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If Google (or whoever) decides to reinvent what the word "family" means in a way that doesn't type-check with what the person understands a family means, whose

If Google (or whoever) decides to reinvent what the word "family" means in a way that doesn't type-check with what the person understands a family means, whose problem is that? The excess child in a 4-child family? Or Google's, when people decide to either start violating ToS and/or move to "Channel Bittorrent"? Maybe it's because I'm one of those Australians with our notorious national tendency towards online piracy I'm a bit biased but it does seem like Google might sensibly choose to err on the side on inclusiveness - just as a pragmatic consideration. The intent is pretty clear - I'm sure there would be a rather suspicious number of "15 person families" that interlock, span 4 different countries, etc. etc. the minute Google relaxed their ToS. And I can't help but wonder how many really large families genuinely have members spanning an age range where the oldest kid is still at home and little Timmy actually needs his own Google account.

mikeash 10y ago
It's pretty common to use words like this to indicate the approximate intent rather than a precise alignment with every possible thing the word could mean. Just toss "family plan" into Google and look at the results that come up. It's a really common term and they pretty much all have arbitrary limits like this, because "family plan" means "plan that might be more suitable for families" not "plan that suits every single family ever." It's common with other words too. Happy hour isn't limited to happy people, nor is it guaranteed to produce happiness. Kids meals have an arbitrary age cutoff even though "kid" is often more varied. Express lanes are sometimes slower than the regular ones. Hacker News is rarely about cutting things with rough or heavy blows, and often not about news. You ask, "whose problem is that?" My answer would be, nobody's, because there isn't a problem for anyone to have in the first place.

mikeash 10y ago

It's pretty common to use words like this to indicate the approximate intent rather than a precise alignment with every possible thing the word could mean. Just toss "family plan" into Google and look at the results that come up. It's a really common term and they pretty much all have arbitrary limits like this, because "family plan" means "plan that might be more suitable for families" not "plan that suits every single family ever." It's common with other words too. Happy hour isn't limited to happy people, nor is it guaranteed to produce happiness. Kids meals have an arbitrary age cutoff even though "kid" is often more varied. Express lanes are sometimes slower than the regular ones. Hacker News is rarely about cutting things with rough or heavy blows, and often not about news. You ask, "whose problem is that?" My answer would be, nobody's, because there isn't a problem for anyone to have in the first place.