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If that's true, then the Chrome team is severely insulated from their critics. Chrome's "Sign-In" feature has been on lists of features that privacy advocates h

If that's true, then the Chrome team is severely insulated from their critics. Chrome's "Sign-In" feature has been on lists of features that privacy advocates have recommended avoiding for years, and watchdogs have consistently raised questions about Chrome's data collection policies and practices. As a Googler, you should encourage your colleagues to read negative and critical coverage of your company and its products. It might be eye-opening to many of them what people actually like and dislike about the products they're building.

lrem 8y ago
I already do. There is a strong internal culture of argument and we do tend to use critical news, forum or blog posts as anecdata points. The higher quality and quantity of external voices on a subject, the better argument can be made one way or another. So please keep them coming, but do remember that usually the best result of those is starting proper research into the topic, which then can show that the best for the 99% still lies the other way.
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  If there's strong internal argumentation, why is everyone so surprised by and bad at reacting to the criticism?
  - jillesvangurp 8y ago
    It's called confirmation bias. They are looking for positive evidence confirming how awesome they are and are blind to evidence of the contrary. Not only are they blind but they seem genuinely confused why people are disagreeing with them so much. From the outside this is an obvious PR disaster. It shouldn't need debating. It's that bad. I imagine the internal mailing lists are going to be a fun read the next few days. I was on similar mailing lists in Nokia when the iphone launched. I'll spare you the details but Nokia suffered from a similarly bad case of confirmation bias and it was decision making based on that in the years before and after that ultimately led to them getting out of the phone business entirely a mere 7 years after being the dominant market leader (and not by any small margin). Confirmation bias kills companies. Anyone from Google/alphabet still capable of making a difference reading this, here's some free advice: sort out your management ASAP. This is one of those issues that stems from a lack of leadership. Heads need to roll, especially the ones doing too much nodding. I'd start at the top. I've had my doubts about the current CEO for a while. Too invisible and stuff like this keeps happening on his watch. Also the product portfolio seems a mess lately. There's something wrong there and current leadership is part of the problem.
- fcarraldo 8y ago
  Is it really that what's best for the 99% lies the other way? Or is it that Chrome has so many users that there will always be a majority that don't care about the latest privacy violation Google has forced upon 1/6th of the world population? When you have 1 billion users, I think it's easy to say that "most of them are better off" with whatever, because there's no possible way that you'll ever have a majority of your 1bn users arguing for or against anything. This is why watchdog organizations exist, and why they're so important. Doing the "right thing" for 99% of your users isn't actually the right thing if it does harm to your most vulnerable users.
  - rifung 8y ago
    > Doing the "right thing" for 99% of your users isn't actually the right thing if it does harm to your most vulnerable users. But aren't the most vulnerable users the one who actually aren't tech savvy? And, arguably this change may actually make things simpler for them.

lrem 8y ago

I already do. There is a strong internal culture of argument and we do tend to use critical news, forum or blog posts as anecdata points. The higher quality and quantity of external voices on a subject, the better argument can be made one way or another. So please keep them coming, but do remember that usually the best result of those is starting proper research into the topic, which then can show that the best for the 99% still lies the other way.

daveFNbuck 8y ago
If there's strong internal argumentation, why is everyone so surprised by and bad at reacting to the criticism?
- jillesvangurp 8y ago
  It's called confirmation bias. They are looking for positive evidence confirming how awesome they are and are blind to evidence of the contrary. Not only are they blind but they seem genuinely confused why people are disagreeing with them so much. From the outside this is an obvious PR disaster. It shouldn't need debating. It's that bad. I imagine the internal mailing lists are going to be a fun read the next few days. I was on similar mailing lists in Nokia when the iphone launched. I'll spare you the details but Nokia suffered from a similarly bad case of confirmation bias and it was decision making based on that in the years before and after that ultimately led to them getting out of the phone business entirely a mere 7 years after being the dominant market leader (and not by any small margin). Confirmation bias kills companies. Anyone from Google/alphabet still capable of making a difference reading this, here's some free advice: sort out your management ASAP. This is one of those issues that stems from a lack of leadership. Heads need to roll, especially the ones doing too much nodding. I'd start at the top. I've had my doubts about the current CEO for a while. Too invisible and stuff like this keeps happening on his watch. Also the product portfolio seems a mess lately. There's something wrong there and current leadership is part of the problem.
fcarraldo 8y ago
Is it really that what's best for the 99% lies the other way? Or is it that Chrome has so many users that there will always be a majority that don't care about the latest privacy violation Google has forced upon 1/6th of the world population? When you have 1 billion users, I think it's easy to say that "most of them are better off" with whatever, because there's no possible way that you'll ever have a majority of your 1bn users arguing for or against anything. This is why watchdog organizations exist, and why they're so important. Doing the "right thing" for 99% of your users isn't actually the right thing if it does harm to your most vulnerable users.
- rifung 8y ago
  > Doing the "right thing" for 99% of your users isn't actually the right thing if it does harm to your most vulnerable users. But aren't the most vulnerable users the one who actually aren't tech savvy? And, arguably this change may actually make things simpler for them.