6 ms·

Hacker News is incredibly biased against Google. There was recently an informal survey[0] in "Tech Twitter" (i.e. other technical people) regarding opinions abo

by pb7 6y ago

Hacker News is incredibly biased against Google. There was recently an informal survey[0] in "Tech Twitter" (i.e. other technical people) regarding opinions about the top tech companies and Google scored second highest overall behind Apple, with something like 85-90% positivity overall across different questions. Facebook, for reference, was something like 35-40%. [0] https://coda.io/@sriram-krishnan/2020-state-of-the-tech-industry-live-twitter-survey-results/large-companies-11 https://coda.io/@sriram-krishnan/2020-state-of-the-tech-indu... Edit: n=3017, 93% are in tech industry.

Normal_gaussian 6y ago
Or perhaps those on your twitter are incredibly biased towards Google? Twitter is repeatedly presented as a general sentiment test, yet this is just not true. Also, what on Earth is "Tech Twitter"? My forays (now abandoned as fruitless) into twitter show it as dispersed as any other social media group - if not more so. I can't imagine anyone being able to run a cross-sectional survey of 'tech' over twitter without massive buy in from either twitter or dozens of disparate groups who would have no interest in measuring tech giant positivity scores.
- machello13 6y ago
  Yeah, "Tech Twitter" is just whoever follows the guy who made the survey and whoever follows them who saw the retweets. The idea that this survey is anything serious is ridiculous.
  - pb7 6y ago
    I think I was pretty clear that it is an informal survey. With that said, I don't see how that survey data is any more biased one way or another than Hacker News, which was my initial assertion. I didn't make a statement that Twitter is correct and Hacker News is wrong, just that whatever OP perceives to be reality here is far from the case elsewhere.
- granzymes 6y ago
  Those twitter results seem in line with the general population. Approval ratings by brand: Amazon: 91% Google: 90% YouTube: 90% Netflix: 89% Microsoft: 89% Sonos: 86% Apple: 81% Slack: 78% Instagram: 72% Facebook: 71% Twitter: 61% The reality is that these are very popular companies. https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gfN9bwxFARhIiyxEkQfkVKaf2yc=/0x0:1800x1315/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1315):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19758792/acastro_200219_3914_tech_survey_0008_08.0.jpg https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gfN9bwxFARhIiyxEkQfkVKaf2yc=...
  - wolco2 6y ago
    That's a vox media survey weight heavy towards vox readers. Who are Vox readers? Rich under 35. It would make sense why this group identifies with major brands as a status symbol. I would love to see what people over 35 and/or make average income or less think. "Vox Media's properties target educated households with six-figure incomes and a head of house less than 35 years old"
    - granzymes 6y ago
      This is incorrect. The survey was conducted in December with 1,123 people, nationally representative of the US. The sample error is ± 3 percent at a 95 percent level of confidence.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    Vox isn't a reliable source for this sort of thing. There are research companies and financial publications that do a more thorough, and reputable, job.
    - granzymes 6y ago
      This was commissioned by The Verge and conducted by an outside polling firm. The survey was conducted in December with 1,123 people, nationally representative of the US. The sample error is ± 3 percent at a 95 percent level of confidence. Feel free to link another survey, this was just the most recent one I could find. There are similar results from surveys in 2017 and 2018.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- paxys 6y ago
  The biggest anti-Google sentiment on this site is always that they keep shutting down services, but the entire reason they do so is that those services were never popular among "normal" users. Such users also care a lot less about online privacy and data sharing.
Barrin92 6y ago
>93% are in tech industry. no offense but is it surprising that the people who likely draw paychecks from those companies like them? The question is framed as "does tech company X do good for the world?" Presumably if you're working in tech you're already self-selected to agree with that question or you're likely hypocritical enough to answer yes anyway. Seems like asking people in the oil industry if oil company X is good for the world
- pb7 6y ago
  Did you actually look at the data? Quite a few of the big companies received very negative opinions, much more negative than I would have blindly guessed. Vast majority of people on Hacker News also draw paychecks from these companies or similar and the sentiment is vastly different.
- dylan604 6y ago
  I don't know, I work in tech and I think FB,G,etc are pretty nasty. While they may have started out as a net-positve, I think the results are now a net-negative from advertising and/or social media centric companies. Apple maybe making us pay premiums for everything it sells, but I still think that's at least one or two tiers below the levels of evil from the others.
meerita 6y ago
Common people have not the time to de-google, nor the interest. Privacy is only a techies concern.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ttt0 6y ago
The objective reality exists and there are legitimate reasons for people wanting to have nothing to do with this company. Not everything is a bias.
dang 6y ago
The universal experience is that Hacker News is incredibly biased against whatever you happen to favor. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=notice%20dislike%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
- pb7 6y ago
  Agree as a rule and even in this particular case, but I think the Hacker News sentiment is closer to the sentiment elsewhere for companies like Facebook and Uber. I do not favor Facebook at all, for example, but defend them equally in instances where I would defend others. I do favor Uber (or at least tech-enabled ride sharing companies in general) but think the common criticism here is warranted even though I do not feel nearly as strongly one way or another. It's a mixed bag. Edit: Why was my GP moved to top level? It made much more sense as a response to the comment questioning the true sentiment.
johncena33 6y ago
Yes, this is mostly HN crowd or very specifically HN crowd last couple of years. Something happened at that time period, after that I have noticed HN became less insightful, less interesting and typical internet beating-the-dead-horse conversation. Every single day there would be at least few articles against Google. Even the articles that are not related to Google, people bring up Google and then start the whole beating-the-dead-horse charade again.
- d1zzy 6y ago
  I noticed that around the time the old press started pushing out articles against Google because it was threatening their livelihood. That made sense. However, the general sentiment seems to have changed in the meantime. Have the HN demographics changed? Or just people's opinions? Or just they got older? I do remember the highly technical discussions around Google product launches (especially in GCE space) but it's been pretty dry for a while now, most of the Google news these days seems to me to be trying to overstate first world problems and coming with first world solutions to them. And another thing I noticed: similar to how on Slashdot there was a significant change in mentality and opinions around H1b programs and immigrants many years ago, I've started to see a change here too. What used to be a place where immigration was seen as a largely positive force it's slowing turning into a "it's OK sometimes but there's all these problems with it". Curious to see if it will turn into current day Slashdot opinion of "close borders, don't let any immigration for technical jobs". Is that also part of aging?

by pb7 6y ago

Normal_gaussian 6y ago

Or perhaps those on your twitter are incredibly biased towards Google? Twitter is repeatedly presented as a general sentiment test, yet this is just not true. Also, what on Earth is "Tech Twitter"? My forays (now abandoned as fruitless) into twitter show it as dispersed as any other social media group - if not more so. I can't imagine anyone being able to run a cross-sectional survey of 'tech' over twitter without massive buy in from either twitter or dozens of disparate groups who would have no interest in measuring tech giant positivity scores.

machello13 6y ago
Yeah, "Tech Twitter" is just whoever follows the guy who made the survey and whoever follows them who saw the retweets. The idea that this survey is anything serious is ridiculous.
- pb7 6y ago
  I think I was pretty clear that it is an informal survey. With that said, I don't see how that survey data is any more biased one way or another than Hacker News, which was my initial assertion. I didn't make a statement that Twitter is correct and Hacker News is wrong, just that whatever OP perceives to be reality here is far from the case elsewhere.
granzymes 6y ago
Those twitter results seem in line with the general population. Approval ratings by brand: Amazon: 91% Google: 90% YouTube: 90% Netflix: 89% Microsoft: 89% Sonos: 86% Apple: 81% Slack: 78% Instagram: 72% Facebook: 71% Twitter: 61% The reality is that these are very popular companies. https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gfN9bwxFARhIiyxEkQfkVKaf2yc=/0x0:1800x1315/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1800x1315):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19758792/acastro_200219_3914_tech_survey_0008_08.0.jpg https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gfN9bwxFARhIiyxEkQfkVKaf2yc=...
- wolco2 6y ago
  That's a vox media survey weight heavy towards vox readers. Who are Vox readers? Rich under 35. It would make sense why this group identifies with major brands as a status symbol. I would love to see what people over 35 and/or make average income or less think. "Vox Media's properties target educated households with six-figure incomes and a head of house less than 35 years old"
  - granzymes 6y ago
    This is incorrect. The survey was conducted in December with 1,123 people, nationally representative of the US. The sample error is ± 3 percent at a 95 percent level of confidence.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  Vox isn't a reliable source for this sort of thing. There are research companies and financial publications that do a more thorough, and reputable, job.
  - granzymes 6y ago
    This was commissioned by The Verge and conducted by an outside polling firm. The survey was conducted in December with 1,123 people, nationally representative of the US. The sample error is ± 3 percent at a 95 percent level of confidence. Feel free to link another survey, this was just the most recent one I could find. There are similar results from surveys in 2017 and 2018.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
paxys 6y ago
The biggest anti-Google sentiment on this site is always that they keep shutting down services, but the entire reason they do so is that those services were never popular among "normal" users. Such users also care a lot less about online privacy and data sharing.

Barrin92 6y ago

>93% are in tech industry. no offense but is it surprising that the people who likely draw paychecks from those companies like them? The question is framed as "does tech company X do good for the world?" Presumably if you're working in tech you're already self-selected to agree with that question or you're likely hypocritical enough to answer yes anyway. Seems like asking people in the oil industry if oil company X is good for the world

pb7 6y ago
Did you actually look at the data? Quite a few of the big companies received very negative opinions, much more negative than I would have blindly guessed. Vast majority of people on Hacker News also draw paychecks from these companies or similar and the sentiment is vastly different.
dylan604 6y ago
I don't know, I work in tech and I think FB,G,etc are pretty nasty. While they may have started out as a net-positve, I think the results are now a net-negative from advertising and/or social media centric companies. Apple maybe making us pay premiums for everything it sells, but I still think that's at least one or two tiers below the levels of evil from the others.

meerita 6y ago

Common people have not the time to de-google, nor the interest. Privacy is only a techies concern.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ttt0 6y ago

The objective reality exists and there are legitimate reasons for people wanting to have nothing to do with this company. Not everything is a bias.

dang 6y ago

The universal experience is that Hacker News is incredibly biased against whatever you happen to favor. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=notice%20dislike%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

pb7 6y ago
Agree as a rule and even in this particular case, but I think the Hacker News sentiment is closer to the sentiment elsewhere for companies like Facebook and Uber. I do not favor Facebook at all, for example, but defend them equally in instances where I would defend others. I do favor Uber (or at least tech-enabled ride sharing companies in general) but think the common criticism here is warranted even though I do not feel nearly as strongly one way or another. It's a mixed bag. Edit: Why was my GP moved to top level? It made much more sense as a response to the comment questioning the true sentiment.

johncena33 6y ago

Yes, this is mostly HN crowd or very specifically HN crowd last couple of years. Something happened at that time period, after that I have noticed HN became less insightful, less interesting and typical internet beating-the-dead-horse conversation. Every single day there would be at least few articles against Google. Even the articles that are not related to Google, people bring up Google and then start the whole beating-the-dead-horse charade again.

d1zzy 6y ago
I noticed that around the time the old press started pushing out articles against Google because it was threatening their livelihood. That made sense. However, the general sentiment seems to have changed in the meantime. Have the HN demographics changed? Or just people's opinions? Or just they got older? I do remember the highly technical discussions around Google product launches (especially in GCE space) but it's been pretty dry for a while now, most of the Google news these days seems to me to be trying to overstate first world problems and coming with first world solutions to them. And another thing I noticed: similar to how on Slashdot there was a significant change in mentality and opinions around H1b programs and immigrants many years ago, I've started to see a change here too. What used to be a place where immigration was seen as a largely positive force it's slowing turning into a "it's OK sometimes but there's all these problems with it". Curious to see if it will turn into current day Slashdot opinion of "close borders, don't let any immigration for technical jobs". Is that also part of aging?