9 ms·

The marketers and advertisers have finally won. Google hasn't been an engineering company for the last 5 years maybe, but this confirms it. It's like Facebook,

by omouse 10y ago

The marketers and advertisers have finally won. Google hasn't been an engineering company for the last 5 years maybe, but this confirms it. It's like Facebook, they're beholden to the non-developers and non-software engineers who frankly don't care about other people's privacy and only see the dollar bills. So glad I'm evaluating other email providers and use Privoxy for ad-blocking.

FUCK__GOOGLE 10y ago
I'm moving off gmail today, gonna just register my own domain and set up a server somewhere. I think that and hangouts are the last ways they got me, looking forward to deleting my account. It's so strange to be old enough to see the same mistakes of the AOL days repeated again at a much larger scale. I don't want your garden, I want my privacy, thanks.
- GrinningFool 10y ago
  Meta-comment: Your post isn't unreasonable, but it seems your throwaway name killed it for you...
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    "isn't unreasonable" but it's a profoundly selfish sentiment. It's almost a given that the people reading this are totally immune to this. We all use adblockers as the default.
- nibs 10y ago
  Zoho Mail + Personal Domain = Free, No Ads. Company makes money by providing good-enough email product, encouraging you to use their other for-money good-enough SaaS products.
- kotajacob 10y ago
  Everyone's talking about switching emails, but realistically how difficult do you think it will be. Changing it for all the services you use and informing everyone? Or are you just planning on setting up forwarding for a while... (Asking because I'm trying to make the switch myself)
  - jhasse 10y ago
    I've switched to Fastmail and still have my gmail address. It's just another folder and it get's fetched via IMAP. I also added the mail as an identity, so I can still answer to people with my gmail adress. So no need to inform everyone, just use your new address when you're asked.
  - hyperdunc 10y ago
    I switched to Fastmail about 2 weeks ago and their POP retrieval feature made it really easy to get all emails from from my old account. I just updated my email address with a service when first using it after making the switch. And I reply to emails from my new address. I was looking into ProtonMail and Riseup as well. There are lots of good alternatives to Gmail.
- jrnichols 10y ago
  "gonna just register my own domain and set up a server somewhere" ..... only to find that you have problems delivering email to Gmail users, who are everywhere. :/ I experienced this same problem when moving to a new hosting provider and IP set. couldn't sent mail to Google properties/hosted accounts until my IP's email reputation score was high enough to be approved by whatever lurks in Google.
blowski 10y ago
This isn't a neat split along the lines of "All developers good, all marketers bad". What has won here is the pressure to grow, and the acceptance of society and governments to let them do it by any means. We are all complicit in this.
- pmyjavec 10y ago
  True, it's time to make a change and start educating family and friends about this issue and the alternatives. I always believed Google was successful because it was pushed and advocated for by geeks, I feel that those days are coming to an end. I use DDG and I think it's a pretty solid alternative, although it requires a little more effort when looking for certain things. Non-tech types have been curious about why I don't use Google, they seem to be getting the tracking is not good thing.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    > I always believed Google was successful because it was pushed and advocated for by geeks, I feel that those days are coming to an end. Those days ended the day Google went public, and quite possibly well before then.
    - guelo 10y ago
      I think the change happened when Eric Schmidt left and Larry Page gave his "more wood behind fewer arrows" speech, which meant engineers down product managers up.
      - yuhong 10y ago
        Maybe, but I want more details on what exactly is happening though.
  - Ntrails 10y ago
    I use DDG at work and the sheer number of times I just resort to sticking !g in front of the query in order to find what I'm looking for is bemusing. It's also a self fulfilling prophecy though - as my threshold to scroll through results on DDG has dropped markedly from when I first started.
drieddust 10y ago
You can do that for other services but I do not see an easy alternate to Android. People are moaning about Microsoft tracking with Windows 10 which is mostly on home devices. In reality Google is worse, they are tracking us 24x7 via our smart phones.
- clarry 10y ago
  Is Cyanogen mod wed to google services?
  - mmoya 10y ago
    The OS [mostly] doesn't matter. Google Play Services does most of the tracking job, see https://microg.org/ https://microg.org/
  - garaetjjte 10y ago
    If you don't install GApps package, no.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  I am using (and hating hating hating hating hating) Android. I've been watching for alternatives. 1. Cyanogen Mod: This inherits too many of Android's fatal flaws. 2. FirefoxOS: Oh well. (It's dead, Jim.) 3. Ubuntu Mobile: It's still alive, though small. 4. Windows Mobile: Not my thing. I may head to a small-form-factor notepad. I really like the concept of a folio-format tablet + bluetooth keyboard, though nobody seems to be making a general 9-10" device. I prefer this to an integrated & hinged laptop, or a smartphone type device, especially in WiFi-only capabilities. The basic hardware of my device is acceptable. The OS, lockdown, user-hostility, surveillence, intentionally broken crap, and App store ecosystem dyfunction are irredeemable.
  - mediaserf 10y ago
    I have high hopes currently for Plasma Mobile - https://plasma-mobile.org/ https://plasma-mobile.org/
golergka 10y ago
Why do you think none of the marketers care about privacy? Why do you think all engineers do? For the record, I'm an engineer, have almost nothing to do with web development, and my honest opinion is actually against so-called privacy advocates. At the same time, a lot of marketing people that I meet actually argue against me on this. If you see a corellation between a profession and political opinion, it does not signify causation.
artursapek 10y ago
I recently moved to using https://mailbox.org/ https://mailbox.org/ to host my email under a personal domain name. I've been very happy with their service. (not affiliated with them whatsoever)
- ForHackernews 10y ago
  I've been happy with https://fastmail.com/ https://fastmail.com/
  - eridius 10y ago
    I second the recommendation for FastMail. Excellent service, they even support push email on iOS (AFAIK they're the only company outside of Yahoo to have that for IMAP), and I love all the work they're doing to try and push email forward (such as JMAP).
Kunix 10y ago
> So glad I'm evaluating other email providers and use Privoxy for ad-blocking. I find it to be not that easy to find good alternatives. In the long run good products require money, and money is massively flowing at advertisement currently. That's why the big players are Google (ads), Facebook (ads), and I suspect that's why Microsoft is starting to massively collect user data (from Windows 10). Building good competition requires money flowing at them, and people don't seem willing to pay for such products. The only alternatives I see currently are: - A change of rules (laws) regulating advertisement and personal data. - A change of the funding system to give more opportunities to people to unite and bootstrap their own initiatives (basic income?). - A subscription-based subset of Internet were you pay $10-$30 each month and can access to a high-quality service providers (news, email providers, etc). - A major actor benevolently sponsoring such efforts (states or other wealthy entities with funding capabilities).
- eridius 10y ago
  It's not easy to find good alternatives if you require that your email be free. If you're willing to pay for email (and really, if email is important to you, you should be paying for it) there's a number of excellent providers. I recommend FastMail, but I've seen people talk about a few other good ones too (though I forget the names).
  - alanh 10y ago
    I, for one, am an enthusiastic paying customer of Fastmail.
    - godshatter 10y ago
      Seconded.
ap22213 10y ago
You're being way generous. It's more like 15 years. But, anyway, moving to another company won't help. Unless it's something that is specifically prohibited by contract (and not unilaterally editable), companies will eventually do it if it makes them money. Individuals have zero leverage. What we need is a massive corporation for all people that will negotiate contracts on our behalf. Oh, wait, that's what governments are for? Governments are so 20th century.
YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
>> the non-developers and non-software engineers who frankly don't care about other people's privacy and only see the dollar bills. If the developers and the software engineers cared about other people's privacy and saw anything beyond dollar bills the nons' would not have anything to sell.
- manigandham 10y ago
  This is not how corporations work.
calbear81 10y ago
Google has never been an engineering company, it's a search company with an engineering-focused culture and an ad-driven monetization model. Please don't paint broad unsubstantiated strokes over all "non-developers and non-software engineers". You mention Facebook as an example that's not engineering focused but fail to mention that their equity structure is such that Mark Zuckerberg has control effectively through the votes his shares represent which means MZ, an engineer/hacker, is responsible for the decisions of the company. Google is not a company whose mission it is to preserve people's privacy. They are out to solve search and organize information and in order to reach their goals, they have to find a way to attract the best talent in the world. This requires making tradeoffs in order to get the capital required to invest in changing the world in the way they think will be better.
- the_watcher 10y ago
  Search is one of the most technically complex engineering problems out there. A search company is by definition an engineering company.
  - candiodari 10y ago
    Having worked for a company designing nuclear power plants, that was very much a financial company where even the tiny sales department had far more power than the very large engineering department ... I would disagree that complexity of a problem makes companies engineering companies. The engineers at sister companies who were working at the time on an offshore gas terminal were in the same position. Those companies are very much not engineering driven.
XJOKOLAT 10y ago
It's Friday night, just on my way out of the office and I have to read this? FUCK GOOGLE.
aikah 10y ago
> Google hasn't been an engineering company for the last 5 years maybe I think Google always was an ad company, using technology to push ads and never a engineering company using ads as a source of income.
- the_watcher 10y ago
  Have you forgotten the years they went providing Google search without a single ad?
  - mikeleeorg 10y ago
    So then would you say Google was a search company and is now an ad company?
    - the_watcher 10y ago
      It's still a search company. What search engine do you use? Who has built a better web search product than Google? I admire DuckDuckGo and am hopeful for them in the future, but Google is simply still the best search engine out there.
  - stonogo 10y ago
    Which years were those? Google has been putting ads in search results since at least 2000. Are you talking about 1998-2000?
    - the_watcher 10y ago
      Yes. Those are years, plural, when Google the company was not putting advertisements into search results. They may have always monetization via ads when they decided to turn it into a company (Larry and Sergei did not think about ads when they were developing the initial product, but I'll concede that they likely just hadn't ever considered that they'd be able to turn a research product into a company at all), but they inarguably built the product before selling one single advertisement.
manigandham 10y ago
It is not engineering vs advertising. Developers are not some kind of perfectly pure and moral people, and engineering is not an end in itself, it's always to serve some other purpose. There is no such thing as a tech/engineering company.
- XJOKOLAT 10y ago
  "Don't be evil" ... ? It's not about developers being perfectly pure and moral, it's about an organisation holding themselves up to a standard that they have set themselves. And a standard which I expect them to meet and exceed.
  - manigandham 10y ago
    What exactly is that standard? Google is a massive company that provides immense value to billions, and they do much of this for free (monetarily to you as the end user) while providing advertisers a great platform that allows for efficient matching of products to consumers. That is a fine standard for a company in my opinion.
    - XJOKOLAT 10y ago
      Being cautious and careful with my information is an extremely basic standard considering the position they are in.
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    > And a standard which I expect them to meet and exceed Then you're a fool. If you want to slam people for not meeting standards, they'll have to be objectively defined. There's no sense of "evil" you could ever hope for people to agree on. Your complaint is similar to the chorus of people complaining that they voted for "hope" and Obama let them down. They should have known that would happen when they saw that his slogan was "hope".
    - XJOKOLAT 10y ago
      Being cautious and careful with my information is an extremely basic standard considering the position they are in.
amelius 10y ago
> Google hasn't been an engineering company for the last 5 years maybe, [...] Well, Google is hyped here on HN (a technology forum) a lot, also in the positive sense. So perhaps HN should start hyping different, more ethical correct, companies?
the_watcher 10y ago
Google is absolutely still doing real engineering. However, on the web side, I tend to agree with you. The core Google product is now ads-first. Their real engineering efforts have just shifted.
nialv7 10y ago
Off topic question: If I was to find a job right now, what's the best "engineering company" I can work for?
- piyush_soni 10y ago
  Google. Ads or not, it's the best 'engineering' company to work for.
jrnichols 10y ago
it's working quite well, along with the ad nauseam propaganda saying that "ad blockers = stealing content." That if you use anything to block ads, you're "entitled" and "you don't deserve to see that content." Yet Google still finds itself held in such high regard that criticism of their advertising tactics are dismissed as trolling in many cases. And here we are.
rtpg 10y ago
do you think marketers are the ones building the ad platforms? A bunch of developers knowingly go work for Google to work on this sort of stuff. "But they offer sooooo much money" is not a moral argument.

by omouse 10y ago

FUCK__GOOGLE 10y ago

I'm moving off gmail today, gonna just register my own domain and set up a server somewhere. I think that and hangouts are the last ways they got me, looking forward to deleting my account. It's so strange to be old enough to see the same mistakes of the AOL days repeated again at a much larger scale. I don't want your garden, I want my privacy, thanks.

GrinningFool 10y ago
Meta-comment: Your post isn't unreasonable, but it seems your throwaway name killed it for you...
- KirinDave 10y ago
  "isn't unreasonable" but it's a profoundly selfish sentiment. It's almost a given that the people reading this are totally immune to this. We all use adblockers as the default.
nibs 10y ago
Zoho Mail + Personal Domain = Free, No Ads. Company makes money by providing good-enough email product, encouraging you to use their other for-money good-enough SaaS products.
kotajacob 10y ago
Everyone's talking about switching emails, but realistically how difficult do you think it will be. Changing it for all the services you use and informing everyone? Or are you just planning on setting up forwarding for a while... (Asking because I'm trying to make the switch myself)
- jhasse 10y ago
  I've switched to Fastmail and still have my gmail address. It's just another folder and it get's fetched via IMAP. I also added the mail as an identity, so I can still answer to people with my gmail adress. So no need to inform everyone, just use your new address when you're asked.
- hyperdunc 10y ago
  I switched to Fastmail about 2 weeks ago and their POP retrieval feature made it really easy to get all emails from from my old account. I just updated my email address with a service when first using it after making the switch. And I reply to emails from my new address. I was looking into ProtonMail and Riseup as well. There are lots of good alternatives to Gmail.
jrnichols 10y ago
"gonna just register my own domain and set up a server somewhere" ..... only to find that you have problems delivering email to Gmail users, who are everywhere. :/ I experienced this same problem when moving to a new hosting provider and IP set. couldn't sent mail to Google properties/hosted accounts until my IP's email reputation score was high enough to be approved by whatever lurks in Google.

blowski 10y ago

This isn't a neat split along the lines of "All developers good, all marketers bad". What has won here is the pressure to grow, and the acceptance of society and governments to let them do it by any means. We are all complicit in this.

pmyjavec 10y ago
True, it's time to make a change and start educating family and friends about this issue and the alternatives. I always believed Google was successful because it was pushed and advocated for by geeks, I feel that those days are coming to an end. I use DDG and I think it's a pretty solid alternative, although it requires a little more effort when looking for certain things. Non-tech types have been curious about why I don't use Google, they seem to be getting the tracking is not good thing.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  > I always believed Google was successful because it was pushed and advocated for by geeks, I feel that those days are coming to an end. Those days ended the day Google went public, and quite possibly well before then.
  - guelo 10y ago
    I think the change happened when Eric Schmidt left and Larry Page gave his "more wood behind fewer arrows" speech, which meant engineers down product managers up.
    - yuhong 10y ago
      Maybe, but I want more details on what exactly is happening though.
- Ntrails 10y ago
  I use DDG at work and the sheer number of times I just resort to sticking !g in front of the query in order to find what I'm looking for is bemusing. It's also a self fulfilling prophecy though - as my threshold to scroll through results on DDG has dropped markedly from when I first started.

drieddust 10y ago

You can do that for other services but I do not see an easy alternate to Android. People are moaning about Microsoft tracking with Windows 10 which is mostly on home devices. In reality Google is worse, they are tracking us 24x7 via our smart phones.

clarry 10y ago
Is Cyanogen mod wed to google services?
- mmoya 10y ago
  The OS [mostly] doesn't matter. Google Play Services does most of the tracking job, see https://microg.org/ https://microg.org/
- garaetjjte 10y ago
  If you don't install GApps package, no.
dredmorbius 10y ago
I am using (and hating hating hating hating hating) Android. I've been watching for alternatives. 1. Cyanogen Mod: This inherits too many of Android's fatal flaws. 2. FirefoxOS: Oh well. (It's dead, Jim.) 3. Ubuntu Mobile: It's still alive, though small. 4. Windows Mobile: Not my thing. I may head to a small-form-factor notepad. I really like the concept of a folio-format tablet + bluetooth keyboard, though nobody seems to be making a general 9-10" device. I prefer this to an integrated & hinged laptop, or a smartphone type device, especially in WiFi-only capabilities. The basic hardware of my device is acceptable. The OS, lockdown, user-hostility, surveillence, intentionally broken crap, and App store ecosystem dyfunction are irredeemable.
- mediaserf 10y ago
  I have high hopes currently for Plasma Mobile - https://plasma-mobile.org/ https://plasma-mobile.org/

golergka 10y ago

Why do you think none of the marketers care about privacy? Why do you think all engineers do? For the record, I'm an engineer, have almost nothing to do with web development, and my honest opinion is actually against so-called privacy advocates. At the same time, a lot of marketing people that I meet actually argue against me on this. If you see a corellation between a profession and political opinion, it does not signify causation.

artursapek 10y ago

I recently moved to using https://mailbox.org/ https://mailbox.org/ to host my email under a personal domain name. I've been very happy with their service. (not affiliated with them whatsoever)

ForHackernews 10y ago
I've been happy with https://fastmail.com/ https://fastmail.com/
- eridius 10y ago
  I second the recommendation for FastMail. Excellent service, they even support push email on iOS (AFAIK they're the only company outside of Yahoo to have that for IMAP), and I love all the work they're doing to try and push email forward (such as JMAP).

Kunix 10y ago

> So glad I'm evaluating other email providers and use Privoxy for ad-blocking. I find it to be not that easy to find good alternatives. In the long run good products require money, and money is massively flowing at advertisement currently. That's why the big players are Google (ads), Facebook (ads), and I suspect that's why Microsoft is starting to massively collect user data (from Windows 10). Building good competition requires money flowing at them, and people don't seem willing to pay for such products. The only alternatives I see currently are: - A change of rules (laws) regulating advertisement and personal data. - A change of the funding system to give more opportunities to people to unite and bootstrap their own initiatives (basic income?). - A subscription-based subset of Internet were you pay $10-$30 each month and can access to a high-quality service providers (news, email providers, etc). - A major actor benevolently sponsoring such efforts (states or other wealthy entities with funding capabilities).

eridius 10y ago
It's not easy to find good alternatives if you require that your email be free. If you're willing to pay for email (and really, if email is important to you, you should be paying for it) there's a number of excellent providers. I recommend FastMail, but I've seen people talk about a few other good ones too (though I forget the names).
- alanh 10y ago
  I, for one, am an enthusiastic paying customer of Fastmail.
  - godshatter 10y ago
    Seconded.

ap22213 10y ago

You're being way generous. It's more like 15 years. But, anyway, moving to another company won't help. Unless it's something that is specifically prohibited by contract (and not unilaterally editable), companies will eventually do it if it makes them money. Individuals have zero leverage. What we need is a massive corporation for all people that will negotiate contracts on our behalf. Oh, wait, that's what governments are for? Governments are so 20th century.

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago

>> the non-developers and non-software engineers who frankly don't care about other people's privacy and only see the dollar bills. If the developers and the software engineers cared about other people's privacy and saw anything beyond dollar bills the nons' would not have anything to sell.

manigandham 10y ago
This is not how corporations work.

calbear81 10y ago

Google has never been an engineering company, it's a search company with an engineering-focused culture and an ad-driven monetization model. Please don't paint broad unsubstantiated strokes over all "non-developers and non-software engineers". You mention Facebook as an example that's not engineering focused but fail to mention that their equity structure is such that Mark Zuckerberg has control effectively through the votes his shares represent which means MZ, an engineer/hacker, is responsible for the decisions of the company. Google is not a company whose mission it is to preserve people's privacy. They are out to solve search and organize information and in order to reach their goals, they have to find a way to attract the best talent in the world. This requires making tradeoffs in order to get the capital required to invest in changing the world in the way they think will be better.

the_watcher 10y ago
Search is one of the most technically complex engineering problems out there. A search company is by definition an engineering company.
- candiodari 10y ago
  Having worked for a company designing nuclear power plants, that was very much a financial company where even the tiny sales department had far more power than the very large engineering department ... I would disagree that complexity of a problem makes companies engineering companies. The engineers at sister companies who were working at the time on an offshore gas terminal were in the same position. Those companies are very much not engineering driven.

XJOKOLAT 10y ago

It's Friday night, just on my way out of the office and I have to read this? FUCK GOOGLE.

aikah 10y ago

> Google hasn't been an engineering company for the last 5 years maybe I think Google always was an ad company, using technology to push ads and never a engineering company using ads as a source of income.

the_watcher 10y ago
Have you forgotten the years they went providing Google search without a single ad?
- mikeleeorg 10y ago
  So then would you say Google was a search company and is now an ad company?
  - the_watcher 10y ago
    It's still a search company. What search engine do you use? Who has built a better web search product than Google? I admire DuckDuckGo and am hopeful for them in the future, but Google is simply still the best search engine out there.
- stonogo 10y ago
  Which years were those? Google has been putting ads in search results since at least 2000. Are you talking about 1998-2000?
  - the_watcher 10y ago
    Yes. Those are years, plural, when Google the company was not putting advertisements into search results. They may have always monetization via ads when they decided to turn it into a company (Larry and Sergei did not think about ads when they were developing the initial product, but I'll concede that they likely just hadn't ever considered that they'd be able to turn a research product into a company at all), but they inarguably built the product before selling one single advertisement.

manigandham 10y ago

It is not engineering vs advertising. Developers are not some kind of perfectly pure and moral people, and engineering is not an end in itself, it's always to serve some other purpose. There is no such thing as a tech/engineering company.

XJOKOLAT 10y ago
"Don't be evil" ... ? It's not about developers being perfectly pure and moral, it's about an organisation holding themselves up to a standard that they have set themselves. And a standard which I expect them to meet and exceed.
- manigandham 10y ago
  What exactly is that standard? Google is a massive company that provides immense value to billions, and they do much of this for free (monetarily to you as the end user) while providing advertisers a great platform that allows for efficient matching of products to consumers. That is a fine standard for a company in my opinion.
  - XJOKOLAT 10y ago
    Being cautious and careful with my information is an extremely basic standard considering the position they are in.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  > And a standard which I expect them to meet and exceed Then you're a fool. If you want to slam people for not meeting standards, they'll have to be objectively defined. There's no sense of "evil" you could ever hope for people to agree on. Your complaint is similar to the chorus of people complaining that they voted for "hope" and Obama let them down. They should have known that would happen when they saw that his slogan was "hope".
  - XJOKOLAT 10y ago
    Being cautious and careful with my information is an extremely basic standard considering the position they are in.

amelius 10y ago

> Google hasn't been an engineering company for the last 5 years maybe, [...] Well, Google is hyped here on HN (a technology forum) a lot, also in the positive sense. So perhaps HN should start hyping different, more ethical correct, companies?

the_watcher 10y ago

Google is absolutely still doing real engineering. However, on the web side, I tend to agree with you. The core Google product is now ads-first. Their real engineering efforts have just shifted.

nialv7 10y ago

Off topic question: If I was to find a job right now, what's the best "engineering company" I can work for?

piyush_soni 10y ago
Google. Ads or not, it's the best 'engineering' company to work for.

jrnichols 10y ago

it's working quite well, along with the ad nauseam propaganda saying that "ad blockers = stealing content." That if you use anything to block ads, you're "entitled" and "you don't deserve to see that content." Yet Google still finds itself held in such high regard that criticism of their advertising tactics are dismissed as trolling in many cases. And here we are.

rtpg 10y ago

do you think marketers are the ones building the ad platforms? A bunch of developers knowingly go work for Google to work on this sort of stuff. "But they offer sooooo much money" is not a moral argument.