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Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

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Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#331

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #272
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but I laughed. Amazon and Google are doing things today as we speak that are as sordid as anything Microsoft has done. The warehouse conditions and pressure cooker culture at Amazon have been repeatedly reported to be appalling and Google's planned Chrome ad blocker and compensation scheme is outright abuse of their dominance in search and ads.

Two wrongs don't make a right. Microsoft was ruled an abusing monopoly (though the remedies were exceedingly limited). Google is presently operating under a US DoJ consent decree. I'd have to check what the status for Facebook is. IBM saw its court actions. AT&T was a regulated, monopoly-abusing entity from the 1910s, and the only reason you're making heavy use of Unix-based systems today is that AT&T's 1949 consent…

The point is not to excuse Microsoft's past behavior. The point is the common "Microsoft is the most villainous tech company that ever existed and ever will exist!" meme among older techies is basically ignoring the fact that, once a company gets to that size, nobody's hands are clean, even good old "Don't be evil" Google. To constantly repeat that meme is to demonstrate that one is living in the past instead of facing the reality of the present.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#332

Post by jacquesm »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #331
dredmorbius wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two wrongs don't make a right. Microsoft was ruled an abusing monopoly (though the remedies were exceedingly limited). Google is presently operating under a US DoJ consent decree. I'd have to check what the status for Facebook is. IBM saw its court actions. AT&T was a regulated, monopoly-abusing entity from the 1910s, and the only reason you're making heavy use of Unix-based systems today is that AT&T's 1949 consent…

The point is not to excuse Microsoft's past behavior. The point is the common "Microsoft is the most villainous tech company that ever existed and ever will exist!" meme among older techies is basically ignoring the fact that, once a company gets to that size, nobody's hands are clean, even good old "Don't be evil" Google. To constantly repeat that meme is to demonstrate that one is living in the past instead of faci…

I did not say anything about Amazon, Google, Apple or other companies because those were not the subject. Note the 'not many' in the comment you replied to. The fact that other companies are bad does nothing to diminish what MS did (and I haven't seen Google finance a lawsuit against Linux yet, for one thing).

The reality of the present is that Microsoft is still at it with their telemetry, forced upgrades and piggy backing of things that further drive their business on what are supposed to be security updates.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#333

Post by joshuamorton »

xg15 wrote: post #321
joshuamorton wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just to clarify, because a different company, in a different industry, did something illegal that had nothing to do with privacy, you don't trust privacy policies?

Yes, pretty much this. That scandal has shown that self-policing doesn't work if all the incentives point into the opposite direction. I don't see what significant differences at Google would make them immune to the forces that were at work at VW.

I think there's a very simple one: google employees, by and large, use google products. If google is mishandling user data, that means that they are mishandling my data, and my boss's data, and my boss's boss's data.

That is, unlike with VW vehicles, individual employees are directly negatively affected.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#334

Post by [deleted] »

sangnoir wrote: post #315
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad you bring up the Kindle: The Fire Phone failed, as I pointed out, because you can't succeed on Android without Google Play. Funny enough, it was rumored their next attempt will support Google Play. And since Google's MADA prohibits manufacturers from selling forks, it means Amazon would also have to give up the Kindle Fire. So Amazon is soon to be another example of how you can't fight Google. If you'd like…

> And since Google's MADA prohibits manufacturers from selling forks, it means Amazon would also have to give up the Kindle Fire. So Amazon is soon to be another example of how you can't fight Google. This is wrong. The anti-forking clause applies to Open Handset Alliance members only: a group which Amazon does not belong to.

[deleted]

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#335

Post by jfoutz »

skookumchuck wrote: post #305
acdha wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the 20th century's defining technologies started that way, from microchips and the internet to biotech. You don't need to get everything to say that the model can support a few misses. The jet engine case seems especially hard to claim as an exception since early development was predicated on military sales and, for example, a quick trip to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_jet_engine shows the o…

The financing of Whittle's and Ohain's jet engines did not come from the government, nor did government finance their incorporation into working, flying aircraft. Whittle's idea he had on his own, not as part of a government research project. The US military even ordered Lockheed to stop working on a jet engine, and concentrate on piston engines. This changed after being faced with the ME-262. The transistor, too. Ai…

Concretely, us spent 150B/ 70B non-defense.

Google ~14B, Amazon ~14B MS ~10B Apple ~10B and FB ~6B for about 50B all together.

So, concretely, we should expect just the big five to produce roughly 1/3 as much as publicly funded science, assuming they're of equal quality. More like 2/3's if we exclude military research. Although you don't come out and say it, you're implying private is more efficient.

I dunno. I think the feds get a big discount by using grad student labor. Fundamentally, the perform different roles. Doctoral research is foundational stuff that corporations take and refine. Sure, i can quibble over each one of your examples. But that's not really the point.

I don't think any corporation was going to go looking for gravity waves, or Proxima B.

So many problems are a tradeoff between exploration and exploitation. Broadly, public funding tends to fill the role of exploration. Private funding tends to fill the role of exploitation. There's no crisp line. Corporations surely explore, and universities surely exploit. But again, broadly, i think the public exploration/private exploitation split is a good one, and i think it's how the 20th century worked pretty much worked.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#336

Post by joshuamorton »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #224
cidibe wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I trust Google for privacy a lot more than I'd trust 10 different little specialized services that are fighting for their lives financially and don't have the decade of experience as the biggest target on the planet with no bad breaches.

And that's a big part of the problem: People don't realize privacy is essentially about fragmenting your information. 10 different little specialized services are far more private, even if they're subject to more breaches. Thinks like your coworkers not knowing every last detail of your family, nobody you know IRL knowing about your weird online kinks, etc. Your privacy is largely reliant on your different social cir…

Why edit your post instead of responding? That's such an odd way to do things and breaks the order of conversation.

>Security and privacy are actually distinctly different concepts with very different implications.

True, but you cannot have privacy without security. That is to say, if I pieces my personal information to 5 different groups, but all of them are vulnerable, your data, all of it, is vulnerable, and an untrusted Nth party can attain all of it. On the other hand, if you give all of your personal information to a single secure party, you know who has the data.

Obviously, its a bit more complex than this because often times larger groups are single sources of failures, but still.

For a nondigital metaphor, your list of kinks is less likely to get out if you put it in a safe deposit box than if you rip it into 4 pieces and tell your closest friends to put their piece under their mattress, even if no friend as the whole list and you trust each friend more than your bank, because an adversary can probably figure out that you gave it to your friends, and can break into their houses, but won't be able to crack the vault.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#337

Post by ocdtrekkie »

joshuamorton wrote: post #336
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's a big part of the problem: People don't realize privacy is essentially about fragmenting your information. 10 different little specialized services are far more private, even if they're subject to more breaches. Thinks like your coworkers not knowing every last detail of your family, nobody you know IRL knowing about your weird online kinks, etc. Your privacy is largely reliant on your different social cir…

Why edit your post instead of responding? That's such an odd way to do things and breaks the order of conversation. >Security and privacy are actually distinctly different concepts with very different implications. True, but you cannot have privacy without security. That is to say, if I pieces my personal information to 5 different groups, but all of them are vulnerable, your data, all of it, is vulnerable, and an un…

I edited the post because I hit a rate limit on HN. I don't like it either, but I have to choose my use of replies carefully.

The problem you miss is that people have different identities. And people want to interact with others, to communicate with people, through those identities. Locking up your kinks in a vault isn't really an option if you want to share them with a community of like-minded individuals. But just because you do, you don't necessarily want your family to be able to look them up on Google.

People have different even potentially public personas, that they still want to keep separate. Under a variety of names, I'm involved in a variety of different communities, some of which I don't really want people I know IRL to know about, some which I don't mind. But all of them are out there on the Internet, because that's how I interact with them.

Actually, apart from the Google-centric notion of it and the lack of multiple identities (exacerbated by Google's "real name policy", Google+ was probably the closest Google got to getting this right: I could put specify which Circles people belonged in, and share information with each independently.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#338

Post by skookumchuck »

jfoutz wrote: post #335
skookumchuck wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The financing of Whittle's and Ohain's jet engines did not come from the government, nor did government finance their incorporation into working, flying aircraft. Whittle's idea he had on his own, not as part of a government research project. The US military even ordered Lockheed to stop working on a jet engine, and concentrate on piston engines. This changed after being faced with the ME-262. The transistor, too. Ai…

Concretely, us spent 150B/ 70B non-defense. Google ~14B, Amazon ~14B MS ~10B Apple ~10B and FB ~6B for about 50B all together. So, concretely, we should expect just the big five to produce roughly 1/3 as much as publicly funded science, assuming they're of equal quality. More like 2/3's if we exclude military research. Although you don't come out and say it, you're implying private is more efficient. I dunno. I think…

My argument is with the notion that if government didn't fund X, X never would have happened. The existence of the internet is the epitome of this kind of thinking. It's like saying if someone paid by the government had an idea to connect two towns with a road, therefore nobody would have ever had such an idea otherwise.

This fallacious reason is obviously false, as FidoNET proves, but that doesn't deter the notion.

The cherry-picked examples are classic confirmation bias, and are non-falsifiable because nobody can go back in time and defund a government project.

There's plenty of non-government money being plowed into basic research - just look at the endowments of top universities like MIT. There would likely be much more if the government did not fund it, just like I'd not be willing to fund a road between A and B if there's a way I can get the government to do it for me.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#339

Post by dang »

659087 wrote: post #50
gigatexal wrote: post #28

Regulation only makes the largest companies that much more untouchable. Why not invest what would have been spent on regulation instead on education? That way the next pioneer could be fostered. Or invest in subsidies for health and wellness and food programs so the next Zuckerberg doesn't go hungry and can have the luxury to innovate (terrible analogy since he came from a middle class family but still). Or if you do…

If there's a "next Zuckerberg" out there, letting them go hungry would probably be the best course of action. It seriously concerns me that people aspire to be like someone who stole an idea then turned it into a global mass surveillance, manipulation, speech supression and propaganda machine.

Please don't post ideological rants to HN. If you have a substantive point to make, please make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do.

Re: Are Google, Amazon and others getting too big?

#340

Post by acdha »

skookumchuck wrote: post #338
jfoutz wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concretely, us spent 150B/ 70B non-defense. Google ~14B, Amazon ~14B MS ~10B Apple ~10B and FB ~6B for about 50B all together. So, concretely, we should expect just the big five to produce roughly 1/3 as much as publicly funded science, assuming they're of equal quality. More like 2/3's if we exclude military research. Although you don't come out and say it, you're implying private is more efficient. I dunno. I think…

My argument is with the notion that if government didn't fund X, X never would have happened. The existence of the internet is the epitome of this kind of thinking. It's like saying if someone paid by the government had an idea to connect two towns with a road, therefore nobody would have ever had such an idea otherwise. This fallacious reason is obviously false, as FidoNET proves, but that doesn't deter the notion.…

It's not a claim that things would never happen but that it'd take much longer. Yes, private investment exists but it's so much smaller — MIT is legendary, one of the top schools in the world, has a full-time development office getting donations, etc. but the bulk of their research is federal by a large margin.

I note that you dismiss the foundational technologies of the last century as cherry-picking but fail to present any data to support claims which are well outside the mainstream. Do you have any sources to back those assertions up?

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