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Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

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Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#211

Post by greatgib »

mostdataisnice wrote: post #199
greatgib wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are an engineer working on the software, the announcement really has little interest. You just want it to be wide and sure not being done in a way that put a bad light on your product. This kind of things happened in my case, and I was more happy to see the interest of the potential users than knowing who disclosed it as it would not be me anyway in all cases. It might not be true in a small company/team/produ…

This is just completely false - if you're working on a feature, you want a PR splash controlled by you, not a stream of silent leaks. PR begets other PR. You're being super presumptuous by saying engineers shouldn't care about the PR around the feature they worked on, even if someone else is running the PR

If it was silent leaks, no one would have even cared about it!

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#212

Post by mpweiher »

slownews45 wrote: post #175
kens wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a monopoly I think some historical background is necessary here. Nowadays IBM isn't a monopoly but during the 20th century, IBM was more or less a monopoly. IBM's antitrust problems go back to their 1936 consent decree and 1956 consent decree. IBM was subject to a huge antitrust case that went on from 1969 to 1982 as well as many other antitrust lawsuits. The first point is that…

No question that anti-trust is currently pretty much incoherent. One frustration is that it has morphed from things around consumer harm to a new focus on harm to other ... businesses. Google downranks some crappy content farm / shopping aggregator - bam - antitrust complaint. Yes, it hurt that business and so helps google shopping - but no one asks - do users like these crap content farms? Same with google finance -…

> morphed from things around consumer harm to a new focus on harm to other ... businesses.

As far as I know, it is actually the focus on "consumer harm" that is, well was, the new thing, introduced in the 1980s under Reagan, and it largely gutted antitrust law. And that was exactly the purpose.

For much of that history, including the seminal breakup of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in 1911, the ruling antitrust theory was “harmful dominance.” That’s the idea that companies that dominate an industry are potentially dangerous merely because they are dominant. With dominance comes the ability to impose corporate will on workers, suppliers, other industries, people who live near factories, even politicians and regulators.

The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 saw the rise of a new antitrust theory, based on “consumer welfare.” Consumer welfare advocates argue that monopolies can be efficient, able to deliver better products at lower prices to consumers, and therefore the government does us all a disservice when it indiscriminately takes on monopolies.

https://wolfstreet.com/2021/08/14/antitrust-bombshells-in-th...

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#213

Post by makeitdouble »

deathanatos wrote: post #184

This is such an uncharitable interpretation of the training materials. The material there is not saying "if you want to speak about things that raise antitrust concerns, use this coded language", it's saying "don't do these things, and just focus on building a good product". Like, the thing here that really boggles my mind: if the training materials had said literally the exact opposite of what they do: "crush the co…

Accusing interpretations of being "uncharitable" feels really odd when we're talking about communication training material. It's not some Slack thread taken out of context, we're reading quotes from reviewed and crafted material.

Also I don't see how changing "Cut off competitors' access to target" to "Integrate target with Google" matches your idealistic view of "focus on our product; competition is good and okay".

They basically acknowledge competition will be crushed, and are asking for appropriate communication to avoid troubles. It makes sense from Google's point of view, but I don't see why we should be advocating for them in any way.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#214

Post by novaRom »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #163
yongjik wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The email policy has no other purpose than to limit legal exposure. > There is no legitimate business reason for that policy. So the policy is about limiting the chance of potentially very expensive lawsuits, and has no legitimate business reason? Choose one. I wish people stopped overusing "Orwellian": the term is so overused that you could use it next to "agile" and I wouldn't notice.

"Orwellian" seems like a good fit for memory-holing people's communications.

At the same time the only apps I cannot select & copy any text from are YouTube and GoogleMaps. The comments people leave there are so valuable for Google?

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#215

Post by simonh »

srswtf123 wrote: post #153
kens wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a monopoly I think some historical background is necessary here. Nowadays IBM isn't a monopoly but during the 20th century, IBM was more or less a monopoly. IBM's antitrust problems go back to their 1936 consent decree and 1956 consent decree. IBM was subject to a huge antitrust case that went on from 1969 to 1982 as well as many other antitrust lawsuits. The first point is that…

Okay, but we can agree that IBM powered the holocaust, and that those tattoos on survivor’s arms represented the punch cards for IBM systems, right? Because really, when there’s a profit to be made, American companies are there to fill a “need”, right?

It sounds like German employees in Germany and it’s territories working for the german subsidiary did work for the German government yes, and after the war was declared they did some very shady stuff. Similarly American citizens working for German companies in America did work for the US government during the war.

I don’t really see what’s surprising about any of this. The implication seems to be that the US directors of IBM were supposed to do something about it, but I’m not sure what.

Of course if some of these contracts for the concentration camps and such were tendered during peacetime, and this was known and it was possible for the US operation to exercise oversight, that would be incredibly damning.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#216

Post by greatgib »

brandmeyer wrote: post #140
greatgib wrote: post #52

I was a direct witness of such a brain washing case a few years ago. Google was about to release a new version of Android or of Nexus phones. (I don't remember the exact details) And there was an insider leak, so the details of the innovation were published on internet a few days before the official announcement. Leaks are now very common and often organized by companies, but a few years ago it was not yet the case.…

> So then I realized that they were brain washed by the company internal communication to feel that anything annoying for Google was bad for them personally! I think your interpretation of this experience is incorrect. Their visceral reaction was against leaking specifically, not negative information generally. Part of the propaganda behind TGIF, the internal newsletters, and so on is the idea that this inside inform…

> While I'm sure you caught a big fish that day, I'm also sure it wasn't that big (come on: the retelling of this anecdote does not need quite that much exaggeration).

I don't exaggerate that point, the sentence was not exactly that but something very excessive and very close to that.

This is the intensity and violence of their feeling that shocked me to the point that I still remember this case after around 5/6 years or more.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#217

Post by shrimpx »

imhelpingu wrote: post #186
deathanatos wrote: post #184

This is such an uncharitable interpretation of the training materials. The material there is not saying "if you want to speak about things that raise antitrust concerns, use this coded language", it's saying "don't do these things, and just focus on building a good product". Like, the thing here that really boggles my mind: if the training materials had said literally the exact opposite of what they do: "crush the co…

I would encourage readers to compare this disingenuous top comment with the other disingenuous top comment. edit: And those of you trying to suppress that comparison with downmods can cry more.

You’re being downvoted because your comments make no sense.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#218

Post by streamofdigits »

monopolies, conglomerates, cartels, monocultures, oligarchies, fragility, lack of diversity, lack of options, lack of checks and balances, inequity...

any way you slice it this cluster of words represents a way of organizing society that is suboptimal and detrimental. anything that can be done by one entity can be done better by multiple competing entities if they are forced to operate in a coopetitive environment.

nobody should have to "prove" anything in the messy specific circumstances of particular industries and companies. society and its economic/political organization should have automatic triggers and disincentives that would prohibit the formation of such structures in the first place.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#220

Post by pencilcode »

mpweiher wrote: post #212
slownews45 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No question that anti-trust is currently pretty much incoherent. One frustration is that it has morphed from things around consumer harm to a new focus on harm to other ... businesses. Google downranks some crappy content farm / shopping aggregator - bam - antitrust complaint. Yes, it hurt that business and so helps google shopping - but no one asks - do users like these crap content farms? Same with google finance -…

> morphed from things around consumer harm to a new focus on harm to other ... businesses. As far as I know, it is actually the focus on "consumer harm" that is, well was, the new thing, introduced in the 1980s under Reagan, and it largely gutted antitrust law. And that was exactly the purpose. For much of that history, including the seminal breakup of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in 1911, the ruling antitrust…

Monopolies in the long term tend to lead to higher prices because without good competition what’s the incentive to sell with low profit margins? So, sell cheap for years, kill any competition, then the market is yours and you can do whatever you want to the inevitable detriment of the consumer. The consumer also looses in monopolies.
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