Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 365 posts

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#321

Post by falcor84 »

lovecg wrote: post #315
mrhands556 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay an electrician a slight premium for knowledge and experience that won’t burn my house down. Sure, I could look it up on YouTube but the probability that I do something wrong probably outweighs the premium I would pay for a qualified electrician. How is this unfair?

It’s completely fair and it’s also not quite what people who critique capitalism are talking about. Imagine you’re hiring a company that has electricians on payroll, then by definition the electrician you hired will get less than the labor he performed, and the company will pocket the difference as profit - or it won’t stay in business long. Electricians have the option of going alone, many other industries not so mu…

Another profession where freelance is a common option is coding. So if going alone should always better, is the implication that all the employed electricians and coders are irrational or want to be exploited?

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#322

Post by registeredcorn »

MildlySerious wrote: post #273
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…

> Which employers are the “nice company making nice things and you’ll be able to sleep at night” tech companies nowadays? Stripe, maybe?

To be fair, I've heard that their customer service is pretty abysmal.

Hmm...maybe there's a corollary between "goodness" and customer service? The worse the customer service, the "gooder" the company?

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#323

Post by jarjoura »

germandiago wrote: post #145
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I don’t think people understand the extent to which public relations influences our beliefs. Google was able to maintain a polished image in well known areas while silently behaving poorly in others and we believed it for a long time. I remember about ten years ago meetings Eric Schmidt had with US military generals. That didn’t even register on mass media so most people probably never heard of it. I wonder how…

I did not go into details as to what Google misbehaviors were. But I wonder what "behaving poorly" is. There is legal and illegal stuff. Companies give jobs to people, not only Google. It is natural, yes, natural, logical, to want to pay less to people. It is also natural that people want to be paid more. A salary is never high enough for an employee. A salary is never low enough for an employer. I do not say this fr…

I promise you both companies have very well defined and strongly worded ethical policies against collusion. Plus, budgets for things like the OP would involve multiple layers of an organization with lots of required sign-off. So if true, this would be damning for all those involved.

As to your other point, I'm sure you're aware that governments and private companies are afforded different rules of engagement. We decided a century ago that allowing companies to collude ended up oppressing markets in negative ways and should not be tolerated. So not sure why you're using one to justify the other.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#324

Post by bostik »

agumonkey wrote: post #141
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…

I don't know if it's been studied or written but I'd bet solid money that every group / company starts nice, trying to differentiate from old rusty and corrupt only to become what they despised because that's just survival instinct and "efficiency" (short term, lazy). Same for people, new ones come fresh with ideals only to become sleazy when their spot is secured. It's a balance between knowledge of the old versus n…

> I don't know if it's been studied or written

Yes, it has been written. And you almost certain will have heard the condensed version.

You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#325

Post by gukov »

lovecg wrote: post #306
rileymat2 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“steal or forge” There is a huge difference between those two. Would be interesting to know how much was “forged.” At one point I thought they tried to vet the dumps pretty well to maintain credibility.

Even assuming it’s 100% legit documents. In an environment where all parties do bad things, but country A selectively exposes parts of country B’s dirty laundry in a way that would benefit country A and uses Wikileaks as the tool to achieve that - well it’s hard to see Wikileaks as this neutral party that does unequivocal good for the world. I’ll change my mind when Wikileaks publishes oh I don’t know, details on Put…

So a whistleblower from company A should wait until company B has a whistleblower, otherwise it will look bad?

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#326

Post by lovecg »

falcor84 wrote: post #321
lovecg wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s completely fair and it’s also not quite what people who critique capitalism are talking about. Imagine you’re hiring a company that has electricians on payroll, then by definition the electrician you hired will get less than the labor he performed, and the company will pocket the difference as profit - or it won’t stay in business long. Electricians have the option of going alone, many other industries not so mu…

Another profession where freelance is a common option is coding. So if going alone should always better, is the implication that all the employed electricians and coders are irrational or want to be exploited?

There are clearly advantages when working for someone else. Is the negotiation between the employee and the employer always fair when an industry has a few established incumbents? That depends and there’s a large spectrum of possibilities.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#327

Post by throwaway29303 »

jeffbee wrote: post #261
throwaway29303 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no problem with profiting from (faster) software. However, there's clearly a HUGE problem profiting from monopolizing the market the way Google is doing. Moreover, it shows that Google's motives were clearly never about the end user but their ad exchange instead. Two birds, one stone. (But leave out the ugly and shameful details to the public until now.)

You think an open standard TCP congestion control algorithm is part of a big conspiracy? Listen to yourself.

No, I don't. I think Google invested heavily in those technologies to profit from its ad exchange monopoly.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#328

Post by germandiago »

jarjoura wrote: post #323
germandiago wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not go into details as to what Google misbehaviors were. But I wonder what "behaving poorly" is. There is legal and illegal stuff. Companies give jobs to people, not only Google. It is natural, yes, natural, logical, to want to pay less to people. It is also natural that people want to be paid more. A salary is never high enough for an employee. A salary is never low enough for an employer. I do not say this fr…

I promise you both companies have very well defined and strongly worded ethical policies against collusion. Plus, budgets for things like the OP would involve multiple layers of an organization with lots of required sign-off. So if true, this would be damning for all those involved. As to your other point, I'm sure you're aware that governments and private companies are afforded different rules of engagement. We deci…

Collusion via regulations still exists today. As long as there are rulers it will exist.

Thinking the opposite is being very innocent, in my view. But all happens in non-obvious ways and in the background, you are going to see a tiny fraction of what happens.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#329

Post by lovecg »

gukov wrote: post #325
lovecg wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even assuming it’s 100% legit documents. In an environment where all parties do bad things, but country A selectively exposes parts of country B’s dirty laundry in a way that would benefit country A and uses Wikileaks as the tool to achieve that - well it’s hard to see Wikileaks as this neutral party that does unequivocal good for the world. I’ll change my mind when Wikileaks publishes oh I don’t know, details on Put…

So a whistleblower from company A should wait until company B has a whistleblower, otherwise it will look bad?

No. But if an entity C keeps publishing whistleblower documents from company A but not B, it’s reasonable to wonder if C is in fact not a neutral actor.

Re: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion

#330

Post by [deleted] »

Infinitesimus wrote: post #154
capableweb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Other than search and ads, I doubt other part would do particular well. Breaking up Google would result in a lot of people losing their job. This is exactly why companies should be broken up. They can currently afford doing a lot of anti-competitive stuff just because another department is profitable while the anti-competitive methods/departments won't. That people would lose their job shouldn't be a consideration…

Companies should be allowed to dabble in unprofitable things as they wish. The need for everything to be profitable is why Google got into selling Ads and also why they keep killing projects. Many things in the world worth doing don't nearly fit into a nice profitable business but in many ways, bring some positivity to the world. Android gave many people a chance at a modern smartphone and connected future. Chrome wo…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN