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Time for the weekly Chrome bash thread on HN. Cue the "I also switched to ddg and it's great!" Seriously, why does this happen so much here? I'm not even talki

Time for the weekly Chrome bash thread on HN. Cue the "I also switched to ddg and it's great!" Seriously, why does this happen so much here? I'm not even talking about the merits of the argument (I switched to Firefox), I'm just talking about how much of an echo chamber this is.

notkaiho 7y ago
Because we, as largely the more clued-in kind of IT users, know the importance of avoiding closed gardens and the dangers of the tracking ad-tech stuff Chrome has?
- mav3rick 7y ago
  Right closed garden ? How do so many chromium forks exist ? Google could have closed sourced it from the start.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Not really, since it’s based on (LGPL) WebKit code.
- dimator 7y ago
  So we have to bring it up every few days? Just look at this comment thread. All switch stories. At this point it's preaching to the choir.
  - thinkingemote 7y ago
    Well the article is explicitly about switch stories so it's a good thing the comments have stayed in track.
mav3rick 7y ago
Most people hate it for the salaries and that they couldn't get in, they mask it as some sort of far left viewpoint that forces them to oppose Google at every opportunity. Google can solve world hunger and HN would still blame them for a "PR" stunt.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > Most people hate it for the salaries and that they couldn't get in You’re projecting with flamebait. Please don’t.
- onion2k 7y ago
  Google has the resources and brains available to solve world hunger, so they probably could do that. Unfortunately all those people who work there would rather spend their time and effort thinking of new ways to get people to see ads. I don't see that as very positive for Google.
  - mrmonkeyman 7y ago
    You are overestimating their actual power and competency by many orders of magnititude, almost as much as you underestimate the problem of "world hunger".
  - SquareWheel 7y ago
    Google has hundreds of product teams. Very few work on ads. Your comment is not accurate at all.
    - onion2k 7y ago
      Practically everything Google does is to drive sales for the ad business. Those teams might not work on ads, but they exist to make ads more money by either working on things that display ads or things that gather data to make ads more attractive to ad buyers. That is the reason why Google exists. If it wasn't for selling ads then none of those other teams would exist.
- BuckRogers 7y ago
  I was never a Google fan for my own reasons (non-political, nor ever wanted a job there). I was pleased when some people I know started rejecting their products, but took a while to realize it was for political reasons alone. Which isn’t good reason in my book, as a software developer. I told them, if Google was left wing, they wouldn’t be union busting. They’re a for-profit enterprise that at best has temporarily mutually aligned self interests. Google would assist in the Holocaust just as IBM did. The only way I could be convinced they’re left wing is if they did the left wing things that matter most: distribute money and power by embracing organized labor. Until then, all the gay rights flags in the world cost Google nothing. And just to be clear, I support leftist causes, just tire of corporate lip service. I don’t see what so many of my right wing friends see in Google being a “SJW” enterprise.
kayyay 7y ago
Any discussion board where the majority of users has a specific background or shared interest is likely to converge in their opinion on some issues, the echo chamber is simply built in. You're free not to participate in a discussion you've come across ten times though.
- izacus 7y ago
  This is amplified with the fact that any voting based discussion board allows a group of users to silence opposing opinions and drive away people that hold them. As a result, you get a self-perpetuating amplification cycle where the loudest silence everyone else.
onion2k 7y ago
Google exists to generate as much profit as possible, almost entirely from the sale and publication of ads. HN readers, in general, dislike ads. Consequently there's already an antagonistic relationship between Google and HN readers. Add to that the fact that Google do many things that people don't like such as killing products, eroding privacy and making the web less open, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that HN readers upvote and comment on articles that aren't entirely positive about things affected by Google's internal politics.
izacus 7y ago
I think seasoned redditors call this a "circlejerk" - a circle of users that constantly upvotes same content without any additional information or debate. This is what's happening here - a bunch of people that constantly grind their same old axe and upvote same old content while downvoting you :) Because you don't hate the evil of the month enough.
rvz 7y ago
You are being downvoted on suspicion of wrong-think by the HN crew. You shouldn't be surprised of the echo-chambers, the weekly testimonials of 'Why I switched from X to Y and you should too' threads and the die-hards who will do anything to flag/dead/ban anything that moves in the wrong direction. (Even if its a normal and civilised debate.) As for browsers, I use 'Un-googled' Chromium.

notkaiho 7y ago

Because we, as largely the more clued-in kind of IT users, know the importance of avoiding closed gardens and the dangers of the tracking ad-tech stuff Chrome has?

mav3rick 7y ago
Right closed garden ? How do so many chromium forks exist ? Google could have closed sourced it from the start.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Not really, since it’s based on (LGPL) WebKit code.
dimator 7y ago
So we have to bring it up every few days? Just look at this comment thread. All switch stories. At this point it's preaching to the choir.
- thinkingemote 7y ago
  Well the article is explicitly about switch stories so it's a good thing the comments have stayed in track.

mav3rick 7y ago

Most people hate it for the salaries and that they couldn't get in, they mask it as some sort of far left viewpoint that forces them to oppose Google at every opportunity. Google can solve world hunger and HN would still blame them for a "PR" stunt.

saagarjha 7y ago
> Most people hate it for the salaries and that they couldn't get in You’re projecting with flamebait. Please don’t.
onion2k 7y ago
Google has the resources and brains available to solve world hunger, so they probably could do that. Unfortunately all those people who work there would rather spend their time and effort thinking of new ways to get people to see ads. I don't see that as very positive for Google.
- mrmonkeyman 7y ago
  You are overestimating their actual power and competency by many orders of magnititude, almost as much as you underestimate the problem of "world hunger".
- SquareWheel 7y ago
  Google has hundreds of product teams. Very few work on ads. Your comment is not accurate at all.
  - onion2k 7y ago
    Practically everything Google does is to drive sales for the ad business. Those teams might not work on ads, but they exist to make ads more money by either working on things that display ads or things that gather data to make ads more attractive to ad buyers. That is the reason why Google exists. If it wasn't for selling ads then none of those other teams would exist.
BuckRogers 7y ago
I was never a Google fan for my own reasons (non-political, nor ever wanted a job there). I was pleased when some people I know started rejecting their products, but took a while to realize it was for political reasons alone. Which isn’t good reason in my book, as a software developer. I told them, if Google was left wing, they wouldn’t be union busting. They’re a for-profit enterprise that at best has temporarily mutually aligned self interests. Google would assist in the Holocaust just as IBM did. The only way I could be convinced they’re left wing is if they did the left wing things that matter most: distribute money and power by embracing organized labor. Until then, all the gay rights flags in the world cost Google nothing. And just to be clear, I support leftist causes, just tire of corporate lip service. I don’t see what so many of my right wing friends see in Google being a “SJW” enterprise.

kayyay 7y ago

Any discussion board where the majority of users has a specific background or shared interest is likely to converge in their opinion on some issues, the echo chamber is simply built in. You're free not to participate in a discussion you've come across ten times though.

izacus 7y ago
This is amplified with the fact that any voting based discussion board allows a group of users to silence opposing opinions and drive away people that hold them. As a result, you get a self-perpetuating amplification cycle where the loudest silence everyone else.

onion2k 7y ago

Google exists to generate as much profit as possible, almost entirely from the sale and publication of ads. HN readers, in general, dislike ads. Consequently there's already an antagonistic relationship between Google and HN readers. Add to that the fact that Google do many things that people don't like such as killing products, eroding privacy and making the web less open, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that HN readers upvote and comment on articles that aren't entirely positive about things affected by Google's internal politics.

izacus 7y ago

I think seasoned redditors call this a "circlejerk" - a circle of users that constantly upvotes same content without any additional information or debate. This is what's happening here - a bunch of people that constantly grind their same old axe and upvote same old content while downvoting you :) Because you don't hate the evil of the month enough.

rvz 7y ago

You are being downvoted on suspicion of wrong-think by the HN crew. You shouldn't be surprised of the echo-chambers, the weekly testimonials of 'Why I switched from X to Y and you should too' threads and the die-hards who will do anything to flag/dead/ban anything that moves in the wrong direction. (Even if its a normal and civilised debate.) As for browsers, I use 'Un-googled' Chromium.