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No longer loving Google

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Re: No longer loving Google

#81

Post by hrktb »

nostromo wrote: post #61
ry0ohki wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe Google is intentionally being evil, but they are definitely behaving a lot like the company they coined the phrase because of. In the 90s Microsoft was using it's huge installed user base advantage to push it's less popular and new-to-the-game browser on a group of people, while also keeping out the competition with some unfair ways. This seems identical to how Google is using it's position as leader…

Changing your search engine is easy. Changing your OS is not.

That's where the android strategy Is paying

Re: No longer loving Google

#82

Post by c2 »

pg wrote: post #31
NelsonMinar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I buried this in the post, but of all the things Google's done this month the promotion of Google Search Plus Your World (aka Search+) is what concerns me the most. The other negative stories are less significant, I only mentioned them because they're part of the trend I'm feeling. I think it's interesting that anti-Google posts are reflexively upvoted. Ten years ago that would have been Microsoft.

I agree that's the most worrying sign. In the past Google won by making what people needed. But it seems clear that was not their primary motivation for SPYW. Their primary motivation was clearly fear of Facebook. That hasn't made Google evil yet. It's just the first step down the road to mediocrity. Which may lead to evil in the long term, because to make lots of money despite being mediocre, you generally have to d…

Another common aspect of human nature: Interpreting people in the worst possible way.

My opinion of Google has turned from positive to negative in the last 5 years, and it has nothing to do with how big or successful they are.

Re: No longer loving Google

#83

Post by rickmb »

pg wrote: post #23

Like any anti-Google post lately, this one has been reflexively upvoted, but if you look at his reasons for not loving Google, they're pretty thin. The Kenyan episode was obviously one rogue branch with insufficient oversight; as soon as the guys in Mountain View found out what was going on, they stopped it, and with a minimum of the sort of corporate doublespeak you'd expect from most big companies. The changes to p…

It's a personal story of when someone stopped believing Google, not a deep analyses of why Google is "evil".

For me Google stopped being credible when it did a 180 on net neutrality. There were good reasons before that, and there were certainly good reasons after that, but when someone or some company loses the benefit of the doubt is a personal thing.

What currently pisses me off most about Google is their blatant disregard for privacy, more specifically their open and arrogant disdain for the way privacy is perceived (and protected by law) outside the US.

In hindsight I "should" have started "hating" Google much earlier, and OMG, I still use Google. Doesn't make any single individual argument criticizing Google any less valid though.

But most of all, the value in this post does not lie in his arguments, but in the fact that it illustrates the way in which Google is losing its supporters and its credibility as an ethical corporation.

Re: No longer loving Google

#84

Post by cynwoody »

darkandbrooding wrote: post #22
dataminer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been trying duckduckgo since last week for search, so far over 95% of my queries are resulting in good results, its my default now in pentadactyl. I will be installing Zimbra ZCS opensource edition on one of my servers for mail, calendaring. Haven't found any alternative for youtube yet.

I've been using duckduckgo for about a week now, and I'm very happy with it. I managed an in-house instance of Zimbra at my last job, and I remain a vocal, enthusiastic supporter of that product. If your organization's requirements list aligns with Zimbra's feature list, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

I've been using them off and on since learning of their existence on this forum a couple of weeks ago. They are surprisingly good!

But I did have the damnedest time remembering their domain name! "Google" was an inspired name choice, including the trademark-friendly intentional misspelling. "Duckduckgo" not so much! I had to re-find the name several times.

However, DDG has a nice shortcut, which turned out to fit within my limited wet-ware RAM: http://ddg.gg.

Re: No longer loving Google

#85

Post by beachgeek »

sek wrote: post #16
untog wrote: post #2

Google is too powerful, too arrogant, too entrenched to be worth our love. Let them defend themselves Wise words. I think the same applies to companies like Apple as well- I'll never understand why people dedicate so much personal energy to defending a company that needs no help. They're big enough to look after themselves.

This is bullshit. To bring these few examples to discredit Google here. Think of their record: OpenSource, Android, SOPA, Fight against Software Patens and so on. Google is still on our side and we need them against all the Microsoft and MPAAs. To be on so many battlefields and doing so few problematic things is impressive. Did they ever really compromise their core values? Google tries not to compromise them, but th…

I could never understand how Scott figured that a jihad against Microsoft was a viable business strategy.

Re: No longer loving Google

#86

Post by rickmb »

logn wrote: post #65

Whether we love or hate google, we sure love to either love or hate google. Companies like, say, 3M would kill to be "hated" and "evil" like google is. Our hate is really more like us picking on that girl we like.

3M has no influence over my life. 3M could disappear tomorrow and I couldn't give a toss. 3M doesn't know enough about me and mine to harm me, and I don't depend on 3M in a way that would hurt me if I could no longer use their products. At worst, it would be slightly annoying.

Google has the power to seriously fuck with my life. I neither love nor hate Google, but I do care about what they do more than most companies, and certainly more than any company in our industry, and for good reasons.

Google is not "that girl we like". Google is "that guy that stands behind us with a big stick", and we don't know if he's going to use it to defend us or beat the shit out of us.

Re: No longer loving Google

#87

Post by ramblerman »

kenjackson wrote: post #80
pg wrote: post #23

Like any anti-Google post lately, this one has been reflexively upvoted, but if you look at his reasons for not loving Google, they're pretty thin. The Kenyan episode was obviously one rogue branch with insufficient oversight; as soon as the guys in Mountain View found out what was going on, they stopped it, and with a minimum of the sort of corporate doublespeak you'd expect from most big companies. The changes to p…

Well I think a lot of where Google crosses the line is becoming clearer now. For example, personalized ads in gmail. Try to opt-out of personalized ads in gmail, seriously go and try it. You can click the button, but they won't actually opt you out. At least not how you'd expect. You'll still get personalized ads, but they just use a different heuristic for how to personalize (based on the current email). How hard is…

This has been a core facet of gmail for years. You get free email + storage - they post contextual ads on the right.

The problem people are discussing here, has nothing to do with some heuristic that runs against your email. It's the advent of the google profile, where all your online searches, mails, posts, rss feeds, and mobile phone now tie together in one place, and google is changing the terms.

>> Haven't made the switch yet, but I'm seriously considering it.

Yeah... sure

Re: No longer loving Google

#88

Post by agravier »

marshray wrote: post #71
agravier wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> idealistic expectations for what ultimately boils down to a money-driven company Are there non-profit-driven companies counting more than 10 people?

Just because a company is for-profit doesn't mean it has to be "money-driven" in the sense that the term is being used here. In fact, for a company like Google for which many of its users have relatively low switching costs it only makes economic sense to do whatever it takes to keep the users happy and enthusiastic, even at the expense of some short-term profit.

OK, I did not understand that the term was used here as driven by short-term profit at the expense of ethics.

Re: No longer loving Google

#89

Post by peto123 »

mahmud wrote: post #7

Is there a check-list for Google products & alternatives? I was just thinking of going through this exercise last night. Don't feel comfortable with them anymore.

I am currently going through this exercise, and here's what I done:

1) Chrome -> Firefox (Firefox 9 is surprisingly snappy, seems to me like a perfectly sensible alternative)

2) Search -> https://duckduckgo.com/lite - doesn't even show your query string in the URL. BUT: Works only in general search terms, not for specific (long) queries. There, Google is still unavoidable, it seems. But for 90% of my searches, DDG is perfecly OK.

3) Zoner instead of Picasa and zonerama.com instead of Photos in G+. [zonerama gives 2GB for free]

4) GMail: I found Hotmail to be adequate, but recently I switched to paying for my own webhosting, so I don't use free email anymore.

5) Google Calendar/Tasks -> Toodledo.com

6) Google Analytics,Adsense -> don't know...haven't found alternative yet.

In mu current understanding, it is not a problem to use some of the Google services, if one found them to be the best. What one should avoid, in my opinion, is to register account with Google and attach one's real-life identity to it. I did it in the past, and now consider it a big mistake of mine. I must say that I am still amazed so many people are ok with that.

Re: No longer loving Google

#90

Post by vibragiel »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #15
pamelafox wrote: post #11

When I first started working at Google, I truly loved them as a user-facing company. And for the first few years, I thought I would work there forever and I could imagine no other place for me. But by the time I left, I was bitter and no longer in love. For various reasons, I felt like I had been betrayed by what I thought Google was at the beginning. It is my fault for having such idealistic expectations for what ul…

Hey Pamela! I fear you had a particularly rough time at Google. Bad project luck, also coming in later. I do look back at my time on Google as fondly as, say, graduate school. Particularly the early years, 2001–2004, it was a truly amazing place to be. That's why I wrote this post up, I just feel sad about where Google is now. Fortunately there's organizations like Y Combinator and places like Hacker News with a lot…

I also look back at your time on Google fondly, specifically for this 2004 email:

  Nelson Minar has invited you to open a free Google Gmail account.
Thanks for that, man :-)
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