61–70 of 78 posts
can't post anything negative about Google on HN. Will get automatically down voted by their thousands of drones, I mean employees.
Is it actually possible to downvote postings on HN? (Why am I being downvoted for asking an honest question?)
It still mostly balances out in the longer run so far. But these days will end as well.
(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion only, not speaking for anybody else. I'm an SRE at Google.) > sometimes mining information to leak to organizer friends > After 9–12 hours on campus I would fill my Google-issued bag with Naked juices and to-go containers of food for my roommates So... deliberate violation of the corporate NDA (which is massively disrespectful to the other people who work here) and stealing food from t…
I can't say I disagree with this analysis but as an ex-googler I once confronted an employee who had just stuffed at least a six pack of red bull into their backpack at the mini kitchen(MK). Their rebuke was defensive as expected, but they also pointed out that (at the time) Google is getting rich by stealing everyone else's information and then putting ads around it and reselling it to other people, so taking a few…
So I disagree with the 'kernel of truth'. That isn't the kernel of truth. Google isn't stealing everyone's information (IP laws are weird sometimes, but the bottom line is there isn't a natural monopoly to information like there is to, say, real property), and there is a beneficial exchange. When done right, and adwords is a good example, ads can benefit the user as well.
Internet search engines are beneficial to the user, the site owner, and society as a whole. Adwords are very powerful, and they are underwriting a whole host of really awesome shit, eg: android, chrome, gmail, google photos, tensorflow, and much much more. Overall civilization is benefiting immensely.
Think what would the world be like if Google was run by the kinds of people who ran tobacco and oil companies? The kind of people who have repressed scientific discovery in the name of profits. Google has it's warts, but nothing that evil. I think we are forgetting how shitty people are out there, and we are getting too relative. Google to perfect is a lot closer than Exxon to perfect.
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I can't say I disagree with this analysis but as an ex-googler I once confronted an employee who had just stuffed at least a six pack of red bull into their backpack at the mini kitchen(MK). Their rebuke was defensive as expected, but they also pointed out that (at the time) Google is getting rich by stealing everyone else's information and then putting ads around it and reselling it to other people, so taking a few…
Aren't you forgetting about robots.txt? (The argument about stealing becomes more complicated when you have to explain why people are not putting up a robots.txt. You might still be able to make it, though.)
Also, Google, and every other search engine, is covered under fair use.
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I can't say I disagree with this analysis but as an ex-googler I once confronted an employee who had just stuffed at least a six pack of red bull into their backpack at the mini kitchen(MK). Their rebuke was defensive as expected, but they also pointed out that (at the time) Google is getting rich by stealing everyone else's information and then putting ads around it and reselling it to other people, so taking a few…
Aren't you forgetting about robots.txt? (The argument about stealing becomes more complicated when you have to explain why people are not putting up a robots.txt. You might still be able to make it, though.)
To use our anonymous employee's perspective, Google was "giving away free drinks to employees." They were an employee, they were taking drinks. At the time the policy was not as explicit as it was after the great MK purge. So they chose to interpret the policy without considering the "intent" (which was drinks when you are at the office). They compared it to newspapers (and to a lesser extent the books project) which at the time were exploiting "fair use" loopholes to drive traffic to Google's sites, where Google placed advertising. Google was sued by a number of different groups over this. As a result advertising is subtle/non-existent on the news.google.com page and somewhat subdued on the books.google.com page.
I agree with Ryan that sites get more out of Google showing results from their pages than they perceive they "lose" by not having people come to their site to read the full story. And while we can argue about magnitude, the reality is that the "web" link on HN stories lets you get the referrer set to Google and that can sometimes jump the paywall of a web site. If such a thing wasn't possible the publisher would argue those people would pay. But as perhaps Forbes has found out, maybe not so much with the ad blocking crowd.
The argument I recognize is that one side might choose to see only that evidence that supports the conclusion they have already arrived at. And the dismissal of contrary evidence is perceived as a lack of integrity.
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Aren't you forgetting about robots.txt? (The argument about stealing becomes more complicated when you have to explain why people are not putting up a robots.txt. You might still be able to make it, though.)
Except that IP violation, isn't a form of theft. Also, Google, and every other search engine, is covered under fair use.
(Ie I agree with you. My comment was just worded rather narrowly.)
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Aren't you forgetting about robots.txt? (The argument about stealing becomes more complicated when you have to explain why people are not putting up a robots.txt. You might still be able to make it, though.)
I wasn't, that is a good point. And after Google I helped run a search engine :-) I was not saying that I advocated the person's point of view or even agreed with it, only that I recognized the argument they were making. Which was people "give" services with some expectation of how they are used, and feel abuse when their expectations are interpreted differently. To use our anonymous employee's perspective, Google wa…
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> So you see, Google took advantage of that image, and it worked out great for them. The problem is as soon as they went that way it became a high risk game, because from then on they will be judged according to that standard. Among people who are aware of that standard, I agree with you. On the other, sadder hand, I think that, to most people, Google really is Just Another Company. And we expect companies--except ma…
Why single out Apple? They aren't that nice to their employees. And if you single out Apple, you can also single out Amazon: they may treat their employees badly by Google standards, but I am delighted to be their customer.
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The NDA is inexcusable. The food though...seems like everybody does it.
I've often taken a drink or a snack from the office for later in the evening or the next day. Never considered that this might be frowned upon. On the other hand, taking large quantities of items frequently seems like an abuse of a perk.