs) hate when their existing services change. Also, G+ has never offered a compelling reason to switch, and few people are going to manage 2 identical social networking accounts. Google will have to build/buy something great, as they did with Maps & Mail, to attract users to G+. Otherwise, it's Buzz and Orkut all over again.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#209

Post by bgruber »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #38

What's with the sudden outpouring of Google-hate of late? I totally get that Google is changing, and has been doing so for a while. But I don't see that as "evil," and I'm struggling to see why anybody would. Google around maybe five or six years ago was a wasteland of shoddy, broken, unintegrated products, many with half-assed, confusing interfaces. That's been tightened up - many of their products are now substanti…

> Google around maybe five or six years ago was a wasteland of shoddy, broken, unintegrated products, many with half-assed, confusing interfaces.

But:

> GMail's interface pisses me off, the new Maps layout is infuriating, and search is broadly speaking totally broken for me in places.

But it's all well integrated, and there's focus, and isn't that what counts?

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#210

Post by rahoulb »

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…

Interesting, given that the original article makes the point about Steve Jobs' advice.

Apple is a company that famously suggests and pushes people into how it thinks things should be done.

From what you are saying, Larry seems to have heard that advice (which when I first read it I took to be about focus, not profit) and heard "push your users down a particular path".

Moving from a "free to do it your way" model to a "best if you do it our way" model is undoubtably going to cause a lot of grief to long-time Google users. In a similar vein that explains the upset about "moving" stuff from AOSP to Play Services.

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