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Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

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Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#311

Post by ErotemeObelus »

basetop wrote: post #160

Eric Schmidt was the anti-privacy leader who dismissed privacy concerns. "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmid... Keep in mind this is the same guy who blackballed CNET reporters for finding personal information on him through google search. https://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology…

Because every CEO is saying "it's okay that privacy is gone! It's no big deal!" I know that one day I'm suddenly going to feel the consequences of their policies and learn by experience that privacy was a big deal after all.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#312

Post by bcrosby95 »

sealjam wrote: post #287
icelancer wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conveniently you (and everyone else who quotes that line) left out the following part. "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 [...] we’re all subject, in the US, to the Patriot Act, and it is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities." His whole point is to NOT use their services…

Is avoiding using "their services" sufficient or even possible/plausible? I may be being overly cynical here, but I think it's relevant. "The homepages of popular sites placed cookies for 275 third-party hosts. In just visiting the homepage of popular sites, we found 32 websites placed 100 or more cookies, 7 websites placed 200 or more cookies, and 6 websites placed 300 or more cookies. We found that Google tracking…

When toys r us was still in business, I went digital dumpster diving on all the 3rd party domain references to find the companies behind all of them. At the end of the day it seemed like pretty much every major tech company I could think of was getting a hit by my browser.

I'm not sure if this was the exception or norm - I was just curious because their website was soooo slooow.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#313

Post by patrec »

simonh wrote: post #288
throwaway6497 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will always remember him as the guy who would willingly collude with other mentees of Bill Campbell to not hire engineers from each others companies. Willingly trying to keep the salaries of engineers low is pure evil. They even tried to rope-in Zuckerberg into this gentleman's agreement. Zuck asked them to buzz off. When Eric is involved in shady practices like these, how do all other leaders on twitterverse who a…

You know how far you are over the ethical line when Zuck tells you to take your shady scheme elsewhere.

More likely Zuck correctly saw that Google as the incumbent had much more to gain from such a scheme. Facebook wouldn't be where it is today without aggressively poaching employees from Google, in their early acquiring tech chops phase they were basically the inofficial open source arm of Google because they hired so many googlers who wrote near 1-to-1 clones of internal Google tech and later also released them as open source long before Google ever got around to releasing the real thing (buck, thrift, ...). These days of course, Facebook itself is a powerhouse of original tech.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#314

Post by lbfkbsjcn73 »

sdenton4 wrote: post #63
nostrademons wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jumping into a new thing regardless of its potential is a necessary, not sufficient, component of innovation. If you wait until it's obvious to everyone that something's a good idea, you're not being innovative, you're just an opportunist. Similarly, if it turns out that it's not actually a good idea, you're not being innovative, you've just wasted a whole lot of time. Innovation happens at the intersection of contra…

a) Opportunism is good business. b) 'Wasting time' is a part of research. If you never fail, you're missing opportunities. That said, you pick your failures with the hope of getting the right kinds of wins... which brings us to... c) Giant centralized cloud-based businesses have giant centralized and for-the-most-part trusted datastores. There's no reason to use a blockchain if a standard distributed database suits y…

> and just imagine the press cycles if a FAANG company rolled out a blockchain

I'm not sure if you're being facetious, but assuming Amazon is a member of "FAANG": https://aws.amazon.com/managed-blockchain/. Does that count?

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#315

Post by Spearchucker »

new2626 wrote: post #296
nothrabannosir wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy is also about solidarity with those who do have something to hide. We want to create a society with herd immunity for dissidents, free thinkers, and even the less controversial yet somehow still controversial; fetishists, (closet) non-traditional-sexuals, or simply those who engage in behaviour that we have only learned to condone, not yet accept. Even if you are not any of those, it is our duty to provide a…

I think your second quoted sentence is a perfectly fine attitude. You have to pick your fights and caring about every possible issue that may affect every possible person is a road down to insanity. (I say this while I agree with your post otherwise.)

His quote doesn't suggest you care about gay marriage. It suggests caring about PRIVACY because for example (amongst many other examples he didn't mention) gay marriage.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#316

Post by throwaway_9168 »

patrec wrote: post #313
simonh wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know how far you are over the ethical line when Zuck tells you to take your shady scheme elsewhere.

More likely Zuck correctly saw that Google as the incumbent had much more to gain from such a scheme. Facebook wouldn't be where it is today without aggressively poaching employees from Google, in their early acquiring tech chops phase they were basically the inofficial open source arm of Google because they hired so many googlers who wrote near 1-to-1 clones of internal Google tech and later also released them as op…

Apparently FB hyper-targeted Google employees with ads based on the profile these employees had happily volunteered when creating their FB profile. (Wish I had a reference link).

Also, from what I understand (again, only hearsay, I don't have any proof for this), there were many employees at Google who thought "Don't be evil" was a joke.

And so they decided they will go to Facebook, which was more closely aligned with their morals, as explained in this rhyme -

Move fast and break laws,

Lets show these dumb fricks who's boss,

When shit hits the fan

The CIA will cover our arse

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#317

Post by neotek »

bitL wrote: post #239
basetop wrote: post #160

Eric Schmidt was the anti-privacy leader who dismissed privacy concerns. "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmid... Keep in mind this is the same guy who blackballed CNET reporters for finding personal information on him through google search. https://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology…

Long before Eric, the SUN's CEO (Eric's previous employer) made a remark that privacy is an illusion and we need to get over it: https://www.wired.com/1999/01/sun-on-privacy-get-over-it/ This stuff was going on for a long time, FAANG just perfected it.

FANG maybe; Apple seems pretty keen on maintaining privacy as one of their primary differentiators.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#318

Post by crististm »

Lucadg wrote: post #259
throwaway6497 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will always remember him as the guy who would willingly collude with other mentees of Bill Campbell to not hire engineers from each others companies. Willingly trying to keep the salaries of engineers low is pure evil. They even tried to rope-in Zuckerberg into this gentleman's agreement. Zuck asked them to buzz off. When Eric is involved in shady practices like these, how do all other leaders on twitterverse who a…

Sounds like the "let's do evil" guy

He actually mocked an early engineer who voiced the "this is evil" mantra in a meeting after he joined Google. If not right then, definitely in a TV interview a few years later.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#319

Post by jcadam »

lsc wrote: post #307
rapsey wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but this is just hopelessly naive and one sided. Sillicon valley is more then google and apple, and if the competition is only between them with regards to salary then those engineers have nothing to complain about.

>Sillicon valley is more then google and apple It is... but the top tier companies pay dramatically more than the next tier down. Like, we're talking 30-50% difference once you count total comp. (it's interesting, base salary is somewhat comparable... but stock and bonus are a big part of comp if you work at a FAANG company, and those... largely don't exist at third-tier companies.) The top-tier employers also do a l…

Very few companies include bonus as a part of a software engineer's compensation (large SV companies are more or less alone in this). Bonuses are generally reserved for executives (excluding sales staff, of course) in most industries, including mine (defense).

Though, salary for software engineers has been ticking up lately. I suppose I can thank the demand for engineers created by these tech companies for that.

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