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I'm quite confident you can't run a company as big as Google without being evil but it seems useful to ponder why does it happen. Corpo structure seems to have

by comboy 6y ago

I'm quite confident you can't run a company as big as Google without being evil but it seems useful to ponder why does it happen. Corpo structure seems to have something to do with it, separate things into categories, then teams get categories and optimize locally without taking bigger picture into account (or even knowing what the picture is). Some regulations, maybe some pressures from some agencies about which they are not allowed to talk about. Etc. But at some point I have to wonder about the mind of someone decisive in the company when "are we the baddies" question appears. Do they rationalize and think that "well, we need to do this because security botnets blahblah users have no idea what we are dealing with here and it's for their own good even if they don't understand it yada yada", or do they just don't give a shit. Or maybe it's like with me disliking my government - I definitely don't like it but I don't feel like fighting that giant machine at the moment, I can't do anything on my own, it would require cooperation and a plan and I have some stuff to do.

rtkwe 6y ago
There's a lot of reasons. Building a closed guarden that locks people in feels a lot safer from a competition standpoint than the alternative, if you can make it hard to steal your customers and only a few (always remember that being on and reading HN means you're not much of an average user), it's also just easier than being open, a closed system can make changes much faster than an open one that has to get concensus before adding a new feature for example. In this specific case and most of the time where Google's complete lack of support shows up it's because having manual review costs money and the process that screws the app developer is easier than having a secondary process that needs more people to decide if the first automated or rote manual scan made a mistake.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
It's quite simple: if one not be evil, one won't become or remain as big. It's simple survival of the fittest. The lion who feels compassion for his prey will not pass his genes to the next generation.
deckard1 6y ago
> seems useful to ponder why does it happen. Ooooh. I know this one! Because that's what VCs want. AirBNB, Uber, Postmates, Google, Facebook, Apple. VCs want to invest in winner-takes-all platforms and markets with incredibly strong network effects. But don't say any of that out loud: https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/08/07/google-documents-show-taboo-words-antitrust https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/08/07/google-doc... All these people rushing in to Silicon Valley with hat-in-hand going from VC to VC talking about how they care so much about the user or the product. It's all a giant colossal fucking sham. You're there to become a billionaire. Can we all stop dancing around this fact already? Paul Graham and his fucking essays. The pretentious VC Twitterverse. It's always been about the money. Facebook's earliest slide deck tells the story of how they are going to harvest their users' private data and offer it up to advertisers: https://app.slidebean.com/p/s15UZQkE7T/Facebooks-original-pitch-deck https://app.slidebean.com/p/s15UZQkE7T/Facebooks-original-pi... This is back when they were still "The Facebook" and a tiny startup. They didn't suddenly become evil and greedy. Greed and evil was the plan. It's right there. Google is no different.
- comboy 6y ago
  Many people at the top are set up for life (and maybe next few generations). Why would they care about money? Yes of course you can tell the tale how it's not ever enough, how money equals power and people want power, but I don't really buy that. These are highly intelligent and creative individuals. They probably also know that power is responsibility and have enough of that. Additional millions/billions have zero impact on their life and I really doubt many of them playing a game between themselves about who has the biggest number. Popular media probably care more about that. If you want to scream at the rich, I think you won't find names of those most interesting in any rankings and not much in tech. They have they patents, oil wells, gov contracts, connections, HFTs and wealth well hidden from the public eye. Most of companies you list offered something that people wanted and that's why they got a lot of money*. That's how the money is supposed to work. Compare it to trading companies that got money from banks which got money from Fed which was created out of thin air. Those at the top of banks and big funds effectively get money from everyone else, without providing them any value, without their consent. Even innocent real estate investment seem to involve more evil and greed than making a and running a huge company without pretty much any realistic vacation. I'm not saying that your point is completely without merit, there is a lot of greed especially in the startup world. I just think that's a huge oversimplification. * more realistically they won at something new that was growing fast

by comboy 6y ago

rtkwe 6y ago

There's a lot of reasons. Building a closed guarden that locks people in feels a lot safer from a competition standpoint than the alternative, if you can make it hard to steal your customers and only a few (always remember that being on and reading HN means you're not much of an average user), it's also just easier than being open, a closed system can make changes much faster than an open one that has to get concensus before adding a new feature for example. In this specific case and most of the time where Google's complete lack of support shows up it's because having manual review costs money and the process that screws the app developer is easier than having a secondary process that needs more people to decide if the first automated or rote manual scan made a mistake.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

It's quite simple: if one not be evil, one won't become or remain as big. It's simple survival of the fittest. The lion who feels compassion for his prey will not pass his genes to the next generation.

deckard1 6y ago

> seems useful to ponder why does it happen. Ooooh. I know this one! Because that's what VCs want. AirBNB, Uber, Postmates, Google, Facebook, Apple. VCs want to invest in winner-takes-all platforms and markets with incredibly strong network effects. But don't say any of that out loud: https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/08/07/google-documents-show-taboo-words-antitrust https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/08/07/google-doc... All these people rushing in to Silicon Valley with hat-in-hand going from VC to VC talking about how they care so much about the user or the product. It's all a giant colossal fucking sham. You're there to become a billionaire. Can we all stop dancing around this fact already? Paul Graham and his fucking essays. The pretentious VC Twitterverse. It's always been about the money. Facebook's earliest slide deck tells the story of how they are going to harvest their users' private data and offer it up to advertisers: https://app.slidebean.com/p/s15UZQkE7T/Facebooks-original-pitch-deck https://app.slidebean.com/p/s15UZQkE7T/Facebooks-original-pi... This is back when they were still "The Facebook" and a tiny startup. They didn't suddenly become evil and greedy. Greed and evil was the plan. It's right there. Google is no different.

comboy 6y ago
Many people at the top are set up for life (and maybe next few generations). Why would they care about money? Yes of course you can tell the tale how it's not ever enough, how money equals power and people want power, but I don't really buy that. These are highly intelligent and creative individuals. They probably also know that power is responsibility and have enough of that. Additional millions/billions have zero impact on their life and I really doubt many of them playing a game between themselves about who has the biggest number. Popular media probably care more about that. If you want to scream at the rich, I think you won't find names of those most interesting in any rankings and not much in tech. They have they patents, oil wells, gov contracts, connections, HFTs and wealth well hidden from the public eye. Most of companies you list offered something that people wanted and that's why they got a lot of money*. That's how the money is supposed to work. Compare it to trading companies that got money from banks which got money from Fed which was created out of thin air. Those at the top of banks and big funds effectively get money from everyone else, without providing them any value, without their consent. Even innocent real estate investment seem to involve more evil and greed than making a and running a huge company without pretty much any realistic vacation. I'm not saying that your point is completely without merit, there is a lot of greed especially in the startup world. I just think that's a huge oversimplification. * more realistically they won at something new that was growing fast