5 ms·

I don't understand how we've normalized Googles behavior to the point where this doesn't even shock me anymore. When I used Google Play Music a couple years ago

I don't understand how we've normalized Googles behavior to the point where this doesn't even shock me anymore. When I used Google Play Music a couple years ago there was a feature that was broken for YEARS according to the bug reports I could find, and in a classic Google move they shut the service down before ever fixing it. That might sound like a non sequitur but it's ridiculous to me how little Google cares about anyone (users or the people who make content for their platforms) yet we still use their products. These days I try to avoid them wherever possible, not only for a small satisfaction of boycotting the company, but also because if I grow to like one of their products it will just shut down eventually. What can we do about this?

lykr0n 6y ago
Stop worshiping the ground Google walks on, which seems common on HackerNews.
- llampx 6y ago
  According to a lot of devs and CTOs I've met, Google and Apple can't do anything wrong while Microsoft can't do anything right.
  - bsder 6y ago
    Actually, I regularly have to go through any APIs we use from Google and yell at the developers who use them. I can't risk having a corporate rollout/demo/pilot fail because some developer made the Googlebot pissy and got everything they're associated with banned. I trust Microsoft way more than Google at this point. That says something.
  - sakoht 6y ago
    Google is clearly guilty of neglect because they like to do everything in an automated way ...even if it can’t possibly be done well at this point. But that is way different than Embrace, Extend, Extinguish from MS. I would not trade, say, Chrome for the world of IE. the tension between Google and Apple is far healthier for developers and consumers.
- adventured 6y ago
  > Stop worshiping the ground Google walks on, which seems common on HackerNews. I've had the exact opposite observation here. There are few places on the Internet I see Google get more consistently browbeaten and held to account for its mistakes and abuses than on HN. This has been the case for at least the past six or eight years or more. Threads on Google here are very rarely laudatory; they typically make the front page because of bad things. HN comments tilt toward overwhelmingly disliking Goliath and favoring David. You see this in most Intel v AMD threads from the past decade. You'd think Intel killed HN's favorite puppy or merged with Oracle. Intel having an inferior product now doesn't explain the visceral response, it's something deeper psychologically, it's a revulsion of big tech broadly. It's mostly just a matter of rooting for the underdog and against big tech. The same thing is common re Amazon and Facebook here (increasingly Apple as well, which has lost a lot of its favor on HN). Microsoft is slightly in favor by contrast, they took a very long big tech lashing previously and people like a comeback story (their open source olive branches help a lot). Pretty typical, forever repeating psychology. Underdogs, comebacks, goliaths v davids. They won't like you again until after you fall.
  - bsder 6y ago
    > You'd think Intel killed HN's favorite puppy or merged with Oracle. To be fair, Intel engaged in some really evil practices to prevent AMD from gaining market share for a very long time. And, unlike Microsoft's slap on the wrist, Intel never really got punished at all for it. Yeah, Intel isn't as bad as Oracle simply because they don't have Larry Ellison. However, Darth Vader isn't magically good simply because he's not The Emperor.
  - kilburn 6y ago
    > Underdogs, comebacks, goliaths v davids. They won't like you again until after you fall. Yeah, the fact that once "the davids" of the past became today's goliaths changed their behavior from (at least pretending to) caring about being social net-positive forces to being purely business machines has nothing to do with it. For instance, Google's code of lost this paragraph two years ago [1]: > “Don’t be evil.” Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it’s also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably, and treating co-workers with courtesy and respect. It may not matter to you but it does for some others. I'm one of them. [1] https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393 https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...
yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
> These days I try to avoid them wherever possible, not only for a small satisfaction of boycotting the company, but also because if I grow to like one of their products it will just shut down eventually. > What can we do about this? I think you've already got it; don't use Google products. Ideally, pay for alternatives.
- Kaze404 6y ago
  I honestly don't think this does anything besides give me a small satisfaction. I can't think of a time when voting with your wallet actually worked.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    > I can't think of a time when voting with your wallet actually worked I suppose it depends on how you count, but Fastmail seems like a good example.
brandonmenc 6y ago
> What can we do about this? Purchase software from other providers. With like, cash.
kodablah 6y ago
> What can we do about this? There is a much harsher solution that I'm not even sure I advocate yet: stigmatize employment there. At-will employment somewhere when we can easily go elsewhere means that, while we don't necessarily condone all that our company does, we in general support/accept the company and its approach. Therefore, absent hardships, we must assume Google employees generally support Google actions as a whole (even if not this one). If others disapprove of Google's actions as a whole, they are allowed to disapprove of those that work there. In my opinion, the best you can do is disapprove of working there (including passing opinionated judgment, albeit politely, on those that do work there). Maybe you take such character judgments in your personal or hiring decisions. Having said that, I don't agree with it as I generally support Google's actions/presence as a whole, but the further their average lowers, the more myself and others won't.
- on_and_off 6y ago
  Some of the kindest people I know work at Google. The truth is that it is become an enormous company and somebody working e.g. on the internals of Compose code has no power over how Chrome handles extensions. I despise Google more and more as a company but that's not going to affect them. In the areas where Google has some real alternatives, switch to these.
- zionic 6y ago
  I saw this in my top-5 school. Internships at google were laughed at pretty hard. All the best guys wanted SpaceX or Tesla. Apple was also considered good but not great for your resume and you couldn't talk about what you worked on much.
brownbat 6y ago
> When I used Google Play Music a couple years ago there was a feature that was broken for YEARS Not sure if this is yours, but mine was that it would often swap out my tracks for radio edits, even though I uploaded the original. I'm an adult, I bought this music, I don't need the kids' version. There's a built in feature you can use, "fix incorrect match," that would fix this only about half the time. Oh right, it also capped the max size of playlists to 1000 songs for some reason. Now it sounds like YouTube Music won't even let me listen while switching to another app, like a workout app, and won't let you turn off the screen without the music going out. Hard to believe. Looking around, I'll be moving to musicolet I guess. Sounds like AIMP and BlackPlayer get good reviews too, but I really love the idea of an app that actually tries to limit the permissions it requests from you. https://www.androidauthority.com/best-music-players-android-auto-944720/ https://www.androidauthority.com/best-music-players-android-...
- Kaze404 6y ago
  I had that issue as well, but in this comment I was talking about editing a track's album art. It would upload the picture but not do anything with it. Very weird to have such a basic function be broken like that for so long. As for YouTube Music, it supports background play only if you subscribe, like regular YouTube.

lykr0n 6y ago

Stop worshiping the ground Google walks on, which seems common on HackerNews.

llampx 6y ago
According to a lot of devs and CTOs I've met, Google and Apple can't do anything wrong while Microsoft can't do anything right.
- bsder 6y ago
  Actually, I regularly have to go through any APIs we use from Google and yell at the developers who use them. I can't risk having a corporate rollout/demo/pilot fail because some developer made the Googlebot pissy and got everything they're associated with banned. I trust Microsoft way more than Google at this point. That says something.
- sakoht 6y ago
  Google is clearly guilty of neglect because they like to do everything in an automated way ...even if it can’t possibly be done well at this point. But that is way different than Embrace, Extend, Extinguish from MS. I would not trade, say, Chrome for the world of IE. the tension between Google and Apple is far healthier for developers and consumers.
adventured 6y ago
> Stop worshiping the ground Google walks on, which seems common on HackerNews. I've had the exact opposite observation here. There are few places on the Internet I see Google get more consistently browbeaten and held to account for its mistakes and abuses than on HN. This has been the case for at least the past six or eight years or more. Threads on Google here are very rarely laudatory; they typically make the front page because of bad things. HN comments tilt toward overwhelmingly disliking Goliath and favoring David. You see this in most Intel v AMD threads from the past decade. You'd think Intel killed HN's favorite puppy or merged with Oracle. Intel having an inferior product now doesn't explain the visceral response, it's something deeper psychologically, it's a revulsion of big tech broadly. It's mostly just a matter of rooting for the underdog and against big tech. The same thing is common re Amazon and Facebook here (increasingly Apple as well, which has lost a lot of its favor on HN). Microsoft is slightly in favor by contrast, they took a very long big tech lashing previously and people like a comeback story (their open source olive branches help a lot). Pretty typical, forever repeating psychology. Underdogs, comebacks, goliaths v davids. They won't like you again until after you fall.
- bsder 6y ago
  > You'd think Intel killed HN's favorite puppy or merged with Oracle. To be fair, Intel engaged in some really evil practices to prevent AMD from gaining market share for a very long time. And, unlike Microsoft's slap on the wrist, Intel never really got punished at all for it. Yeah, Intel isn't as bad as Oracle simply because they don't have Larry Ellison. However, Darth Vader isn't magically good simply because he's not The Emperor.
- kilburn 6y ago
  > Underdogs, comebacks, goliaths v davids. They won't like you again until after you fall. Yeah, the fact that once "the davids" of the past became today's goliaths changed their behavior from (at least pretending to) caring about being social net-positive forces to being purely business machines has nothing to do with it. For instance, Google's code of lost this paragraph two years ago [1]: > “Don’t be evil.” Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it’s also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably, and treating co-workers with courtesy and respect. It may not matter to you but it does for some others. I'm one of them. [1] https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393 https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago

> These days I try to avoid them wherever possible, not only for a small satisfaction of boycotting the company, but also because if I grow to like one of their products it will just shut down eventually. > What can we do about this? I think you've already got it; don't use Google products. Ideally, pay for alternatives.

Kaze404 6y ago
I honestly don't think this does anything besides give me a small satisfaction. I can't think of a time when voting with your wallet actually worked.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  > I can't think of a time when voting with your wallet actually worked I suppose it depends on how you count, but Fastmail seems like a good example.

brandonmenc 6y ago

> What can we do about this? Purchase software from other providers. With like, cash.

kodablah 6y ago

> What can we do about this? There is a much harsher solution that I'm not even sure I advocate yet: stigmatize employment there. At-will employment somewhere when we can easily go elsewhere means that, while we don't necessarily condone all that our company does, we in general support/accept the company and its approach. Therefore, absent hardships, we must assume Google employees generally support Google actions as a whole (even if not this one). If others disapprove of Google's actions as a whole, they are allowed to disapprove of those that work there. In my opinion, the best you can do is disapprove of working there (including passing opinionated judgment, albeit politely, on those that do work there). Maybe you take such character judgments in your personal or hiring decisions. Having said that, I don't agree with it as I generally support Google's actions/presence as a whole, but the further their average lowers, the more myself and others won't.

on_and_off 6y ago
Some of the kindest people I know work at Google. The truth is that it is become an enormous company and somebody working e.g. on the internals of Compose code has no power over how Chrome handles extensions. I despise Google more and more as a company but that's not going to affect them. In the areas where Google has some real alternatives, switch to these.
zionic 6y ago
I saw this in my top-5 school. Internships at google were laughed at pretty hard. All the best guys wanted SpaceX or Tesla. Apple was also considered good but not great for your resume and you couldn't talk about what you worked on much.

brownbat 6y ago

> When I used Google Play Music a couple years ago there was a feature that was broken for YEARS Not sure if this is yours, but mine was that it would often swap out my tracks for radio edits, even though I uploaded the original. I'm an adult, I bought this music, I don't need the kids' version. There's a built in feature you can use, "fix incorrect match," that would fix this only about half the time. Oh right, it also capped the max size of playlists to 1000 songs for some reason. Now it sounds like YouTube Music won't even let me listen while switching to another app, like a workout app, and won't let you turn off the screen without the music going out. Hard to believe. Looking around, I'll be moving to musicolet I guess. Sounds like AIMP and BlackPlayer get good reviews too, but I really love the idea of an app that actually tries to limit the permissions it requests from you. https://www.androidauthority.com/best-music-players-android-auto-944720/ https://www.androidauthority.com/best-music-players-android-...

Kaze404 6y ago
I had that issue as well, but in this comment I was talking about editing a track's album art. It would upload the picture but not do anything with it. Very weird to have such a basic function be broken like that for so long. As for YouTube Music, it supports background play only if you subscribe, like regular YouTube.