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We have to give credit to Google for funding amazing performance work with Chromium/v8 as well as things like project zero. v8 Sandboxes, isolates - powers man

by harikb 6y ago

We have to give credit to Google for funding amazing performance work with Chromium/v8 as well as things like project zero. v8 Sandboxes, isolates - powers many edge worker models like those at Cloudflare, Fastly, and even entire node.js ecosystem Project zero - see recent posts of securing non-google software, including past reports about iPhone bugs. I just can't understand the hate they get in other fronts.

nine_k 6y ago
A company the size of Google should not be seen as a single homogeneous entity. Some departments of it do wonderful, stellar work and give it away as open source. Other parts do so-so work. Yet other parts do something which is seen by many as nefarious. You can often see the whole spectrum represented in one major product, such as Chrome or Android. This is why seeing entire Google (or FB, or MS, or even Oracle) as uniformly "good" or "evil" is a dangerous simplification. OTOH knowing their corporate policies from prior experience, one can presume how "good" or "evil" an outcome is more probable in some new, unknown case. Known cases, such as V8, can completely contradict the common perception.
topspin 6y ago
> I just can't understand the hate they get in other fronts. It's easy to understand. Great technical work and products don't bestow sainthood.
lrossi 6y ago
We’re talking about corporations of the size of small cities. There are going to be some amazing people in there, but some that you don’t like as well. Both groups will stand out. So it’s normal to hear apparently conflicting news about the org as a whole.
user982 6y ago
> I just can't understand the hate they get in other fronts. Other fronts are other fronts than the good works you listed.
simion314 6y ago
>I just can't understand the hate they get in other fronts. One recent Google achievement that it is not talked about that much, Google Maps, Google offered it for free, killed all the other companies that offered similar services for money and now Google maps is also paid. Some people don't like when giants use their profits from a market to offer free stuff in other markets and kill good paid or free products.
- magicalist 6y ago
  > Google offered it for free, killed all the other companies that offered similar services for money and now Google maps is also paid There weren't really similar services when it launched and there were far more mapping services/APIs both before and after the rate hike, so... The real problem is people based businesses on the rates offered and then they were drastically increased. The maps market is doing fine.
  - jhayward 6y ago
    Mapquest was a whole business, a growing, going concern.
    - magicalist 6y ago
      > Mapquest was a whole business MapQuest didn't have a mapping API until later, and was notably owned by AOL and offered as a free product for five years by that point. They're also still a company, having not been killed, despite MapQuest's best efforts to destroy their own wildly popular product through neglect.
- harikb 6y ago
  Freemium models as well as services being in free to get market share is also a model other companies have also done in the past. Granted this is something that should be slightly regulated. Companies must be forced to give N months notice for pricing changes, particularly those that can also be classified as utilities. About the actual method of pricing though, one needs to compare to the likes of Oracle - where they charge based on CPU cores that you are using (where it is entirely based on how much can they extract out of a company). Or let us take the case of your favorite TV/Phone company wanting more $$ for an extra extension in your house. In those days, I would have never imaged that Netflix or Youtube additional "profiles" would be free.
infogulch 6y ago
> I just can't understand the hate they get in other fronts. It's not incongruous to belive both: 1. Google is doing important and valuable work, 2. Google is doing other things that are bad and they should stop. The whole idea that you can simply label some entity (human, company, anything) as "purely good" or "purely evil" is wrong and dangerous. You must qualify the scope of good and bad, and discriminate between which behaviors fall into each category. This is the major failure in the idea of cancel culture.
tux3 6y ago
I'm super confused by your comment! I don't believe that good contributions in one area absolves someone's bad behavior in other fronts. You're not supposed to buy goodwill.

by harikb 6y ago

nine_k 6y ago

A company the size of Google should not be seen as a single homogeneous entity. Some departments of it do wonderful, stellar work and give it away as open source. Other parts do so-so work. Yet other parts do something which is seen by many as nefarious. You can often see the whole spectrum represented in one major product, such as Chrome or Android. This is why seeing entire Google (or FB, or MS, or even Oracle) as uniformly "good" or "evil" is a dangerous simplification. OTOH knowing their corporate policies from prior experience, one can presume how "good" or "evil" an outcome is more probable in some new, unknown case. Known cases, such as V8, can completely contradict the common perception.

topspin 6y ago

> I just can't understand the hate they get in other fronts. It's easy to understand. Great technical work and products don't bestow sainthood.

lrossi 6y ago

We’re talking about corporations of the size of small cities. There are going to be some amazing people in there, but some that you don’t like as well. Both groups will stand out. So it’s normal to hear apparently conflicting news about the org as a whole.

user982 6y ago

> I just can't understand the hate they get in other fronts. Other fronts are other fronts than the good works you listed.

simion314 6y ago

>I just can't understand the hate they get in other fronts. One recent Google achievement that it is not talked about that much, Google Maps, Google offered it for free, killed all the other companies that offered similar services for money and now Google maps is also paid. Some people don't like when giants use their profits from a market to offer free stuff in other markets and kill good paid or free products.

magicalist 6y ago
> Google offered it for free, killed all the other companies that offered similar services for money and now Google maps is also paid There weren't really similar services when it launched and there were far more mapping services/APIs both before and after the rate hike, so... The real problem is people based businesses on the rates offered and then they were drastically increased. The maps market is doing fine.
- jhayward 6y ago
  Mapquest was a whole business, a growing, going concern.
  - magicalist 6y ago
    > Mapquest was a whole business MapQuest didn't have a mapping API until later, and was notably owned by AOL and offered as a free product for five years by that point. They're also still a company, having not been killed, despite MapQuest's best efforts to destroy their own wildly popular product through neglect.
harikb 6y ago
Freemium models as well as services being in free to get market share is also a model other companies have also done in the past. Granted this is something that should be slightly regulated. Companies must be forced to give N months notice for pricing changes, particularly those that can also be classified as utilities. About the actual method of pricing though, one needs to compare to the likes of Oracle - where they charge based on CPU cores that you are using (where it is entirely based on how much can they extract out of a company). Or let us take the case of your favorite TV/Phone company wanting more $$ for an extra extension in your house. In those days, I would have never imaged that Netflix or Youtube additional "profiles" would be free.

infogulch 6y ago

> I just can't understand the hate they get in other fronts. It's not incongruous to belive both: 1. Google is doing important and valuable work, 2. Google is doing other things that are bad and they should stop. The whole idea that you can simply label some entity (human, company, anything) as "purely good" or "purely evil" is wrong and dangerous. You must qualify the scope of good and bad, and discriminate between which behaviors fall into each category. This is the major failure in the idea of cancel culture.

tux3 6y ago

I'm super confused by your comment! I don't believe that good contributions in one area absolves someone's bad behavior in other fronts. You're not supposed to buy goodwill.