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Mourning Google

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Re: Mourning Google

#381

Post by serjester »

rchaud wrote: post #255

These blog posts eulogizing Google's culture death sidestep the elephant in the room; Google sells ads. Nothing else they produce makes money. Google Search didn't magically get dumber, they simply made a business decision to favor SEO-optimized junk sites, many of which run Google Ads. There's an outdated saying that goes, "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" If Google was hiring only the best and brightest, s…

Who said YouTube is unprofitable? They brought in 30B last year - if they’re unprofitable it’s because of accounting magic to offset other parts of the business.

Re: Mourning Google

#382

Post by vineyardmike »

behnamoh wrote: post #343
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have observational bias based on the things that you are interested in and observed as an outside observer. The real innovation at Google is internal and invisible to you -- often secret, maybe kind of boring, but totally transformational. It's infrastructure and its support. And all those moonshot things and stuff were mainly PR, sideshows, and not the primary focus of the company's brains. And they ke thing is…

How do we break ads for Google? More generally, what do we do to make ads disappear or weakened? I guess that's the only way current Google would want to innovate more.

You can’t break ads without breaking Google.

It’s like an Oil Rich Nation. Pumping oil is the only thing they know. They’ll build shiny cities, crazy buildings, and fund moonshots. But nothing else will compare to the profits of oil/ads, so nothing else can possibly matter.

The only big oil economy that isn’t totally dependent on their energy industry is the US, and only because we had other natural resources that allowed us to diversify early.

To divest Google from ads they need another source of infinite cash. If you can discover that, it’s way more valuable to you on its own instead of within Google. Maybe they can find a few thousand smaller side businesses to supplement revenue, but they’ll always be individually disposable (as we see now) and subject to cancellation.

Re: Mourning Google

#383

Post by matkoniecz »

osmsucks wrote: post #285
YoshiRulz wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It violates copyright, yes. If you're interested in contributing opening hours data, but learning OSM's quirks sounds too hard, try https://streetcomplete.app (for Android and soon maybe iOS).

Be careful when using StreetComplete. It's by far the most user-friendly OSM editor out there, but it bundles edits together in one big changeset. I didn't know that, so I used it on occasion to fill in information about places I was visiting, and right after to fill in information about places far away that I know intimately (where I live). This created a very geographically large changeset which got reviewers to sh…

> t bundles edits together in one big changeset

have you enabled manual uploading (that needs to be done in settings and warns about need for triggering regular uploads)?

or have you edited just before and after air travel, and enabled plane mode before changes had chance to upload?

Re: Mourning Google

#384

Post by NoGravitas »

alimbada wrote: post #54

> Use Chrome for Google stuff: Maps, Calendar, Docs, Translate I don't see any good reason to stick to Chrome for these. I've been using them without issue via Firefox for years. I used to see warnings on some of those products that " works best with Google Chrome" when using Firefox but those have all disappeared now and even when they did have those warnings I don't remember experiencing any major issues.

I have a dedicated Google container in my Firefox for when I need to use a Google-owned site. It might be less essential now that third party cookies are dead, but I'm fine with belt and suspenders.

Re: Mourning Google

#385

Post by tadfisher »

smugglerFlynn wrote: post #376
herval wrote: post #37

> "Larry and Sergey were smart guys who recognized they didn’t know shit about corporateness and quickly got into a pattern of hiring and empowering psychotic pricks who were presumably “good at business”. Not gonna talk about some of the things I saw because these people are wealthy and litigious." Big Tech in a nutshell

[flagged]

This works great with the instrumental to "311 - The Continuous Life".

Re: Mourning Google

#386

Post by ksec »

cousin_it wrote: post #16

I have a different theory about the cause of the decline. Google 10-15 years ago had a clear idea of how to win: hire the best programmers, give them freedom, and they'll build products that will win in every market. And, well, that hasn't happened. Long before the current talk of Google's decline, there was talk of the Google black hole, where talented people would get hired and their noteworthy output would drop to…

>the non-normal culture wasn't proving itself.

Remember the big fuss about no managers?

>not many amazing new products were happening.

And, one of the things I've always found is that you've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to try to sell it. And I made this mistake probably more than anybody else in this room. - Steve Jobs

To me Google is simply a technology company, and are constantly innovating with Technology and looking for uses cases with the new tech they have. Apple, or at least Steve Jobs' Apple because the current Apple is looking more and more like Google. Are a consumer company that identify a problem and work backwards to look for a technology solution.

Unfortunately, it turns out Technology, Business, and Consumer understanding is an extremely rare set of combination.

Re: Mourning Google

#387

Post by jterrys »

behnamoh wrote: post #340
hn8305823 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just having the power isn't enough. Nobody respects pushovers. Think of "Asshole" in corporate leadership as "a show of force" that earns begrudging respect. But to your point you can earn respect without always being an asshole, or being one for no reason at all.

I wonder what it is about leaders like Steve Jobs that makes them popular despite how programmers working for them know the guy in charge has never written a line of code. Is it charisma (whatever that means)? Is it vision? Is it luck and being at the right place at the right time? Is it a few devoted loyal programmers who spread the word about how amazing the Führer is? I often think it also has to do with the perso…

I think it's literally just notoriety. There's collaborative and visionary leadership styles but nobody bats an eye because there's no conflict. People just work and its another Tuesday. Product gets delivered. Everyone moves on.

Re: Mourning Google

#388

Post by NoGravitas »

naasking wrote: post #211
vanderZwan wrote: post #22

> To me this feels like a big inflection point, because around the stumbling feet of the Big Tech dinosaurs, the Web’s mammals, agile and flexible, still scurry. Tangent: I kinda hate this metaphor. It reinforces this incredibly outdated idea that dinosaurs - or any other extinct life-form - went extinct because they were an evolutionary dead end. (Also, since I do not know a single nerd who isn't into dinosaurs the…

> Dinosaurs were doing great. They also were not slow or stumbling. They occupied every niche on the planet. The main reason most of them went extinct was a massive asteroid triggering the K–Pg extinction event (and even then birds are still around and doing just fine, thank you). The inability to avert or survive through an extinction level event literally proves that they are an evolutionary dead end. Extinction le…

Humanity is currently showing very little potential for averting extinction level events. They might end up surviving and rebounding from the Jackpot, but that's not the way to bet.

Re: Mourning Google

#389

Post by zehaeva »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #294
zehaeva wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does teaching Latin in schools have to do with schools, ostensibly, failing? Are you saying that Latin is something that is useful to everyday life and because we don't teach it to our children we're depriving them of this wonderous tool? I personally do not know Latin, but I have never run into a situation where I needed to know it. And to analyze the idea that, "Well, it's not Latin in specific, but that we ar…

Well, you would be surprised how much historical writing you are locked out of by not being able to read Latin. Not from antiquity, but from the fall of rome up until the turn of the previous century, Latin was the language . A tiny fraction of what's been written in Latin is available in any vernacular. By not reading Latin, you're locked out almost all western pre-modern writing. > Plato complained that "children t…

I assure you that I am not surprised with how much historical writing I am locked out of by not being able to read Latin. Honestly I would be willing to bet that it as much as I am locked out of from not being able to read Chinese, Sanskrit, Greek, Japanese, Arabic, etc. You can't think that's a serious argument for teaching Latin in primary or secondary school? If I were a western historian, sure, you should probably learn Latin, probably some flavor of ancient Greek as well.

I am referencing a Guardian article that I read nearly a decade ago[0] but he wasn't the only one to have bemoaned the "youth".

With Socrates, him being sentenced to death while for "corrupting the youth" that's a pretty naive, and incomplete, explanation, if you were to dig a little deeper you'll find that the, probably, true reasons for Socrates' trial was political[1]. You forget that the "corruption of the youth" was bound with the accusation that Socrates was denying the gods and introducing new gods[2], not, as you imply, that he was a champion of the youths themselves. For me it's difficult to take everything we know about Socrates as true given the posthumous glow up that Plato gives us. This is partly Socrates' own fault for his, as we're told, ideas that writing things down would lead to forgetfulness. Ironic honestly.

I am tempted to discuss further about Socrates' trial, how most thought that he was going to going to get off due to his ability in rhetoric and hi, basically, not defending himself was pretty shocking in and of itself.

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/mar/17/ephebiphob.... [1]https://www.mcgill.ca/classics/files/classics/2006-7-03.pdf [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Socrates

Re: Mourning Google

#390

Post by vanderZwan »

gumby wrote: post #354
vanderZwan wrote: post #22

> To me this feels like a big inflection point, because around the stumbling feet of the Big Tech dinosaurs, the Web’s mammals, agile and flexible, still scurry. Tangent: I kinda hate this metaphor. It reinforces this incredibly outdated idea that dinosaurs - or any other extinct life-form - went extinct because they were an evolutionary dead end. (Also, since I do not know a single nerd who isn't into dinosaurs the…

The metaphor can work to the degree that the dinosaurs succeeded, and the mammals stayed small (occupying a cockroach-like niche) until a large exogenous disruption upended the system. Of course that isn't what happened to the car companies, or the newspapers, or most once large sectors, and I do actually think that the same gradual, rather than abrupt, decay will happen to these big tech companies. In fact we see it…

Right, it can still work, as other commentors also show with their interpretation. However, I'd say that this is only so because we put in the effort to "patch" the metaphor into something the author didn't really say.

Also even then a lot of those comments still miss why I take issue with the "evolutionary dead end" implication, which is that it is presented as evolutionary survivors somehow being inherently better compared to what went extinct. Evolutionary dead ends do exist, but in reality extinction often comes down to (un)lucky circumstances.

> But maybe that's just a quibble.

Heh, maybe, but the quibble is valid. Quibbling over such details is practically how paleonerds show affection, right?

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