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Antitrust was a disaster for Bell Labs, which gave us inventions like the transistor and Unix. Nothing as noteworthy after the breakup and string of acquisition
by bbqmaster999 6y ago
Antitrust was a disaster for Bell Labs, which gave us inventions like the transistor and Unix. Nothing as noteworthy after the breakup and string of acquisitions. In the same way I’m worried for all the moon shoot projects at these big companies if they are broken up. I suggest reading the Idea Factory and then see how you feel about breaking up big tech.
- AlexandrB 6y agoBell also forced you to rent their telephones if you wanted phone service. The old Bell was a disaster for consumers and Bell Labs does not excuse their monopolistic practices. As a counterpoint consider Xerox PARC, which brought us the GUI and Ethernet without Xerox fucking over their customers (too much). Edit: I find it funny that someone posting on "Hacker" News is defending a monopoly that extracts an ad tax from every startup and kills many innovative new companies by acquihire.
- bbqmaster999 6y agoYou really find it funny that someone on HN is defending the company whose resources and internal innovation culture lead to advances that are foundational to all the technology we work on today? So maybe they charged too much for their phone service, big deal. I’d argue that their contributions to science and engineering outweigh that.
- AlexandrB 6y agoSomehow, it's much rarer to see someone on HN defending the government, whose resources and internal innovation culture lead to advances that are foundational to all the technology that we work on today. So maybe they charged too much taxes, bid deal. I’d argue that their contributions to science and engineering outweigh that.
- throwaway2048 6y agoname some foundational advances Google has made. Throwing 100x more resources at AI ideas from the 70s isn't an foundational advance.
- throwaways885 6y agoMapReduce, GFS and Bigtable are the foundations of big data today.
- konjin 6y agoNone of those things are new or interesting. Maps were used in the 70s and you can find a chapter about them being parrapalized in Kthuths original Art of Computer Programming.
- tylerhou 6y agoThe original TOACP makes no mention of map parallelization. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Art_of_Computer_Programming/x9AsAwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=map https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Art_of_Computer_Pro... Nor the second one: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Art_of_Computer_Programming_Volume_2/Zu-HAwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=map https://www.google.com/books/edition/Art_of_Computer_Program... Nor the third one: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Art_of_Computer_Programming/e3wLBAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=map https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Art_of_Computer_Pro... I also searched for "parallel" and couldn't find any relevant passages to map parallelization.
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- throwaway2048 6y agoThose are good engineering efforts, but its like building a bridge vs understanding the theory of gravity. They are definitely not foundational in anywhere near the sense that bell labs was.
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoMaybe Bell Labs was only foundational due to timing?
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- jjtheblunt 6y agoGo is pretty close to being from Bell Labs, in the sense it's a continuation funded by Google of work from Bell Labs, no?
- Dirlewanger 6y agoPlease tell me what amazing inventions Google funded in the past 20 years. Inventions that benefited everyone, not just Google.