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Tough pill to swallow? Apple never staked a claim to some fuzzy moral high ground. All Jobs is pointing out is that to the extent that you equate greediness wit

by ellyagg 17y ago

Tough pill to swallow? Apple never staked a claim to some fuzzy moral high ground. All Jobs is pointing out is that to the extent that you equate greediness with evil, Google is precisely as evil as every other company. Google is open where it thinks it can afford to be and not where it doesn't. So is Apple. Google locks down its algorithm to give a good user experience in search. Apple locks down its App Store to provide a good experience on the iPhone. Both of these moves are designed to make money, but mysteriously, Teflon Google easily sheds all acknowledgement of its motives. Maybe I'm not a good judge of morality. I still hold the romantic notion that people giving you money means people think you're doing something good for them. Apple's fans are some of the most loyal on the planet. It doesn't seem as though they're extorting folks into buying their stuff.

pyre 17y ago
> Google locks down its algorithm to give a good user experience in search. Apple locks down its App Store to provide a good experience on the iPhone. You lost me at this point. Out of all of the things that Google does or has done, locking down their algorithm hardly ranks on the scale of evil. > Both of these moves are designed to make money, but mysteriously, Teflon Google easily sheds all acknowledgement of its motives. Google locking down their algorithm does not prevent someone from competing with them. On the other hand, Apple locking down the AppStore does allow them to prevent others from competing with them (i.e. where is iPhone Opera Web Browser?). Google's algorithm is more in line with the hardware design blueprints of the iPad and the source code to the operating system. No one but the most rabid FSF supporters are railing on Apple for not open-sourcing their operating system. And no one is railing on Apple for not posting their hardware design blueprints for the iPad and/or iPhone.
- demallien 17y ago
  No, your analogy isn't right. Or rather, using your analogy, no one is being prevented from competing with Apple either, all you need to do is build your own wildly successful gadget with AppStore. Easy! No, a better analogy would be to look at how Google restricts use of their APIs. I remember a couple of years ago, I wanted to geo-code a couple of hundred addresses of handicapped parking spaces in Paris for a handicapped friend. Google's terms of service required me to pay money for this access, because a couple of hundred hits, run over a few minutes, was considered commercial use of their service. I didn't have an automatic right to use Google's service in an innovative way. And indeed, I tried it anyhow, just to see how they reacted, the server stopped responding after the first 50 or so hits. Both companies are very restrictive in how you, as a developer, may use the services that they provide. And they are both near-monopoly providers of those services. As others have pointed out, both are publicly traded companies that are there to make a profit, and both will put restrictions on developers that they feel are using their systems in ways that they have decided are inappropriate.
  - pwhelan 17y ago
    "I didn't have an automatic right to use Google's service in an innovative way. And indeed, I tried it anyhow, just to see how they reacted, the server stopped responding after the first 50 or so hits." No, you didn't have the automatic right to use their servers as much as you want in an innovative way. Putting in a time delay (say 2 seconds?) between each request and you can do that just fine. Google is in no way saying either method is inappropriate, just that they consider one to be an action done by businesses and they don't give away as many services to businesses for free. I hope you got the list done for your friend though, it sounds like quite a nice thing to do.
    - demallien 17y ago
      Yes, that's the way of getting around the technical restriction, but if you read the terms of service, at least as they were a couple of years ago, what I was doing wasn't allowed - I was over the upper limit per month. I ended up finishing things with Yahoo's service instead, so she eventually had a list of handicapped places in her GPS :-)
- ellyagg 17y ago
  I lost you because we have different assumptions. I don't consider either of those things to "rank on the scale of evil". They are both business practices. Just because you assert that Apple's practice is more evil, doesn't make it so. And, you're quite wrong. Google makes its money as an advertising platform. In this regard, Google's moat around its industry is exactly as deep and as wide as Apple's is around the App Store. People compete against Google search. People compete against the App Store. The lock in effects for both of these enterprises are essentially the same.
leoc 17y ago
> Apple never staked a claim to some fuzzy moral high ground. What? Have you forgotten "1984" and "Think Different"?
- cabalamat 17y ago
  If I was Google I'd do a parody of the 1984 ad featuring Apple as the bad guy. -- "We have created for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each iPhone user may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing applications."
  - glhaynes 17y ago
    And the majority of your userbase wouldn't understand that it's satire because they would love to be set free from the contradictory, confusing, often-harmful experience on other platforms.
  - crowsfan85 17y ago
    > 1984 ad featuring Apple as the bad guy? See Simpsons S20:Ep7. http://youtube.com/watch?v=CZGIn9bpALo http://youtube.com/watch?v=CZGIn9bpALo
    - cabalamat 17y ago
      LOL -- thanks for that link
- ellyagg 17y ago
  Please. Those campaigns weren't self-serious morality stories, they were about anti-conformity. Companies establishing a personality is branding. Companies asserting that whatever they do must not be evil because, hey, that's our motto, is arrogance. Google has set itself up to be right by default in every action. If I dispute their actions, I just might be evil. After all, we know they aren't. As a matter of fact, I consider it somewhat evil that they don't have easy (or in some cases any) live support for most of their products. But, hey, the services are free, right? Google couldn't be getting any strategic or first order value from my using gmail, could they? If I knew someone personally who told me all the time that they refused to do anything or believe anything immoral and then I had to carry on a discussion about politics with that person, it wouldn't be very pleasant. Every public debate where Google's involved, and that's all of them now, is like debating that guy.

by ellyagg 17y ago

pyre 17y ago

> Google locks down its algorithm to give a good user experience in search. Apple locks down its App Store to provide a good experience on the iPhone. You lost me at this point. Out of all of the things that Google does or has done, locking down their algorithm hardly ranks on the scale of evil. > Both of these moves are designed to make money, but mysteriously, Teflon Google easily sheds all acknowledgement of its motives. Google locking down their algorithm does not prevent someone from competing with them. On the other hand, Apple locking down the AppStore does allow them to prevent others from competing with them (i.e. where is iPhone Opera Web Browser?). Google's algorithm is more in line with the hardware design blueprints of the iPad and the source code to the operating system. No one but the most rabid FSF supporters are railing on Apple for not open-sourcing their operating system. And no one is railing on Apple for not posting their hardware design blueprints for the iPad and/or iPhone.

demallien 17y ago
No, your analogy isn't right. Or rather, using your analogy, no one is being prevented from competing with Apple either, all you need to do is build your own wildly successful gadget with AppStore. Easy! No, a better analogy would be to look at how Google restricts use of their APIs. I remember a couple of years ago, I wanted to geo-code a couple of hundred addresses of handicapped parking spaces in Paris for a handicapped friend. Google's terms of service required me to pay money for this access, because a couple of hundred hits, run over a few minutes, was considered commercial use of their service. I didn't have an automatic right to use Google's service in an innovative way. And indeed, I tried it anyhow, just to see how they reacted, the server stopped responding after the first 50 or so hits. Both companies are very restrictive in how you, as a developer, may use the services that they provide. And they are both near-monopoly providers of those services. As others have pointed out, both are publicly traded companies that are there to make a profit, and both will put restrictions on developers that they feel are using their systems in ways that they have decided are inappropriate.
- pwhelan 17y ago
  "I didn't have an automatic right to use Google's service in an innovative way. And indeed, I tried it anyhow, just to see how they reacted, the server stopped responding after the first 50 or so hits." No, you didn't have the automatic right to use their servers as much as you want in an innovative way. Putting in a time delay (say 2 seconds?) between each request and you can do that just fine. Google is in no way saying either method is inappropriate, just that they consider one to be an action done by businesses and they don't give away as many services to businesses for free. I hope you got the list done for your friend though, it sounds like quite a nice thing to do.
  - demallien 17y ago
    Yes, that's the way of getting around the technical restriction, but if you read the terms of service, at least as they were a couple of years ago, what I was doing wasn't allowed - I was over the upper limit per month. I ended up finishing things with Yahoo's service instead, so she eventually had a list of handicapped places in her GPS :-)
ellyagg 17y ago
I lost you because we have different assumptions. I don't consider either of those things to "rank on the scale of evil". They are both business practices. Just because you assert that Apple's practice is more evil, doesn't make it so. And, you're quite wrong. Google makes its money as an advertising platform. In this regard, Google's moat around its industry is exactly as deep and as wide as Apple's is around the App Store. People compete against Google search. People compete against the App Store. The lock in effects for both of these enterprises are essentially the same.

leoc 17y ago

> Apple never staked a claim to some fuzzy moral high ground. What? Have you forgotten "1984" and "Think Different"?

cabalamat 17y ago
If I was Google I'd do a parody of the 1984 ad featuring Apple as the bad guy. -- "We have created for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each iPhone user may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing applications."
- glhaynes 17y ago
  And the majority of your userbase wouldn't understand that it's satire because they would love to be set free from the contradictory, confusing, often-harmful experience on other platforms.
- crowsfan85 17y ago
  > 1984 ad featuring Apple as the bad guy? See Simpsons S20:Ep7. http://youtube.com/watch?v=CZGIn9bpALo http://youtube.com/watch?v=CZGIn9bpALo
  - cabalamat 17y ago
    LOL -- thanks for that link
ellyagg 17y ago
Please. Those campaigns weren't self-serious morality stories, they were about anti-conformity. Companies establishing a personality is branding. Companies asserting that whatever they do must not be evil because, hey, that's our motto, is arrogance. Google has set itself up to be right by default in every action. If I dispute their actions, I just might be evil. After all, we know they aren't. As a matter of fact, I consider it somewhat evil that they don't have easy (or in some cases any) live support for most of their products. But, hey, the services are free, right? Google couldn't be getting any strategic or first order value from my using gmail, could they? If I knew someone personally who told me all the time that they refused to do anything or believe anything immoral and then I had to carry on a discussion about politics with that person, it wouldn't be very pleasant. Every public debate where Google's involved, and that's all of them now, is like debating that guy.