5 ms·
Reminds me a few google employers posts on HN responding to the usual 'google closes products often': we dont, and we never closed a business products, only uni
by rdslw 9y ago
Reminds me a few google employers posts on HN responding to the usual 'google closes products often': we dont, and we never closed a business products, only unimportant consumer ones.
Yeah, sure.
Google is heading Microsoft 199x way - fastly becoming public enemy no 1.
- bovermyer 9y agoCute language. So just to be clear, you're putting Google ahead of North Korea, ISIS, et al on the list of threats to humanity?
- pc86 9y agoI think it's odd to even include ISIS on any list of "threats to humanity." How many orders of magnitude could more damage could Google do by accident compared to ISIS?
- djsumdog 9y agoNot even mentioning ISIS was created by the CIA. The US is the largest state sponsor of terrorism, but private internet megacorps are the biggest threat to freedom of speech. They're both pretty bad threats, just in very different ways.
- bovermyer 9y agoIn this context, I intended "threat to humanity" to mean "a clear and present danger to the safety and security of human beings." ISIS very intentionally kills people opposed to its goals. Google, by comparison, does not. Whether Google is the origin story of a 1984-like dystopia is another question entirely.
- aplummer 9y agoClearly the OP meant in the context of anticompetitive action the tech industry, not including foreign (at war) countries that have concentration camps. This kind of snark really takes away from the discussion.
- lightbyte 9y agoHow is ISIS top 2 on your list of threats to humanity? They are at best a regional threat. Google can do considerably more damage on a global scale.
- CydeWeys 9y agoThey literally just killed eight people on a path that I bike down all the time. Your comment is poorly timed. Also, I can't take you seriously when you're saying that Google can do considerably more global damage than IS. Think a little bit more before speaking. IS has directly been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and many more injuries, and has severely curtailed the rights of millions of people in the afflicted regions that it took over. Those are all people like you and I, and what happened to them matters. There's just no comparison between that and you losing access to some API. Boo hoo.
- lightbyte 9y agoLiterally hundreds/thousands of people are killed by our own citizens every day, I'm not concerned with an additional 8. Google has the ability to negatively affect hundreds of millions of lives on a global scale over a significantly long term. ISIS is not even in the same ballpark.
- orf 9y ago> IS has directly been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and many more injuries So has the USA, and likely all current first-world countries. Should the USA not be #1 on the threats to humanity? Actually, come to think of it, drinking has been directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and many more injuries. Maybe that should be #2? Your list of threats is just the current round of scare mongering topics. Noticeably lacking are actual threats, like climate change and the rise of nationalism. And yes, a company that controls as much information (and access to that information) can be very very dangerous.
- bovermyer 9y agoThe two examples I gave were not the top two, nor in any particular order. However, they do make a practice of killing people, which Google does not. Also, the elimination of a minor API is hardly a globally-damaging action.
- anticodon 9y agoWhy is North Korea a threat to humanity?
- DannyB2 9y agoA possibility exists that North Korea might be able to bait someone into a nuclear war.
- anticodon 9y agoI think this is highly unlikely. There's simply no point. NK needs nuclear weapons to stave off possible US invasion. They are not crazy people. Crazy people can't create nuclear weapons just to randomly kill people for no reason.
- NetStrikeForce 9y agoCome on, I have no sympathy for NK's regime, but that's victim blaming. The threat is "baiting someone into nuclear war" and not "having tens of thousands of nuclear warheads and being ready to use them to kill millions of people"? Give me an effing break mate :)
- sctb 9y agoGood heavens, this is exactly the kind of thing the guidelines refer to here: > Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html