4 ms·

Very few people think they are doing evil, most people think they are doing good. Humans first and foremost justify their actions. Google's overriding value is

Very few people think they are doing evil, most people think they are doing good. Humans first and foremost justify their actions. Google's overriding value is money. That's what they care about. If it wasn't that way they would operate differently. What it appears like is Google operates in a way that prioritizes money and then later justifies it with this notion of "doing good", but that's vague enough to literally mean anything. You think I'm exaggerating, but look at any number of organizations that have done things which nobody considers good and then look at how their members justify it. It always happens. How easy it to justify making 300k a year while pumping out walled garden mediocrity? It's really easy. Chiming in feels like sour grapes, but this notion that a massive corporation gives a fuck about anything but it's own existence doesn't seem realistic.

wpietri 8y ago
Isn't that like saying that a person's overriding value is food because they spend so much time and money on it, eating repeatedly throughout the day? When instead that's more a necessity for doing anything else. I agree that Google cares about making money, because without it they wouldn't have a company. But isn't it strong to say their overriding value is money? Contrast them with, say, the pre-Google search companies. Google was able to kick their asses because Google ignored higher short-term revenue (e.g., display ads) and focused on generating much more search value. Look at GMail, which was a money-loser for years. Or all of their blue-sky projects, the canceling of which would immediately improve their profitability. This is not to say that they're all buttercups and moonbeams. But I think they could be much greedier, and much more awful.
- hueving 8y ago
  >and focused on generating much more search value. That's just a competitive strategy any company takes to displace incumbents. Hardly a moral high ground.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    I partly disagree, and I think you've created a false dichotomy. We can look at any economic activity through two lenses: "serves others" and "fills my pockets". The more companies focus only on the latter, the more they are scammy, extractive, or exploitative. The more companies focus on the former, the more value they create for their customers. But these things aren't mutually exclusive. They're independent. Companies that focus only on creating value while ignoring profit usually fail, as they aren't sustainable. Companies that focus only on profit usually fail, as customers realize they are getting taken for a ride. Some companies can do both well. I think Google is in that category. They create massive value without worrying too much about extracting every penny of cash. Which means that their overriding value isn't really money.
- aaron-lebo 8y ago
  They have much more money than necessity. If we're talking about eating they are foodies that spend $200 at every meal and give the scraps to the homeless guy on the way out. It's not that they don't do good, but how do you quantify that even? The singular value that drives it (beyond the differing political values and the variety of tech they put out) is a desire to make money. What value does the organization have that is more central to that? If it was otherwise they wouldn't have hired a CFO who was in Wall Street at the height of its misbehavior. It's been nearly 20 years since Google was the little guy. They're a massive corporation and many people have come and gone. The only constant is the need to make stockholders happy. That might be cynical, but I just think it's realistic about how the modern world operates. They could be worse but they could also be much more and describing basic business behavior as "doing good" kind of dilutes the term and covers up what is really just a big corp being a big corp, the same way that MS's commercials with Common talking about "changing the world" is really just a way of selling stuff. It's a meaningless mantra.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    I don't think they are nearly as good as they think they are. But in the universe of companies, I think they're much better than average. I think your mistake here is to see business as zero sum. It isn't. As I mention in a nearby comment, businesses create value for customers and then extract cash from the result. Plenty of other organizations are less focused on creating value and more focused on extracting cash. I agree that the machinery of American corporate capitalism is very focused on the latter, and personally think that MBAs are an infection vector for an ideology to justify that. However, I think Google has been so good at long-term investment because they have a strong competing strain of focusing on value delivery for customers and users. That is part of engineering culture, and also part of design culture. So yes, Google's a large company. But it's a large company where engineers and designers have a lot of power. Where many of the senior people have fuck-you money, and can go do whatever they want once it stops being fun. Plenty of other companies don't even argue about mission. Power is concentrated at the top in the hands of execs, mostly with MBA training, who just tell everybody else what to do in hopes of juicing profit numbers for the next 1-3 quarters. If you want to look at an organization who's overriding value really is profit, take a look at Yahoo. They used to be a beloved company with a lot of good people. But they honored the traditional American model of "rush after short-term profits". They rarely built anything truly useful, and when the they did get ahold of something good (e.g., Flickr), their lack of a sense of purpose meant they just flailed around, wasting their lead. Or you could look at many companies in the financial sector, who can only think in extractive terms.

wpietri 8y ago

Isn't that like saying that a person's overriding value is food because they spend so much time and money on it, eating repeatedly throughout the day? When instead that's more a necessity for doing anything else. I agree that Google cares about making money, because without it they wouldn't have a company. But isn't it strong to say their overriding value is money? Contrast them with, say, the pre-Google search companies. Google was able to kick their asses because Google ignored higher short-term revenue (e.g., display ads) and focused on generating much more search value. Look at GMail, which was a money-loser for years. Or all of their blue-sky projects, the canceling of which would immediately improve their profitability. This is not to say that they're all buttercups and moonbeams. But I think they could be much greedier, and much more awful.

hueving 8y ago
>and focused on generating much more search value. That's just a competitive strategy any company takes to displace incumbents. Hardly a moral high ground.
- wpietri 8y ago
  I partly disagree, and I think you've created a false dichotomy. We can look at any economic activity through two lenses: "serves others" and "fills my pockets". The more companies focus only on the latter, the more they are scammy, extractive, or exploitative. The more companies focus on the former, the more value they create for their customers. But these things aren't mutually exclusive. They're independent. Companies that focus only on creating value while ignoring profit usually fail, as they aren't sustainable. Companies that focus only on profit usually fail, as customers realize they are getting taken for a ride. Some companies can do both well. I think Google is in that category. They create massive value without worrying too much about extracting every penny of cash. Which means that their overriding value isn't really money.
aaron-lebo 8y ago
They have much more money than necessity. If we're talking about eating they are foodies that spend $200 at every meal and give the scraps to the homeless guy on the way out. It's not that they don't do good, but how do you quantify that even? The singular value that drives it (beyond the differing political values and the variety of tech they put out) is a desire to make money. What value does the organization have that is more central to that? If it was otherwise they wouldn't have hired a CFO who was in Wall Street at the height of its misbehavior. It's been nearly 20 years since Google was the little guy. They're a massive corporation and many people have come and gone. The only constant is the need to make stockholders happy. That might be cynical, but I just think it's realistic about how the modern world operates. They could be worse but they could also be much more and describing basic business behavior as "doing good" kind of dilutes the term and covers up what is really just a big corp being a big corp, the same way that MS's commercials with Common talking about "changing the world" is really just a way of selling stuff. It's a meaningless mantra.
- wpietri 8y ago
  I don't think they are nearly as good as they think they are. But in the universe of companies, I think they're much better than average. I think your mistake here is to see business as zero sum. It isn't. As I mention in a nearby comment, businesses create value for customers and then extract cash from the result. Plenty of other organizations are less focused on creating value and more focused on extracting cash. I agree that the machinery of American corporate capitalism is very focused on the latter, and personally think that MBAs are an infection vector for an ideology to justify that. However, I think Google has been so good at long-term investment because they have a strong competing strain of focusing on value delivery for customers and users. That is part of engineering culture, and also part of design culture. So yes, Google's a large company. But it's a large company where engineers and designers have a lot of power. Where many of the senior people have fuck-you money, and can go do whatever they want once it stops being fun. Plenty of other companies don't even argue about mission. Power is concentrated at the top in the hands of execs, mostly with MBA training, who just tell everybody else what to do in hopes of juicing profit numbers for the next 1-3 quarters. If you want to look at an organization who's overriding value really is profit, take a look at Yahoo. They used to be a beloved company with a lot of good people. But they honored the traditional American model of "rush after short-term profits". They rarely built anything truly useful, and when the they did get ahold of something good (e.g., Flickr), their lack of a sense of purpose meant they just flailed around, wasting their lead. Or you could look at many companies in the financial sector, who can only think in extractive terms.