6 ms·

Such a shame then that that talent is focused on making people click ads

by gaius 9y ago

pebers 9y ago
Like Bigtable, MapReduce and Tensorflow haven't had any impact outside advertising...
- jacquesm 9y ago
  That's true, but if not for advertising they wouldn't exist. Advertising is like pornography: lots of technology finds its first application or even invention in either.
antisocial 9y ago
They open source all their excellent work. Rent seeking cable providers are trying to take advantage of the net neutrality repeal to make people click ads.
jonknee 9y ago
It could be worse, a couple generations ago the best minds were used to find new ways to kill people.
- notdonspaulding 9y ago
  That seems like an uncharitable reading of history. Even if technically correct, this interpretation of the effects of nuclear weaponry on the number of humans killed in war seems wildly off-base. https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace In the short-term anyway (by which I mean 1945 to the present day), the advent of nuclear weaponry seems to have decreased the number of humans killed. And that was certainly the most reasonable rationale for the use of nuclear warheads to end WW2.
  - jonknee 9y ago
    You're discounting the non-zero chance that nuclear weapons will end the world as we know it. You can't say that about clicking ads.
    - dmix 9y ago
      Still, it's ultimately about balancing alternatives. Whether there is a net-gain in exchange for an extremely rare potential scenario which every party is massively disincentived from ever pursuing even a minor exchange of 'tactical' nukes... let alone the even smaller probability 'world ending' volleys. War was brutal for centuries and was only getting more destructive until nukes. As much as Oppenheimer may have regretted his involvement it's still has not turned into the total disaster many predicted. We could certainly do more to minimize the threat by reducing stockpiles but from a pure philosophical view of having nukes or not...eh I see a good argument in favour of it. Likewise people clicking on ads has generated tons of value for society and is a big foundation of the recent technical progress we've all benefited from. This is the tradeoff we've exchange for the relatively minor downside risk of ads making people engage in meaningless consumerist pursuits or unhealthy behaviour or be lied to slightly more efficiently by politicians.
      - sgt101 9y ago
        Your analysis has a number of assumptions. First that anyone contemplating nuclear weapon use is considering net-gains. Second that every party is disincentivized, either in rational calculative terms or in terms of their perception of the incentives. As a counter I give you the modern USA - what is the disincentive for the USA to use 20 or 30 tactical nukes if that achieves one of its strategic aims? Thirdly, what if I told you that the probability of a world ending volley approaches 1.0 ? What is the evidence that it doesn't? At the height of Watergate a drunken Nixon was quoted as saying "You know what the difference between us is? I'll tell you, I can walk out of this room right now and give an order and a hour later 80 million people are dead". Cuba was nearer the real deal that either side realised, we've had launch orders ignored and lose weapons that were a fail from going off - which almost certainly would have been interpreted as a strike. And yet people construct everything as ok.
- dmix 9y ago
  Not that much different today, a significant portion of high quality talent is still being drawn into the defense industry. But largely to destroy people's privacy and exploiting the weak state of information security instead of killing people.
CydeWeys 9y ago
Aren't you forgetting the vast majority of Google's products that aren't ads, like Search, Maps, Android, Gmail, etc.?
- pavs 9y ago
  I understand what you are trying to say. But all the products you mentioned generates revenue through ads, both directly and indirectly. Google still makes more than 90% of their revenue from ads. Yes, they are trying to diversify for some time now, maybe they will succeed. but they are not there yet. Most of their current brainshare works on products that make money from ads both directly and indirectly.
  - ddorian43 9y ago
    Is it wrong if a hospital makes money from ads?
    - pavs 9y ago
      I would hope so, considering they probably would be sharing patient personal information for relevant ads.
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    We're not talking about where revenue comes from, we're talking about what products engineers are working on. The vast majority of engineering effort at Google is on products like the ones I mentioned, not ads, and it's insulting to Jeff Dean and others to imply that they're not doing anything other than serving up ads. Search, Maps, Android, etc., are all incredibly useful and technically challenging products, and Jeff Dean's code and inventions are used in all of them.
    - pavs 9y ago
      I understand what you are saying. But the issue is not so black or white. Google/Alphabet is not pouring billions of dollars on free products from the goodness of their heart, they are doing so increase their revenue from ADs. As matter of fact, I would think that most of their ad revenue does not come from direct ad products, but indirectly from other products. Whether ads are ok or not is a different argument (I don't have any problems with Ads as long as they are not too annoying), but the feeling of righteousness is something I can't understand. Please understand Google is a for-profit public-traded company, with the only objective of making money for their shareholders (nothing wrong with that), but to imply they have all these free products without any hidden revenue agenda (is, mostly Ads), is just ridiculous.
vikascoder 9y ago
Of all the hate that Advertising gets, how will any business survive without Advertising? How does an ad free world look like? You pay for every service as a ad-free subscription model? But how would you come to know such a service exists without Advertising?
- gaius 9y ago
  But how would you come to know such a service exists without Advertising? If you need a product you will go and look for it. Advertising by definition is to trick you into buying things you don’t need.
bitmapbrother 9y ago
>Such a shame then that that talent is focused on making people click ads Alphabet's Project Loon was providing connectivity to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. What were the other SV companies, that did nothing to help out, working on? https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/how-google-is-using-balloons-to-extend-cellular-service-in-puerto-rico/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/how-google-is-us...
- sharcerer 9y ago
  exactly. no other SV co is as scientific minded as Alphabet. People focus on the fact that they make money from ads, but nobody looks at what they have done with that money. No other company has done so much for education in my opinion indirectly.( Youtube, Google Earth , Google itself). Google Classroom is also there but I am talking about education in general. As a student, if I had to wish which company survived among the top 5 if 4 had to die tomorrow, then most people in their right mind would vote for Alphabet. even haters.

Such a shame then that that talent is focused on making people click ads

by gaius 9y ago

Such a shame then that that talent is focused on making people click ads

pebers 9y ago

Like Bigtable, MapReduce and Tensorflow haven't had any impact outside advertising...

jacquesm 9y ago
That's true, but if not for advertising they wouldn't exist. Advertising is like pornography: lots of technology finds its first application or even invention in either.

antisocial 9y ago

They open source all their excellent work. Rent seeking cable providers are trying to take advantage of the net neutrality repeal to make people click ads.

jonknee 9y ago

It could be worse, a couple generations ago the best minds were used to find new ways to kill people.

notdonspaulding 9y ago
That seems like an uncharitable reading of history. Even if technically correct, this interpretation of the effects of nuclear weaponry on the number of humans killed in war seems wildly off-base. https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace In the short-term anyway (by which I mean 1945 to the present day), the advent of nuclear weaponry seems to have decreased the number of humans killed. And that was certainly the most reasonable rationale for the use of nuclear warheads to end WW2.
- jonknee 9y ago
  You're discounting the non-zero chance that nuclear weapons will end the world as we know it. You can't say that about clicking ads.
  - dmix 9y ago
    Still, it's ultimately about balancing alternatives. Whether there is a net-gain in exchange for an extremely rare potential scenario which every party is massively disincentived from ever pursuing even a minor exchange of 'tactical' nukes... let alone the even smaller probability 'world ending' volleys. War was brutal for centuries and was only getting more destructive until nukes. As much as Oppenheimer may have regretted his involvement it's still has not turned into the total disaster many predicted. We could certainly do more to minimize the threat by reducing stockpiles but from a pure philosophical view of having nukes or not...eh I see a good argument in favour of it. Likewise people clicking on ads has generated tons of value for society and is a big foundation of the recent technical progress we've all benefited from. This is the tradeoff we've exchange for the relatively minor downside risk of ads making people engage in meaningless consumerist pursuits or unhealthy behaviour or be lied to slightly more efficiently by politicians.
    - sgt101 9y ago
      Your analysis has a number of assumptions. First that anyone contemplating nuclear weapon use is considering net-gains. Second that every party is disincentivized, either in rational calculative terms or in terms of their perception of the incentives. As a counter I give you the modern USA - what is the disincentive for the USA to use 20 or 30 tactical nukes if that achieves one of its strategic aims? Thirdly, what if I told you that the probability of a world ending volley approaches 1.0 ? What is the evidence that it doesn't? At the height of Watergate a drunken Nixon was quoted as saying "You know what the difference between us is? I'll tell you, I can walk out of this room right now and give an order and a hour later 80 million people are dead". Cuba was nearer the real deal that either side realised, we've had launch orders ignored and lose weapons that were a fail from going off - which almost certainly would have been interpreted as a strike. And yet people construct everything as ok.
dmix 9y ago
Not that much different today, a significant portion of high quality talent is still being drawn into the defense industry. But largely to destroy people's privacy and exploiting the weak state of information security instead of killing people.

CydeWeys 9y ago

Aren't you forgetting the vast majority of Google's products that aren't ads, like Search, Maps, Android, Gmail, etc.?

pavs 9y ago
I understand what you are trying to say. But all the products you mentioned generates revenue through ads, both directly and indirectly. Google still makes more than 90% of their revenue from ads. Yes, they are trying to diversify for some time now, maybe they will succeed. but they are not there yet. Most of their current brainshare works on products that make money from ads both directly and indirectly.
- ddorian43 9y ago
  Is it wrong if a hospital makes money from ads?
  - pavs 9y ago
    I would hope so, considering they probably would be sharing patient personal information for relevant ads.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  We're not talking about where revenue comes from, we're talking about what products engineers are working on. The vast majority of engineering effort at Google is on products like the ones I mentioned, not ads, and it's insulting to Jeff Dean and others to imply that they're not doing anything other than serving up ads. Search, Maps, Android, etc., are all incredibly useful and technically challenging products, and Jeff Dean's code and inventions are used in all of them.
  - pavs 9y ago
    I understand what you are saying. But the issue is not so black or white. Google/Alphabet is not pouring billions of dollars on free products from the goodness of their heart, they are doing so increase their revenue from ADs. As matter of fact, I would think that most of their ad revenue does not come from direct ad products, but indirectly from other products. Whether ads are ok or not is a different argument (I don't have any problems with Ads as long as they are not too annoying), but the feeling of righteousness is something I can't understand. Please understand Google is a for-profit public-traded company, with the only objective of making money for their shareholders (nothing wrong with that), but to imply they have all these free products without any hidden revenue agenda (is, mostly Ads), is just ridiculous.

vikascoder 9y ago

Of all the hate that Advertising gets, how will any business survive without Advertising? How does an ad free world look like? You pay for every service as a ad-free subscription model? But how would you come to know such a service exists without Advertising?

gaius 9y ago
But how would you come to know such a service exists without Advertising? If you need a product you will go and look for it. Advertising by definition is to trick you into buying things you don’t need.

bitmapbrother 9y ago

>Such a shame then that that talent is focused on making people click ads Alphabet's Project Loon was providing connectivity to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. What were the other SV companies, that did nothing to help out, working on? https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/how-google-is-using-balloons-to-extend-cellular-service-in-puerto-rico/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/how-google-is-us...

sharcerer 9y ago
exactly. no other SV co is as scientific minded as Alphabet. People focus on the fact that they make money from ads, but nobody looks at what they have done with that money. No other company has done so much for education in my opinion indirectly.( Youtube, Google Earth , Google itself). Google Classroom is also there but I am talking about education in general. As a student, if I had to wish which company survived among the top 5 if 4 had to die tomorrow, then most people in their right mind would vote for Alphabet. even haters.