38 ms·

“Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

739 points by walkingolof 9y ago

cromwellian 9y ago
>The idea of the Internet turning into a battlefield of propaganda is very far away from the ideal. Too late, it already happened, and had nothing to do with data collection. When television was invented, people had much the same visions of utopia: it'll be used to educate people. The internet is now flooded with propaganda from think tanks banked by billionaire wingnuts to the Putin Troll Army.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  And think tanks banked by Google, who will pressure them to fire people if they say the wrong thing.
  - cromwellian 9y ago
    Nice try, but no one's complaining about the Web being flooded with propaganda from Open Markets, nor can really call Eric Schmidt saying he is displeased as "pressure", then every time Steve Jobs threw a fit about a less than 100% positive iPhone review, we'd have to be talking about Apple's control of the media, the blacklisting of reporters, and the withholding of "access". The kinds of think tanks I'm talking about are things like the Scaife's funding of the Project for A New American Century, you know, the guys who masterminded the Iraq war? Or how about the Koch brothers funding of climate denial? You know, things which actually are fucking up our world and getting people killed. I would imagine the kinds of propaganda the Vivaldi CEO is worrying about is the kinds that get hate groups out in the streets with Nazi signs, not the kinds that try to lobby the government to protect net neutrality.
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      Are you really suggesting that Eric Schmidt personally calling their CEO and expressing his "displeasure" isn't pressure? I suppose when a mob boss says it'd be "unfortunate if something happened to someone", you'd characterize that as just an expression of a personal view, too. Perhaps someone "sleeping with the fishes" really is just a leisurely dip in the Chicago river. It's also worth noting that there are a significant number of examples where your employer has invested specifically in people writing about antitrust law, and specifically, claiming that Google doesn't violate it (see Joshua Wright, etc.). Suggesting their financial investment is limited to net neutrality discussions is... pretty misleading.
phr4ts 9y ago
Summary: Google suspends AdWords campaigns of Vivaldi Browser after Vivaldi CEO wrote an anti-Google article
- gaius 9y ago
  That is not a summary. The article opens with Google faking breaking compatibility with Opera in order to push their own browser. Why fake? Because the services worked perfectly when faking the user agent...
  - gsnedders 9y ago
    > The article opens with Google faking breaking compatibility with Opera in order to push their own browser. It explicitly states that it got worse when they introduced their own browser, which implies it pre-dates their own browser.
    - gaius 9y ago
      I think he means that first Google was cozy with Mozilla, and then later introduced Chrome. Opera the browser predates Google the company.
tryingagainbro 9y ago
Vivaldi CEO – “Google: it is time to return to not being evil” Me: that train has left the station. When you have monopoly power (70%-98% of market share) the governments should return Google and Whatever Corp to not being evil.
- akerl_ 9y ago
  It seems like companies are stuck in a losing game. We constantly push small companies to capture more market share. Any companies that fold during that effort, we bring out the pitchforks because the services they ran get shut off. Any companies that succeed, we bring out the pitchforks because they own too much market power. It seems a bit much that we ask for companies to constantly grow and simultaneously ensure they never pass 70% market share.
  - chki 9y ago
    Do "we" really push companies to capture market share? I mean sure, stockholders do, but "we" as the general public don't really care about a companies size until they become too big.
    - MugaSofer 9y ago
      It would be more accurate to say the laws of physics push certain services to capture enormous market share. How can a new search engine - or email service, for that matter - compete with Google's servers? How can a new social network compete with Facebook having all your friends already on it? How can a new encyclopedia compete with Wikipedia's vast store of volunteer-checked knowledge? How can a new operating system compete with the fact that everyone already knows hw to use Windows? It's not impossible, but an incremental improvement won't do it; you need to be massively better than the default to overcome the sheer advantage that comes from being the default.
    - akerl_ 9y ago
      I'd say there's a portion of non-shareholders who believe companies they like should be fighting to maximize market share, but I agree with you in-so-far as I think we can ignore that group for purposes of this discussion. To your point: if you're the CEO of a company, and the shareholders are pushing you to capture market share, you're quite inclined to do it. Especially since capturing market share makes it more likely your company will stay profitable or become profitable, even absent shareholder wishes. Which works until/unless you reach the point where you've gotten the combination of skill and luck and circumstance that means you end up with a monopoly market share, at which point "we" (where we == the non-shareholder general public) start posting about how your company has taken over the market and the government should declare you some combination of "common carrier" or "utility" or "out of business".
duncan_bayne 9y ago
https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  Seems you are getting similar treatment as I did in the past for posting relevant XKCDs. I'm guessing it's because you aren't adding much value to the conversation, but could be some folks hate XKCD too I guess.
  - Practicality 9y ago
    Not a downvoter, but it doesn't quite work. Google isn't against open-source. It's somewhat related, but not exactly.
    - jsjohnst 9y ago
      I didn't see that XKCD is being specifically about open source. That said, the one I posted a few months ago was spot on and yet it was downvoted to death within a few hours, so I don't think it really matters how perfect the fitting is.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    XKCD is a high iq version of a reaction gif.
    - jsjohnst 9y ago
      I agree completely now that you say that.
- duncan_bayne 9y ago
  Too late to edit, so to clarify: yes, posting an XKCD like that is dismissive. And for good reason. I am sick to death of people complaining about Google, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. doing Bad Things™, after handing the keys to the city to them, often in the hopes of getting rich in the process. "Oh no! Apple dropped our iOS app from the store!" Well, who could've predicted that building software for a proprietary stack and walled garden would end badly? "Google de-ranked us mysteriously!" If your business model depends on search engine rankings for success, you have a _major_ business risk there as there's realistically only one search engine in the world these days. "LinkedIn spammed my contacts!" Then disable your LinkedIn profile. Bad actors - like Google has become - only succeed because we as geeks use their services. The problem is one of our making, and we could fix it overnight if we chose to. But convenience eats all worldviews I guess. http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-03-19 http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-03-19
deleted 9y ago
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MikeGale 9y ago
There's a pattern here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt-google-new-america.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt-...
- degenerate 9y ago
  Assuming you've seen this too: https://qz.com/823922/eric-schmidt-played-a-crucial-role-in-team-hillarys-election-tech/ https://qz.com/823922/eric-schmidt-played-a-crucial-role-in-... Schmidt has been wading neck-deep in pulling political strings for years now... Google is evil, evil, evil.
  - HillaryBriss 9y ago
    > Google is evil, evil, evil well, at least they don't have anyone's personal info
- partisan 9y ago
  It's the endgame. There's less and less breathable room between the biggest players. That oversized market share turns into profits which turn into power: political and psychological. Most people won't have heard of these incidents. Of those, most won't even remember them next week. Soon, those who would dissent will pick their livelihood over speaking up for their principles. And I can't blame them.
- unityByFreedom 9y ago
  So you'll believe any story that critiques Google now? I would take this article with a grain of salt. Vivaldi's version of events is one side of the story. We don't know how Google would respond.
  - dang 9y ago
    > So you'll believe any story that critiques Google now? Please don't post personal swipes. Your comment would be much stronger without that bit. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
lightedman 9y ago
Really sounds like some sort of RICO or extortion charge should be filed against Google, assuming this is all 100% factual.
- jrs95 9y ago
  That’s probably why they have the government on their payroll.
- protomyth 9y ago
  it is probably not RICO https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico-dammit/ https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico-... (a bit salty on the language)
  - Endy 9y ago
    Sorry for going to a further tangent but... I'm definitely not a lawyer, but do I get a little frustrated at its overuse in pop culture too. Of course, most people don't think of "conspiracy to commit" as a crime, so they immediately jump to "is it RICO?" and say yes.
  - lightedman 9y ago
    I've actually got a little experience with this particular subject. The specific part you would charge Google under would be "It shall be unlawful for any person employed by or associated with any enterprise engaged in, or the activities of which affect, interstate or foreign commerce, to conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity or collection of unlawful debt." Specifically, collection of unlawful debt. As noted by the Vivaldi man: "We made effort to understand their explanations and to work with them on their various unreasonable demands (some of which they don’t follow themselves, by the way). After almost three months of back-and-forth, the suspension to our account has been lifted, but only when we bent to their requirements." If any of those requirements involved a monetary payment, you can very-well guarantee Google violated RICO. It was literal extortion. A RICO trial was one of my most fun days in court as a juror. Armenian Power Gang.
drunkenmonkey 9y ago
Applause for Vivaldi for the backbone to say something openly.
Jonnax 9y ago
Google are really shitty with their web browser especially on mobile. If you run Firefox you get a stripped down version of Google Search also with no infinite scrolling for images and low resolution. Use a user agent spoofer like this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/chrome-ua-on-google-android/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/chrome-ua-on-... And it seems to work fine on Firefox. I'm sure their official excuse is that they only support WebKit based browsers on mobile, like it's the new Internet Explorer with some modern day ActiveX
- kuschku 9y ago
  Not just that, but major functionality is missing. You can't restrict search just to your native language, or to all languages. You can't set a time frame.
  - pmontra 9y ago
    I didn't know that chrome could get that. I thought that the mobile site had limited functionality and requested the desktop site when I needed to set a time range. I checked it with Chrome and it works. Very unfair. However Chrome spoils the user experience by asking too many questions (log in? change language?). Not a good experience, I'll keep asking for the desktop site on those rare occasions.
- fyrstenberg 9y ago
  I discovered this as well. Not only, they're faking it with the new YouTube design as well. I had to set my user agent to Chrome to get the new dark theme (it may have changed later). I did try different user-agents using AgentX[1] and with Edge UA they said the new look wouldn't work (or in effect something along those lines), so there is not much actual feature check going on. Only setting Chrome would give me all features. Google is doing what Microsoft did 10 years ago - it didn't go so well for Microsoft when people eventually caught on. 1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/agentx/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/agentx/
  - infogulch 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
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numanumakid2017 9y ago
Leave Google alone. Google is doing a lot of good in this world. Just look at all the youtube stars and adsense rockstars they have created. I dont see ppl making millions from fb or microsoft.
LarryPage 9y ago
Google hasn't been my default search engine for 6+ months. In fact the only Google things I use frequently are Android and Chromium (through Opera). I feel better about my internet usage, and I've been having a much better experience. Obligatory "username checks out"
- breakingcups 9y ago
  What search engine have you been using? I've tried others but none seem to come even close, unfortunately.
  - Nomentatus 9y ago
    Also switched to DuckDuckGo about a month ago, because Google was ignoring words in my enquiries to show me what the AI hallucinated I might want to see. Works much better than it used to. It does have some AI hallucinations, but not nearly as many.
  - Corristowolf 9y ago
    DuckDuckGo works well. Even has those info tiles that google has when you search a store etc.
    - LarryPage 9y ago
      Yeah I've been using DuckDuckGo exclusively.
amirmasoudabdol 9y ago
YouTube website does everything to be unusable on the iPad. They don't use the default player. They won't save your settings if you use Safari. They do not allow full screen video. Even when you request the desktop site, they resist to load the video properly in first few trials. They are being as annoying as they can!
- saagarjha 9y ago
  That's because they want you using their app, which they have more control over and where they can disable features like background playback and Picture in Picture which they can then charge you for.
  - K0SM0S 9y ago
    On a side related note, YouTube Red still isn't available worldwide, so most people outside the US don't even have the option to pay for background/PiP. It's a subpar user experience by design and Google apparently doesn't care at all (it's been years now). Also, still no speed control on the mobile YouTube app. All of this being true even on Android O. As most people, I cannot avoid using YouTube, but everytime I need background play of podcast-like content, I default to another activity (eg actual podcast app, an audiobook, whatever). Typical case is when you need to communicate at the same time, or do 'stuff' while listening. When you add it all up, that's hours everyday lost from me. And I'm just one user, iirc the majority of human beings don't live in the US... It's frustrating that you can't even pay to resolve the issue, let alone knowing that they themselves placed a restriction (background play) that didn't exist in the first place. Reminds me of the worst from the likes of MS, Apple, Oracle, Verizon.
- cm2187 9y ago
  And the video will stop playing if you switch to another tab.
klondike_ 9y ago
I wish I could use Vivaldi, it seems like a nice browser for power users. Unfortunately it's closed source (besides the Webkit parts). Considering how much sensitive information goes through a browser nowadays, I would never consider something closed source. I'm sure Vivaldi has no intentions of becoming "evil" like Google, but because of its closed source nature it wouldn't be hard to slip a tracker or two in the browser and regular users would be none the wiser.
- roblabla 9y ago
  I don't know what browser you're using, but assuming chrome : it's not open source either. Chromium is open source, but Google Chrome is proprietary, much in the same way vivaldi is. If you want a truly open source modern browser, the only options are chromium or firefox these days, AFAIK ? (If you know an alternative I'm interested !)
  - jhasse 9y ago
    On Linux there are quite a few other options e.g. Eolie. https://github.com/gnumdk/eolie https://github.com/gnumdk/eolie On Android I can recommend Lightning: https://github.com/anthonycr/Lightning-Browser https://github.com/anthonycr/Lightning-Browser
  - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
    I don't think it's fair to assume that someone who is calling for a browser to be open sourced is using Chrome rather than Chromium.
  - TwoBit 9y ago
    Why assume Chrome? Most likely he uses Firefox.
  - lmm 9y ago
    Konqueror is still around (it's where the chrome rendering engine originally came from), and IMO still the best.
  - 482794793792894 9y ago
neil_s 9y ago
I'm a bit skeptical of the claims he's making in his article, since he has obvious incentives as the founder of a browser company competing with Google. Judging from the amazing features listed on the webpage (bar charts of my history, wow, do not need that at all), I'm guessing his product sense might have some something to do with his companies not working out, not bigger competitors that are out to get him. Can anyone point me to links confirming his two claims: that Google services were maliciously blocking Opera for reasons other than compatibility and efficiency for a low-market-share browser, and that Google blocked his ads for spurious reasons. He doesn't really provide details on what rules he was violating, but judging from the fact that the ads were reinstated the moment he was in compliance with them, it sounds like a trumped up charge.
- unityByFreedom 9y ago
  > He doesn't really provide details on what rules he was violating, but judging from the fact that the ads were reinstated the moment he was in compliance with them, it sounds like a trumped up charge. I agree skepticism is warranted. This is one side of the story. Even if you have it out for Google, you should want more details before grabbing your pitchfork. Mistakenly criticizing someone only empowers them.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  The people most likely to have complaints about a business is actually their competitors, so this logic makes it very easy to just assume your favorite company is never doing something wrong. Also, note that Vivaldi is not seeking major penetration in the market. It is "A Browser for Our Friends" specifically because it is folks that want a browser for power users like themselves, not for the everyday Chrome or Firefox folks. Clearly, you don't know how you harass someone effectively. Break things, and apologize quickly and fix it immediately when they ask about it. (Malicious IT people can do this too!) "Oops, no idea what happened there, sorry, we'll fix it." Accidents happen and all...
  - cromwellian 9y ago
    And clearly you don't know what you're talking about and are just making slanderous speculation. Engineers at Google have better things to do with their time than sit around trying to dream up ways to screw up the health of their code base for harassment purposes. Is that what people do at your company? Sabotage code for political purposes? Maybe it's time to change jobs.
amelius 9y ago
Never trust a company that has the word "evil" in its company motto, even if used in the negative sense. Imagine that Disney used the motto: "We won't kill your children". Would you still send your kids to their theme park?
- andrenotgiant 9y ago
  Google doesnt use the word "evil" in any of their mottos or official copy.
  - grzm 9y ago
    > Google Code of Conduct > Preface > “Don’t be evil.” Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it’s also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably, and treating co-workers with courtesy and respect. > The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put “Don’t be evil” into practice. [0]: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html
mjevans 9y ago
Setting aside everything else; other comments are doing an OK job discussing those topics... What were the content changes that Google forced them to make? I'd like to know so that I can evaluate how reasonable that request is from my own perspective.
cromwellian 9y ago
"Seems to work" is not the same thing as "Working As Intended". I work on Gmail/Inbox (previously GWT). When we released Inbox, it started out as Chrome only, people discovered they could get it to load and seemingly work on Firefox by spoofing, but the reality was, it was still broken, and would eventually consume all memory, because Inbox relies on sparse Javascript array behavior for protobufs, and something like a[300000000]=1, for(x in a)/Object.keys(a) would cause the JS engine to allocate a giant array. Inbox also was a the first web property to adopt a form of Material Design, and had hard design requirements for 60fps on the Web Animation. Unfortunately, due to the way browsers upload GPU textures when doing compositing, animation timing was broke. (Do they count time spent uploading in the interpolation?) My coworkers spent a huge amount of time fixing it, and then finally making Edge work. There was no ill will or evil plan, just finite engineering resources. I don't know the details around Google Docs, but my guess (speculation) would be it probably had to do with Content-Editable. Docs was a Google acquisition of Writely. Back in those days, many online editing apps on the bleeding edge (ab)used Content Editable. Those of you who are Web developers know that Content Editable varies wildly across platform, has no real spec stating a deterministic expectation of what it should do. If the original Writely was based on this, they probably didn't want to fix it, instead Writely was rewritten and the new Google Docs basically avoids Content-Editable and implemented their own complete layout/editing engine in JS. Getting that to work correctly across many fonts, languages, BiDi support, etc was probably a hellish amount of work, but the end result was probably to make it more resilient against across browser issues. We've now reached a stage where every time something breaks or someone gets deranked, they immediately start jumping to conspiracy theories about how they were specified targeted for nefarious reasons, no one seems to understand Hanlon's Razor. Google only recently retired IE8 support. I wanted it dead for a long time. Am I evil? Our code base is littered with horrific code smell in our JS due to Microsoft's bad garbage collection implementation in prior browsers. In order to reduce memory leaks in our Closure Library code base, it's full of C++-like destructors/retain-release like constructs, which increases codesize, decreases performance. Google Web Toolkit's whole widget system was constructed around the needs of IE6/8, which ultimately bloated and doomed its UI system from adapting to the modern web. Web programming is still fraught with issues, issues you don't encounter on iOS, and to a lesser extent, Android, because of a single implementation. The combinatorial explosion of browsers, browser versions, form factors, means testing on everything and everywhere, and even with the resources of Google this creates significant impacts on productivity and maintenance. That means you can't expect a modern, bleeding edge web app, to come out of the gate working perfectly everywhere, especially if it is adopting only recently shipped APIs as a core requirement. So you have only a few choices: hold up your release until everyone catches up, ship everyone the same lowest common denominator triaging out the advanced stuff, shipping an app with all kinds of workarounds and fallbacks, or shipping a native mobile one instead. It's the threat of the latter which is the real problem these days, because with mobile first, engineering wise, it looks cheaper and more predictable with better user experience.
Endy 9y ago
Well, if I were the team at Vivaldi, I would be using as little of Google's tech until THEY bend. After all, Opera 15+ and Vivaldi now both use Google's web engine. That feels like a major mistake to me, because it constantly tells Google, "regardless of what we say, we need you and we'll give in to your demands". Attacking Google just turns into biting the hand that feeds when you rely on them not only for revenue, but even for the core technologies which you need to exist. Instead of relying on Google for email and online office function, two options come to mind - either develop your own (time-consuming and extremely technically challenging) or support Zoho. For search, there's privacy-friendly DuckDuckGo & StartPage, or Exalead if you're worried about index size. I was sincerely hoping that we would get to see a modern equivalent to Presto in Vivaldi when I first heard about the browser and who was backing it. I think this would be a great time to begin serious work on that project, a new and proprietary web engine that's not beholden to Apple, Google, Mozilla, or any of the major firms.
- dabockster 9y ago
  > a new and proprietary web engine that's not beholden to Apple, Google, Mozilla, or any of the major firms I wouldn't necessarily go as far as proprietary, but I agree everywhere else. Now that we essentially have a bunch of Chrome flavors, I'm finding myself missing the browser wars of the mid 2000s. Real competition producing real results.
  - fbender 9y ago
    Have a look at what Mozilla is doing with Gecko (Project Quantum) and Servo. Even Microsoft is moving in a much better direction with Edge in the recent years, doing a lot of work and opening up parts of the engine. I don't know why parent put Mozilla into the same bucket as Apple and Google, they are not comparable in any conceivable way.
    - Endy 9y ago
      Because I don't trust Mozilla to put the user first and not give in to Google's demands anymore. Between the Australis UI ("Looks like Chrome") and now WebExtensions ("Works like Chrome"), the fiercely independent and unique Firefox (and by extension all of Mozilla) from days/years past is forever gone. Losing Thunderbird & SeaMonkey as fully developed projects was really the first warning of many; but many people were willing to let it go. I don't trust any of their new projects to actually remain stable and different from Google's desires, and really I don't have any reason to believe that they give a tinker's damn about their long-time users or their original ideals when they split from Netscape. They are no different from Opera who capitulated completely (and we see that Vivaldi, while calling them out, isn't announcing that they're creating their own engine, or switching to raw KHTML), and I'm just waiting until the day I have to start laughing because Mozilla announces that, in order to develop for the mobile space of Android & iOS, they're switching the desktop browser from Gecko to WebKit/Blink. Because I'm sure, given the track they're on, that day will come. I can no longer summon the appropriate dread. I can only laugh.
bobsgame 9y ago
Google is not evil. They provide fantastic services and value and have made the world a much better place. Mistakes will be made and they will correct them.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ionised 9y ago
  Hi Larry.
Steeeve 9y ago
Isn't vivaldi just another branded chromium? Seems a bit disingenuine for them to be complaining about the company that built their product.
- jasonkostempski 9y ago
  When the hand that feeds you starts jamming food down your windpipe, it's time to bite.
- CodeWriter23 9y ago
  Isn't Chromium just a repackaging of KHTML from the KDE project?
  - Steeeve 9y ago
    Is it really? The last time I played with that it was almost unusable. (must've been more than a decade ago).
    - rrix2 9y ago
      WebKit was originall a fork of KHTML. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Origins
  - amk_ 9y ago
    KHTML -> Webkit -> Blink \_ Safari \_ Chromium |_ Epiphany |_ Opera 15+ |_ Vivaldi
  - lmm 9y ago
    Yes, and if Google was bad-mouthing KDE then we should call them out for it. What was your point?
    - CodeWriter23 9y ago
      My point is Vivaldi using Chrome is irrelevant in this discussion. Writing Chrome doesn't give Google a free pass on antitrust and intimidation issues.
joelrunyon 9y ago
Question for the HN crowd: is there a single-use browser for desktop like firefox focus? I really love it on iOS, but they don't seem to make it for Mac. Any suggestions?
- cpeterso 9y ago
  You can configure Firefox to always open in Private Browsing mode. Look for "Always use private browsing mode" in Firefox's Privacy & Security settings. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/settings-privacy-browsing-history-do-not-track#w_never-remember-history https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/settings-privacy-browsi...
CodeWriter23 9y ago
Once a pickle, never a cucumber.
unityByFreedom 9y ago
I wonder what the correspondence between Vivaldi and Google looked like. Specifically, regarding this section: > When we reached out to Google to resolve the issue, we got a clarification masqueraded in the form of vague terms and conditions, some of which, they admitted themselves, were not a “hard” requirement. In exchange for being reinstated in Google’s ad network, their in-house specialists dictated how we should arrange content on our own website and how we should communicate information to our users. > We made effort to understand their explanations and to work with them on their various unreasonable demands (some of which they don’t follow themselves, by the way). After almost three months of back-and-forth, the suspension to our account has been lifted, but only when we bent to their requirements. This is one side of the story. Without seeing the correspondence it's hard to decide who's being evil.
yuhong 9y ago
I tend to focus on individual problems, the recent think tank debacle or the ad bubble being examples.
TruthSHIFT 9y ago
"Don't be Evil" was just code for "Don't be Microsoft." But, today even Microsoft has enough sense to not be Microsoft.
- katastic 9y ago
  Microsoft is too busy being a dumpster fire to be evil. I install and maintain their products for a living. I have horror stories upon horror stories representing weeks (if not months) of dev time to work around--including writing a custom plugin with an SDK just to fix a bug in the data import wizard in CRM.
elihu 9y ago
It would be great if Google changes their policies and acts responsibly from here on out, but whether they do or not, I think we would all be better off in the long run if there were more competing services. Maybe it's time for a new search engine? (Or a new video sharing site, or a new email service, or a new online ad delivery system, or a new news aggregator, or a new cell phone operating system vendor, or a new Internet business model that isn't dependent on advertising revenue...) Google started at a time when most people didn't think we need a new search engine, and it seems to have worked well for them. Maybe it's that time again. I'm not sure when exactly the PageRank patent expires (people seem to be saying 2017 or 2018), but it will be soon and that should open up some interesting possibilities.
- unityByFreedom 9y ago
  > I'm not sure when exactly the PageRank patent expires (people seem to be saying 2017 or 2018), but it will be soon and that should open up some interesting possibilities. You could use it right now. In fact, many do. Google doesn't sue companies for using PageRank or much of their published research. Much more interesting things have come out since then like BigTable (led to Hadoop + NoSQL databases) and Word2Vec (better semantic analysis + search). These are in use all over industry. ITT people who don't understand the contributions Google has made. If you're wondering why there aren't competitors, you're not looking far enough. Baidu competes with Google in China.
  - elihu 9y ago
    Patents are a pretty big threat to have hanging over your company -- Google might not sue other companies for using it now, but they could in the future. At least, until the patent expires. I realize Google has created more than PageRank, but PageRank is pretty fundamental technology. If you can't use it for legal reasons, that's a big impediment. I don't know how Bing gets around it. I've never tried using Baidu, but if my main concern is that I don't want a search engine censoring the Internet, then using Baidu is at least as problematic as using Google.
    - 9y ago
exikyut 9y ago
> It is also fair to say that Google is now in a position where regulation is needed. I sincerely hope that they’ll get back to the straight and narrow. Hah. Even before I read any of this article, just reading the post title as submitted here made me think of something I ponder often: The Microsoft antitrust regulations happened ultimately because Microsoft read the situation wrong and pushed too hard. It's sad to say that Google have studied what happened very, very well, and they've stepped carefully enough that, well, we now have Chromebooks - the exact direction Microsoft was heading in. And nobody's batting an eyelid. Yes, Google needs to be reminded what its boundaries are. I believe this can be done. My guess is that Google have successfully ridden the general consensus of "it's open source, anyone can fork it" to get away with having Chrome be the world's dominant browser. But Chrome is not Chromium. Yeah, yeah, the binary differences are just a crash-reporter and autoupdater (mostly, IIRC), but still. So the politicos need to be convinced that we've revisited the same situation. My suggestion is stifles laughter requiring that Chromebooks provide the option to install Firefox. :D (OT trivia: Chromium's builtin spellchecker is fine with "politicos". That's hilarious. (I know it's on, it doesn't like "autoupdater".))
- studentrob 9y ago
  > My suggestion is stifles laughter requiring that Chromebooks provide the option to install Firefox. :D Google should take that upon themselves. I was prepared to refute your suggestion until a quick Google search told me Chromebooks have 58% marketshare in K-12. It's probably much lower across home devices and much lower still across the world, but popular enough that, like Android, it should allow installing competing browsers. For an antitrust lawsuit to be successful, I imagine their marketshare would need to be much higher.
  - mentando 9y ago
    Do Chromebooks actively block you from installing another browser? I mean I have a Chromebook and I can install crouton and run Firefox. Or would Google have to provide a "supported" way to install other browsers?
    - 9y ago
zmmmmm 9y ago
A lot of words, but it seems to boil down to: In exchange for being reinstated in Google’s ad network, their in-house specialists dictated how we should arrange content on our own website and how we should communicate information to our users. It's impossible to evaluate this without more details. If their web site actually broke reasonable elements of Google's terms and conditions then it sounds like this is completely expected. The lack of any further detail to the allegations makes me strongly suspect that there's another side to this story. It may still not add up in Google's favour, but without something else I'm left feeling sceptical about this.
- eps 9y ago
  Most likely a variation of their favourite "must provide Terms & Conditions and Uninstallation instructions immediately next the Download button" b/s. There are a lot of stories going around about this being used to drag undesirable AdWords customers through the pleasure halls of Indian-accented Google support hell. It's not the requirements per se (though they are complete bullshit and their own Chrome does not in fact follow them), it's how they are "communicated" by the support. This certainly looks like a passive-aggressive way to drive people off AdWords.
- fauigerzigerk 9y ago
  That is a valid point, but the question remains: How come that one ad network is powerful enough to make a customer beg for three months to be reinstated instead of simply choosing a competitor? Something is clearly out of whack in this market.
  - JohnTHaller 9y ago
    Because that ad market is coupled to the largest search engine.
myotheracc 9y ago
With Sundar Pichai in place as CEO, anyone who criticizes Google will be labeled an alt-right racist.
mitja_belak 9y ago
Finally someone other than random bloggers dared saying it clear. And its not just monopoly over advertising. Lately they are in business of censoring political 'wrongthink' on one hand and prioritizing the management & friends political views in mainstream search. I don't think Google will change anything on its own though and its sad to see a neutral company of engeeners turn into power hungry megacorp.
folli 9y ago
"You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain" - Harvey Dent
staticelf 9y ago
Google has become a really crappy company in my eyes. I run Vivaldi nowadays as my main browser since it is great but it feels like a new UI on Chrome. Why can't google support all modern browsers for their products? I work as a web dev and have done so for all of my work.
reacweb 9y ago
Google main focus is AI. To build the future AI (of singularity), google wants to have a full picture of the entire life of as many people as possible. The focus of google is the user, but not for its good, but to replace him by posthumans.
mcv 9y ago
I guess this was the reason why Opera was the first browser to support native user agent spoofing? It was a great feature in the days of websites being developed for specific browsers. If that's still going on, that would be really sad and unprofessional. As much as I appreciate the good work that Google has done, this is absolutely anti-competitive and deserves to be punished. I really hope Google turns good again, because otherwise they're really no better than Microsoft in their worst years.
ZeroGravitas 9y ago
I've long maintained that the greatest benefit that Google gets from the slogan "Don't be evil" is how ridiculous it makes their critics sound when they bring it up. I fully support pretty much everything he says in the article, but can't help but roll my eyes at the headline. I can't see it helping with anyone who isn't already on board with the message. I think monopolies cause real societal harm, and that large corporations should be held very strongly to the rules by regulators but I still find it hard to use the term "evil" in relation to something that could well just be corporate bureaucracy gone wrong.
sol_remmy 9y ago
> A monopoly both in search and advertising, Google, unfortunately, shows that they are not able to resist the misuse of power. The ONLY thing that makes Google close to a monopoly is government power - hear me out: Google has patented all of their search algorithms. This is akin to patenting all of the O(nlog) sorting algorithms. Competitors are left with using Bubble Sort. The simple solution is to invalidate some of these patents. Then the "monopoly" problem will fix itself.
dreamcompiler 9y ago
"Don't Be Evil" stopped working for Google the day of their IPO. You become evil when your masters (Wall Street) punish you for not being evil.
otterpro 9y ago
As much as I'd like to agree with the statement, I can't say the same about Vivaldi/Opera because they have left a bad taste in my mouth when they sued their former employee who went to work later for Mozilla for $3.4M (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5629255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5629255). That lawsuit was dropped later, but as a dev, I wouldn't feel comfortable working for a company that could sue me later in life. By the way, I used to be exclusive on Opera many years ago and I loved how well it worked and how fast it ran, until Chrome came out. I wouldn't say Vivaldi is good and Google is evil. I think they differ only on the degree of evilness.
thomastjeffery 9y ago
Internet: it is time to return to not being Google.
piyush_soni 9y ago
Besides Google being shitty here, the only thing that strikes me in this article is this irony: According to the article, Jon von Tetzchner is giving talks and raising concerns on "data gathering and ad targeting practices" from Google, but in turn, wants to use the same to advertise his product? Doesn't it show at least some level of hypocrisy? It's almost like "I don't like that Google tracks its users, so I made this shiny new browser, but I'll use Google's tracking services to advertise it nevertheless".

739 points by walkingolof 9y ago

>The idea of the Internet turning into a battlefield of propaganda is very far away from the ideal. Too late, it already happened, and had nothing to do with data collection. When television was invented, people had much the same visions of utopia: it'll be used to educate people. The internet is now flooded with propaganda from think tanks banked by billionaire wingnuts to the Putin Troll Army.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
And think tanks banked by Google, who will pressure them to fire people if they say the wrong thing.
- cromwellian 9y ago
  Nice try, but no one's complaining about the Web being flooded with propaganda from Open Markets, nor can really call Eric Schmidt saying he is displeased as "pressure", then every time Steve Jobs threw a fit about a less than 100% positive iPhone review, we'd have to be talking about Apple's control of the media, the blacklisting of reporters, and the withholding of "access". The kinds of think tanks I'm talking about are things like the Scaife's funding of the Project for A New American Century, you know, the guys who masterminded the Iraq war? Or how about the Koch brothers funding of climate denial? You know, things which actually are fucking up our world and getting people killed. I would imagine the kinds of propaganda the Vivaldi CEO is worrying about is the kinds that get hate groups out in the streets with Nazi signs, not the kinds that try to lobby the government to protect net neutrality.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Are you really suggesting that Eric Schmidt personally calling their CEO and expressing his "displeasure" isn't pressure? I suppose when a mob boss says it'd be "unfortunate if something happened to someone", you'd characterize that as just an expression of a personal view, too. Perhaps someone "sleeping with the fishes" really is just a leisurely dip in the Chicago river. It's also worth noting that there are a significant number of examples where your employer has invested specifically in people writing about antitrust law, and specifically, claiming that Google doesn't violate it (see Joshua Wright, etc.). Suggesting their financial investment is limited to net neutrality discussions is... pretty misleading.

phr4ts 9y ago

Summary: Google suspends AdWords campaigns of Vivaldi Browser after Vivaldi CEO wrote an anti-Google article

gaius 9y ago
That is not a summary. The article opens with Google faking breaking compatibility with Opera in order to push their own browser. Why fake? Because the services worked perfectly when faking the user agent...
- gsnedders 9y ago
  > The article opens with Google faking breaking compatibility with Opera in order to push their own browser. It explicitly states that it got worse when they introduced their own browser, which implies it pre-dates their own browser.
  - gaius 9y ago
    I think he means that first Google was cozy with Mozilla, and then later introduced Chrome. Opera the browser predates Google the company.

tryingagainbro 9y ago

Vivaldi CEO – “Google: it is time to return to not being evil” Me: that train has left the station. When you have monopoly power (70%-98% of market share) the governments should return Google and Whatever Corp to not being evil.

akerl_ 9y ago
It seems like companies are stuck in a losing game. We constantly push small companies to capture more market share. Any companies that fold during that effort, we bring out the pitchforks because the services they ran get shut off. Any companies that succeed, we bring out the pitchforks because they own too much market power. It seems a bit much that we ask for companies to constantly grow and simultaneously ensure they never pass 70% market share.
- chki 9y ago
  Do "we" really push companies to capture market share? I mean sure, stockholders do, but "we" as the general public don't really care about a companies size until they become too big.
  - MugaSofer 9y ago
    It would be more accurate to say the laws of physics push certain services to capture enormous market share. How can a new search engine - or email service, for that matter - compete with Google's servers? How can a new social network compete with Facebook having all your friends already on it? How can a new encyclopedia compete with Wikipedia's vast store of volunteer-checked knowledge? How can a new operating system compete with the fact that everyone already knows hw to use Windows? It's not impossible, but an incremental improvement won't do it; you need to be massively better than the default to overcome the sheer advantage that comes from being the default.
  - akerl_ 9y ago
    I'd say there's a portion of non-shareholders who believe companies they like should be fighting to maximize market share, but I agree with you in-so-far as I think we can ignore that group for purposes of this discussion. To your point: if you're the CEO of a company, and the shareholders are pushing you to capture market share, you're quite inclined to do it. Especially since capturing market share makes it more likely your company will stay profitable or become profitable, even absent shareholder wishes. Which works until/unless you reach the point where you've gotten the combination of skill and luck and circumstance that means you end up with a monopoly market share, at which point "we" (where we == the non-shareholder general public) start posting about how your company has taken over the market and the government should declare you some combination of "common carrier" or "utility" or "out of business".

duncan_bayne 9y ago

https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/

jsjohnst 9y ago
Seems you are getting similar treatment as I did in the past for posting relevant XKCDs. I'm guessing it's because you aren't adding much value to the conversation, but could be some folks hate XKCD too I guess.
- Practicality 9y ago
  Not a downvoter, but it doesn't quite work. Google isn't against open-source. It's somewhat related, but not exactly.
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    I didn't see that XKCD is being specifically about open source. That said, the one I posted a few months ago was spot on and yet it was downvoted to death within a few hours, so I don't think it really matters how perfect the fitting is.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  XKCD is a high iq version of a reaction gif.
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    I agree completely now that you say that.
duncan_bayne 9y ago
Too late to edit, so to clarify: yes, posting an XKCD like that is dismissive. And for good reason. I am sick to death of people complaining about Google, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. doing Bad Things™, after handing the keys to the city to them, often in the hopes of getting rich in the process. "Oh no! Apple dropped our iOS app from the store!" Well, who could've predicted that building software for a proprietary stack and walled garden would end badly? "Google de-ranked us mysteriously!" If your business model depends on search engine rankings for success, you have a _major_ business risk there as there's realistically only one search engine in the world these days. "LinkedIn spammed my contacts!" Then disable your LinkedIn profile. Bad actors - like Google has become - only succeed because we as geeks use their services. The problem is one of our making, and we could fix it overnight if we chose to. But convenience eats all worldviews I guess. http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-03-19 http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-03-19

deleted 9y ago

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MikeGale 9y ago

There's a pattern here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt-google-new-america.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt-...

degenerate 9y ago
Assuming you've seen this too: https://qz.com/823922/eric-schmidt-played-a-crucial-role-in-team-hillarys-election-tech/ https://qz.com/823922/eric-schmidt-played-a-crucial-role-in-... Schmidt has been wading neck-deep in pulling political strings for years now... Google is evil, evil, evil.
- HillaryBriss 9y ago
  > Google is evil, evil, evil well, at least they don't have anyone's personal info
partisan 9y ago
It's the endgame. There's less and less breathable room between the biggest players. That oversized market share turns into profits which turn into power: political and psychological. Most people won't have heard of these incidents. Of those, most won't even remember them next week. Soon, those who would dissent will pick their livelihood over speaking up for their principles. And I can't blame them.
unityByFreedom 9y ago
So you'll believe any story that critiques Google now? I would take this article with a grain of salt. Vivaldi's version of events is one side of the story. We don't know how Google would respond.
- dang 9y ago
  > So you'll believe any story that critiques Google now? Please don't post personal swipes. Your comment would be much stronger without that bit. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

lightedman 9y ago

Really sounds like some sort of RICO or extortion charge should be filed against Google, assuming this is all 100% factual.

jrs95 9y ago
That’s probably why they have the government on their payroll.
protomyth 9y ago
it is probably not RICO https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico-dammit/ https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico-... (a bit salty on the language)
- Endy 9y ago
  Sorry for going to a further tangent but... I'm definitely not a lawyer, but do I get a little frustrated at its overuse in pop culture too. Of course, most people don't think of "conspiracy to commit" as a crime, so they immediately jump to "is it RICO?" and say yes.
- lightedman 9y ago
  I've actually got a little experience with this particular subject. The specific part you would charge Google under would be "It shall be unlawful for any person employed by or associated with any enterprise engaged in, or the activities of which affect, interstate or foreign commerce, to conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity or collection of unlawful debt." Specifically, collection of unlawful debt. As noted by the Vivaldi man: "We made effort to understand their explanations and to work with them on their various unreasonable demands (some of which they don’t follow themselves, by the way). After almost three months of back-and-forth, the suspension to our account has been lifted, but only when we bent to their requirements." If any of those requirements involved a monetary payment, you can very-well guarantee Google violated RICO. It was literal extortion. A RICO trial was one of my most fun days in court as a juror. Armenian Power Gang.

drunkenmonkey 9y ago

Applause for Vivaldi for the backbone to say something openly.

Jonnax 9y ago

Google are really shitty with their web browser especially on mobile. If you run Firefox you get a stripped down version of Google Search also with no infinite scrolling for images and low resolution. Use a user agent spoofer like this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/chrome-ua-on-google-android/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/chrome-ua-on-... And it seems to work fine on Firefox. I'm sure their official excuse is that they only support WebKit based browsers on mobile, like it's the new Internet Explorer with some modern day ActiveX

kuschku 9y ago
Not just that, but major functionality is missing. You can't restrict search just to your native language, or to all languages. You can't set a time frame.
- pmontra 9y ago
  I didn't know that chrome could get that. I thought that the mobile site had limited functionality and requested the desktop site when I needed to set a time range. I checked it with Chrome and it works. Very unfair. However Chrome spoils the user experience by asking too many questions (log in? change language?). Not a good experience, I'll keep asking for the desktop site on those rare occasions.
fyrstenberg 9y ago
I discovered this as well. Not only, they're faking it with the new YouTube design as well. I had to set my user agent to Chrome to get the new dark theme (it may have changed later). I did try different user-agents using AgentX[1] and with Edge UA they said the new look wouldn't work (or in effect something along those lines), so there is not much actual feature check going on. Only setting Chrome would give me all features. Google is doing what Microsoft did 10 years ago - it didn't go so well for Microsoft when people eventually caught on. 1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/agentx/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/agentx/
- infogulch 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

numanumakid2017 9y ago

Leave Google alone. Google is doing a lot of good in this world. Just look at all the youtube stars and adsense rockstars they have created. I dont see ppl making millions from fb or microsoft.

LarryPage 9y ago

Google hasn't been my default search engine for 6+ months. In fact the only Google things I use frequently are Android and Chromium (through Opera). I feel better about my internet usage, and I've been having a much better experience. Obligatory "username checks out"

breakingcups 9y ago
What search engine have you been using? I've tried others but none seem to come even close, unfortunately.
- Nomentatus 9y ago
  Also switched to DuckDuckGo about a month ago, because Google was ignoring words in my enquiries to show me what the AI hallucinated I might want to see. Works much better than it used to. It does have some AI hallucinations, but not nearly as many.
- Corristowolf 9y ago
  DuckDuckGo works well. Even has those info tiles that google has when you search a store etc.
  - LarryPage 9y ago
    Yeah I've been using DuckDuckGo exclusively.

amirmasoudabdol 9y ago

YouTube website does everything to be unusable on the iPad. They don't use the default player. They won't save your settings if you use Safari. They do not allow full screen video. Even when you request the desktop site, they resist to load the video properly in first few trials. They are being as annoying as they can!

saagarjha 9y ago
That's because they want you using their app, which they have more control over and where they can disable features like background playback and Picture in Picture which they can then charge you for.
- K0SM0S 9y ago
  On a side related note, YouTube Red still isn't available worldwide, so most people outside the US don't even have the option to pay for background/PiP. It's a subpar user experience by design and Google apparently doesn't care at all (it's been years now). Also, still no speed control on the mobile YouTube app. All of this being true even on Android O. As most people, I cannot avoid using YouTube, but everytime I need background play of podcast-like content, I default to another activity (eg actual podcast app, an audiobook, whatever). Typical case is when you need to communicate at the same time, or do 'stuff' while listening. When you add it all up, that's hours everyday lost from me. And I'm just one user, iirc the majority of human beings don't live in the US... It's frustrating that you can't even pay to resolve the issue, let alone knowing that they themselves placed a restriction (background play) that didn't exist in the first place. Reminds me of the worst from the likes of MS, Apple, Oracle, Verizon.
cm2187 9y ago
And the video will stop playing if you switch to another tab.

klondike_ 9y ago

I wish I could use Vivaldi, it seems like a nice browser for power users. Unfortunately it's closed source (besides the Webkit parts). Considering how much sensitive information goes through a browser nowadays, I would never consider something closed source. I'm sure Vivaldi has no intentions of becoming "evil" like Google, but because of its closed source nature it wouldn't be hard to slip a tracker or two in the browser and regular users would be none the wiser.

roblabla 9y ago
I don't know what browser you're using, but assuming chrome : it's not open source either. Chromium is open source, but Google Chrome is proprietary, much in the same way vivaldi is. If you want a truly open source modern browser, the only options are chromium or firefox these days, AFAIK ? (If you know an alternative I'm interested !)
- jhasse 9y ago
  On Linux there are quite a few other options e.g. Eolie. https://github.com/gnumdk/eolie https://github.com/gnumdk/eolie On Android I can recommend Lightning: https://github.com/anthonycr/Lightning-Browser https://github.com/anthonycr/Lightning-Browser
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  I don't think it's fair to assume that someone who is calling for a browser to be open sourced is using Chrome rather than Chromium.
- TwoBit 9y ago
  Why assume Chrome? Most likely he uses Firefox.
- lmm 9y ago
  Konqueror is still around (it's where the chrome rendering engine originally came from), and IMO still the best.
- 482794793792894 9y ago

neil_s 9y ago

I'm a bit skeptical of the claims he's making in his article, since he has obvious incentives as the founder of a browser company competing with Google. Judging from the amazing features listed on the webpage (bar charts of my history, wow, do not need that at all), I'm guessing his product sense might have some something to do with his companies not working out, not bigger competitors that are out to get him. Can anyone point me to links confirming his two claims: that Google services were maliciously blocking Opera for reasons other than compatibility and efficiency for a low-market-share browser, and that Google blocked his ads for spurious reasons. He doesn't really provide details on what rules he was violating, but judging from the fact that the ads were reinstated the moment he was in compliance with them, it sounds like a trumped up charge.

unityByFreedom 9y ago
> He doesn't really provide details on what rules he was violating, but judging from the fact that the ads were reinstated the moment he was in compliance with them, it sounds like a trumped up charge. I agree skepticism is warranted. This is one side of the story. Even if you have it out for Google, you should want more details before grabbing your pitchfork. Mistakenly criticizing someone only empowers them.
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
The people most likely to have complaints about a business is actually their competitors, so this logic makes it very easy to just assume your favorite company is never doing something wrong. Also, note that Vivaldi is not seeking major penetration in the market. It is "A Browser for Our Friends" specifically because it is folks that want a browser for power users like themselves, not for the everyday Chrome or Firefox folks. Clearly, you don't know how you harass someone effectively. Break things, and apologize quickly and fix it immediately when they ask about it. (Malicious IT people can do this too!) "Oops, no idea what happened there, sorry, we'll fix it." Accidents happen and all...
- cromwellian 9y ago
  And clearly you don't know what you're talking about and are just making slanderous speculation. Engineers at Google have better things to do with their time than sit around trying to dream up ways to screw up the health of their code base for harassment purposes. Is that what people do at your company? Sabotage code for political purposes? Maybe it's time to change jobs.

amelius 9y ago

Never trust a company that has the word "evil" in its company motto, even if used in the negative sense. Imagine that Disney used the motto: "We won't kill your children". Would you still send your kids to their theme park?

andrenotgiant 9y ago
Google doesnt use the word "evil" in any of their mottos or official copy.
- grzm 9y ago
  > Google Code of Conduct > Preface > “Don’t be evil.” Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it’s also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably, and treating co-workers with courtesy and respect. > The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put “Don’t be evil” into practice. [0]: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html

mjevans 9y ago

Setting aside everything else; other comments are doing an OK job discussing those topics... What were the content changes that Google forced them to make? I'd like to know so that I can evaluate how reasonable that request is from my own perspective.

cromwellian 9y ago

"Seems to work" is not the same thing as "Working As Intended". I work on Gmail/Inbox (previously GWT). When we released Inbox, it started out as Chrome only, people discovered they could get it to load and seemingly work on Firefox by spoofing, but the reality was, it was still broken, and would eventually consume all memory, because Inbox relies on sparse Javascript array behavior for protobufs, and something like a[300000000]=1, for(x in a)/Object.keys(a) would cause the JS engine to allocate a giant array. Inbox also was a the first web property to adopt a form of Material Design, and had hard design requirements for 60fps on the Web Animation. Unfortunately, due to the way browsers upload GPU textures when doing compositing, animation timing was broke. (Do they count time spent uploading in the interpolation?) My coworkers spent a huge amount of time fixing it, and then finally making Edge work. There was no ill will or evil plan, just finite engineering resources. I don't know the details around Google Docs, but my guess (speculation) would be it probably had to do with Content-Editable. Docs was a Google acquisition of Writely. Back in those days, many online editing apps on the bleeding edge (ab)used Content Editable. Those of you who are Web developers know that Content Editable varies wildly across platform, has no real spec stating a deterministic expectation of what it should do. If the original Writely was based on this, they probably didn't want to fix it, instead Writely was rewritten and the new Google Docs basically avoids Content-Editable and implemented their own complete layout/editing engine in JS. Getting that to work correctly across many fonts, languages, BiDi support, etc was probably a hellish amount of work, but the end result was probably to make it more resilient against across browser issues. We've now reached a stage where every time something breaks or someone gets deranked, they immediately start jumping to conspiracy theories about how they were specified targeted for nefarious reasons, no one seems to understand Hanlon's Razor. Google only recently retired IE8 support. I wanted it dead for a long time. Am I evil? Our code base is littered with horrific code smell in our JS due to Microsoft's bad garbage collection implementation in prior browsers. In order to reduce memory leaks in our Closure Library code base, it's full of C++-like destructors/retain-release like constructs, which increases codesize, decreases performance. Google Web Toolkit's whole widget system was constructed around the needs of IE6/8, which ultimately bloated and doomed its UI system from adapting to the modern web. Web programming is still fraught with issues, issues you don't encounter on iOS, and to a lesser extent, Android, because of a single implementation. The combinatorial explosion of browsers, browser versions, form factors, means testing on everything and everywhere, and even with the resources of Google this creates significant impacts on productivity and maintenance. That means you can't expect a modern, bleeding edge web app, to come out of the gate working perfectly everywhere, especially if it is adopting only recently shipped APIs as a core requirement. So you have only a few choices: hold up your release until everyone catches up, ship everyone the same lowest common denominator triaging out the advanced stuff, shipping an app with all kinds of workarounds and fallbacks, or shipping a native mobile one instead. It's the threat of the latter which is the real problem these days, because with mobile first, engineering wise, it looks cheaper and more predictable with better user experience.

Endy 9y ago

Well, if I were the team at Vivaldi, I would be using as little of Google's tech until THEY bend. After all, Opera 15+ and Vivaldi now both use Google's web engine. That feels like a major mistake to me, because it constantly tells Google, "regardless of what we say, we need you and we'll give in to your demands". Attacking Google just turns into biting the hand that feeds when you rely on them not only for revenue, but even for the core technologies which you need to exist. Instead of relying on Google for email and online office function, two options come to mind - either develop your own (time-consuming and extremely technically challenging) or support Zoho. For search, there's privacy-friendly DuckDuckGo & StartPage, or Exalead if you're worried about index size. I was sincerely hoping that we would get to see a modern equivalent to Presto in Vivaldi when I first heard about the browser and who was backing it. I think this would be a great time to begin serious work on that project, a new and proprietary web engine that's not beholden to Apple, Google, Mozilla, or any of the major firms.

dabockster 9y ago
> a new and proprietary web engine that's not beholden to Apple, Google, Mozilla, or any of the major firms I wouldn't necessarily go as far as proprietary, but I agree everywhere else. Now that we essentially have a bunch of Chrome flavors, I'm finding myself missing the browser wars of the mid 2000s. Real competition producing real results.
- fbender 9y ago
  Have a look at what Mozilla is doing with Gecko (Project Quantum) and Servo. Even Microsoft is moving in a much better direction with Edge in the recent years, doing a lot of work and opening up parts of the engine. I don't know why parent put Mozilla into the same bucket as Apple and Google, they are not comparable in any conceivable way.
  - Endy 9y ago
    Because I don't trust Mozilla to put the user first and not give in to Google's demands anymore. Between the Australis UI ("Looks like Chrome") and now WebExtensions ("Works like Chrome"), the fiercely independent and unique Firefox (and by extension all of Mozilla) from days/years past is forever gone. Losing Thunderbird & SeaMonkey as fully developed projects was really the first warning of many; but many people were willing to let it go. I don't trust any of their new projects to actually remain stable and different from Google's desires, and really I don't have any reason to believe that they give a tinker's damn about their long-time users or their original ideals when they split from Netscape. They are no different from Opera who capitulated completely (and we see that Vivaldi, while calling them out, isn't announcing that they're creating their own engine, or switching to raw KHTML), and I'm just waiting until the day I have to start laughing because Mozilla announces that, in order to develop for the mobile space of Android & iOS, they're switching the desktop browser from Gecko to WebKit/Blink. Because I'm sure, given the track they're on, that day will come. I can no longer summon the appropriate dread. I can only laugh.

bobsgame 9y ago

Google is not evil. They provide fantastic services and value and have made the world a much better place. Mistakes will be made and they will correct them.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ionised 9y ago
Hi Larry.

Steeeve 9y ago

Isn't vivaldi just another branded chromium? Seems a bit disingenuine for them to be complaining about the company that built their product.

jasonkostempski 9y ago
When the hand that feeds you starts jamming food down your windpipe, it's time to bite.
CodeWriter23 9y ago
Isn't Chromium just a repackaging of KHTML from the KDE project?
- Steeeve 9y ago
  Is it really? The last time I played with that it was almost unusable. (must've been more than a decade ago).
  - rrix2 9y ago
    WebKit was originall a fork of KHTML. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Origins
- amk_ 9y ago
  KHTML -> Webkit -> Blink \_ Safari \_ Chromium |_ Epiphany |_ Opera 15+ |_ Vivaldi
- lmm 9y ago
  Yes, and if Google was bad-mouthing KDE then we should call them out for it. What was your point?
  - CodeWriter23 9y ago
    My point is Vivaldi using Chrome is irrelevant in this discussion. Writing Chrome doesn't give Google a free pass on antitrust and intimidation issues.

joelrunyon 9y ago

Question for the HN crowd: is there a single-use browser for desktop like firefox focus? I really love it on iOS, but they don't seem to make it for Mac. Any suggestions?

cpeterso 9y ago
You can configure Firefox to always open in Private Browsing mode. Look for "Always use private browsing mode" in Firefox's Privacy & Security settings. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/settings-privacy-browsing-history-do-not-track#w_never-remember-history https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/settings-privacy-browsi...

CodeWriter23 9y ago

Once a pickle, never a cucumber.

unityByFreedom 9y ago

I wonder what the correspondence between Vivaldi and Google looked like. Specifically, regarding this section: > When we reached out to Google to resolve the issue, we got a clarification masqueraded in the form of vague terms and conditions, some of which, they admitted themselves, were not a “hard” requirement. In exchange for being reinstated in Google’s ad network, their in-house specialists dictated how we should arrange content on our own website and how we should communicate information to our users. > We made effort to understand their explanations and to work with them on their various unreasonable demands (some of which they don’t follow themselves, by the way). After almost three months of back-and-forth, the suspension to our account has been lifted, but only when we bent to their requirements. This is one side of the story. Without seeing the correspondence it's hard to decide who's being evil.

yuhong 9y ago

I tend to focus on individual problems, the recent think tank debacle or the ad bubble being examples.

TruthSHIFT 9y ago

"Don't be Evil" was just code for "Don't be Microsoft." But, today even Microsoft has enough sense to not be Microsoft.

katastic 9y ago
Microsoft is too busy being a dumpster fire to be evil. I install and maintain their products for a living. I have horror stories upon horror stories representing weeks (if not months) of dev time to work around--including writing a custom plugin with an SDK just to fix a bug in the data import wizard in CRM.

elihu 9y ago

It would be great if Google changes their policies and acts responsibly from here on out, but whether they do or not, I think we would all be better off in the long run if there were more competing services. Maybe it's time for a new search engine? (Or a new video sharing site, or a new email service, or a new online ad delivery system, or a new news aggregator, or a new cell phone operating system vendor, or a new Internet business model that isn't dependent on advertising revenue...) Google started at a time when most people didn't think we need a new search engine, and it seems to have worked well for them. Maybe it's that time again. I'm not sure when exactly the PageRank patent expires (people seem to be saying 2017 or 2018), but it will be soon and that should open up some interesting possibilities.

unityByFreedom 9y ago
> I'm not sure when exactly the PageRank patent expires (people seem to be saying 2017 or 2018), but it will be soon and that should open up some interesting possibilities. You could use it right now. In fact, many do. Google doesn't sue companies for using PageRank or much of their published research. Much more interesting things have come out since then like BigTable (led to Hadoop + NoSQL databases) and Word2Vec (better semantic analysis + search). These are in use all over industry. ITT people who don't understand the contributions Google has made. If you're wondering why there aren't competitors, you're not looking far enough. Baidu competes with Google in China.
- elihu 9y ago
  Patents are a pretty big threat to have hanging over your company -- Google might not sue other companies for using it now, but they could in the future. At least, until the patent expires. I realize Google has created more than PageRank, but PageRank is pretty fundamental technology. If you can't use it for legal reasons, that's a big impediment. I don't know how Bing gets around it. I've never tried using Baidu, but if my main concern is that I don't want a search engine censoring the Internet, then using Baidu is at least as problematic as using Google.
  - 9y ago

exikyut 9y ago

> It is also fair to say that Google is now in a position where regulation is needed. I sincerely hope that they’ll get back to the straight and narrow. Hah. Even before I read any of this article, just reading the post title as submitted here made me think of something I ponder often: The Microsoft antitrust regulations happened ultimately because Microsoft read the situation wrong and pushed too hard. It's sad to say that Google have studied what happened very, very well, and they've stepped carefully enough that, well, we now have Chromebooks - the exact direction Microsoft was heading in. And nobody's batting an eyelid. Yes, Google needs to be reminded what its boundaries are. I believe this can be done. My guess is that Google have successfully ridden the general consensus of "it's open source, anyone can fork it" to get away with having Chrome be the world's dominant browser. But Chrome is not Chromium. Yeah, yeah, the binary differences are just a crash-reporter and autoupdater (mostly, IIRC), but still. So the politicos need to be convinced that we've revisited the same situation. My suggestion is stifles laughter requiring that Chromebooks provide the option to install Firefox. :D (OT trivia: Chromium's builtin spellchecker is fine with "politicos". That's hilarious. (I know it's on, it doesn't like "autoupdater".))

studentrob 9y ago
> My suggestion is stifles laughter requiring that Chromebooks provide the option to install Firefox. :D Google should take that upon themselves. I was prepared to refute your suggestion until a quick Google search told me Chromebooks have 58% marketshare in K-12. It's probably much lower across home devices and much lower still across the world, but popular enough that, like Android, it should allow installing competing browsers. For an antitrust lawsuit to be successful, I imagine their marketshare would need to be much higher.
- mentando 9y ago
  Do Chromebooks actively block you from installing another browser? I mean I have a Chromebook and I can install crouton and run Firefox. Or would Google have to provide a "supported" way to install other browsers?
  - 9y ago

zmmmmm 9y ago

A lot of words, but it seems to boil down to: In exchange for being reinstated in Google’s ad network, their in-house specialists dictated how we should arrange content on our own website and how we should communicate information to our users. It's impossible to evaluate this without more details. If their web site actually broke reasonable elements of Google's terms and conditions then it sounds like this is completely expected. The lack of any further detail to the allegations makes me strongly suspect that there's another side to this story. It may still not add up in Google's favour, but without something else I'm left feeling sceptical about this.

eps 9y ago
Most likely a variation of their favourite "must provide Terms & Conditions and Uninstallation instructions immediately next the Download button" b/s. There are a lot of stories going around about this being used to drag undesirable AdWords customers through the pleasure halls of Indian-accented Google support hell. It's not the requirements per se (though they are complete bullshit and their own Chrome does not in fact follow them), it's how they are "communicated" by the support. This certainly looks like a passive-aggressive way to drive people off AdWords.
fauigerzigerk 9y ago
That is a valid point, but the question remains: How come that one ad network is powerful enough to make a customer beg for three months to be reinstated instead of simply choosing a competitor? Something is clearly out of whack in this market.
- JohnTHaller 9y ago
  Because that ad market is coupled to the largest search engine.

myotheracc 9y ago

With Sundar Pichai in place as CEO, anyone who criticizes Google will be labeled an alt-right racist.

mitja_belak 9y ago

Finally someone other than random bloggers dared saying it clear. And its not just monopoly over advertising. Lately they are in business of censoring political 'wrongthink' on one hand and prioritizing the management & friends political views in mainstream search. I don't think Google will change anything on its own though and its sad to see a neutral company of engeeners turn into power hungry megacorp.

folli 9y ago

"You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain" - Harvey Dent

staticelf 9y ago

Google has become a really crappy company in my eyes. I run Vivaldi nowadays as my main browser since it is great but it feels like a new UI on Chrome. Why can't google support all modern browsers for their products? I work as a web dev and have done so for all of my work.

reacweb 9y ago

Google main focus is AI. To build the future AI (of singularity), google wants to have a full picture of the entire life of as many people as possible. The focus of google is the user, but not for its good, but to replace him by posthumans.

mcv 9y ago

I guess this was the reason why Opera was the first browser to support native user agent spoofing? It was a great feature in the days of websites being developed for specific browsers. If that's still going on, that would be really sad and unprofessional. As much as I appreciate the good work that Google has done, this is absolutely anti-competitive and deserves to be punished. I really hope Google turns good again, because otherwise they're really no better than Microsoft in their worst years.

ZeroGravitas 9y ago

I've long maintained that the greatest benefit that Google gets from the slogan "Don't be evil" is how ridiculous it makes their critics sound when they bring it up. I fully support pretty much everything he says in the article, but can't help but roll my eyes at the headline. I can't see it helping with anyone who isn't already on board with the message. I think monopolies cause real societal harm, and that large corporations should be held very strongly to the rules by regulators but I still find it hard to use the term "evil" in relation to something that could well just be corporate bureaucracy gone wrong.

sol_remmy 9y ago

> A monopoly both in search and advertising, Google, unfortunately, shows that they are not able to resist the misuse of power. The ONLY thing that makes Google close to a monopoly is government power - hear me out: Google has patented all of their search algorithms. This is akin to patenting all of the O(nlog) sorting algorithms. Competitors are left with using Bubble Sort. The simple solution is to invalidate some of these patents. Then the "monopoly" problem will fix itself.

dreamcompiler 9y ago

"Don't Be Evil" stopped working for Google the day of their IPO. You become evil when your masters (Wall Street) punish you for not being evil.

otterpro 9y ago

As much as I'd like to agree with the statement, I can't say the same about Vivaldi/Opera because they have left a bad taste in my mouth when they sued their former employee who went to work later for Mozilla for $3.4M (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5629255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5629255). That lawsuit was dropped later, but as a dev, I wouldn't feel comfortable working for a company that could sue me later in life. By the way, I used to be exclusive on Opera many years ago and I loved how well it worked and how fast it ran, until Chrome came out. I wouldn't say Vivaldi is good and Google is evil. I think they differ only on the degree of evilness.

thomastjeffery 9y ago

Internet: it is time to return to not being Google.

piyush_soni 9y ago

Besides Google being shitty here, the only thing that strikes me in this article is this irony: According to the article, Jon von Tetzchner is giving talks and raising concerns on "data gathering and ad targeting practices" from Google, but in turn, wants to use the same to advertise his product? Doesn't it show at least some level of hypocrisy? It's almost like "I don't like that Google tracks its users, so I made this shiny new browser, but I'll use Google's tracking services to advertise it nevertheless".