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This sort of evil behavior doesn't require intent or actual malice to form. All it requires is that panic efforts to fix things be primarily allocated to probl
by nullc 7y ago
This sort of evil behavior doesn't require intent or actual malice to form.
All it requires is that panic efforts to fix things be primarily allocated to problems that hurt google and not primarily allocated to things that hurt google's opponents. Or for infrastructure that has a history of hurting google to get disabled while infrastructure that has a history of hurting others gets ignored in favor of spending more time on new projects or fixing things that hurt google.
IMO characterizing it as involving malice ('pretend') actually _understates_ the problem. Google's actions are sometimes explicitly malicious, but they're even more often malicious OR indifferent, as that is a strict superset. If one day they decided to stop being actively evil this problem would not go away.
Maybe it could be reduced with the right kind of attitude towards introspecting and seeking out systemic causes of evil consequences even at their own expense. I heard there was once a company with a "don't be evil" mantra, but they abandoned it as they grew.
This also explains why the same evil conduct sometimes shows up in cases where no one can figure out any way that google actually benefits. It's a lot easier to cause harm through indifference than greed because greed requires that you have a way to benefit. Most conceivable harmful acts don't have much of a benefit for anyone.
- a-nikolaev 7y agoI see your argument, and while it is plausible, it is muddying the waters. The twitter thread I linked above is from a former Firefox vice president, not from some random person on the Internet. People at Mozilla also thought that Google is playing fair game. When they realized there was a malicious intent, it was too late.
- raspie 7y agoThere is no such thing as a megacorp's indifference to increasing their profits and achieving their strategic goals. You can't plausibly claim indifference when Google's business processes that took many millions of dollars to set up and optimize promote Google's success by harming Google's competitors and taming Google's existential threats in user-hostile ways that range from perhaps subtle to outrageously obvious. They didn't start doing this yesterday. No amount of plausible deniability can cover a gaping void this large. Google's behaviour is entirely consistent with a huge company exercising its monopolistic power in a largely unregulated environment. They do whatever they can get away with.
- roca 7y agoAs a former Mozilla distinguished engineer --- this is exactly right.
- deogeo 7y ago“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action”
- Gibbon1 7y agoThis is why we used to have anti-trust law.