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This is outrageous. Google definitely lived long enough to become a villain. It is incredible how much goodwill they've lost in the past decade. When was the l

This is outrageous. Google definitely lived long enough to become a villain. It is incredible how much goodwill they've lost in the past decade. When was the last time they did anything good?

maxwell 5y ago
I was glad they walked back on Dragonfly and (effectively) killed AMP. In the process they did lose me as a user of their free products though. And they lost me as a developer, I no longer opt for building with their tools, including Chrome, Android, Angular, GCloud, etc.
- pengaru 5y ago
  > and (effectively) killed AMP err, what? I still regularly get AMP links from news.google.com
  - maxwell 5y ago
    I was referring to https://plausible.io/blog/google-amp https://plausible.io/blog/google-amp Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27192685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27192685
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - tyingq 5y ago
    The incentive to move to AMP is gone, since it's no longer needed to land in the carousel, but moving off of it is still a project/effort.
- sintaxi 5y ago
  AMP failed.
  - nanidin 5y ago
    I switched to Duck Duck Go on mobile as a direct result of AMP. So not only did AMP fail, but Google lost most of the eyeball time they were getting from me and they're not getting it back any time soon.
    - maxwell 5y ago
      Yeah that was what made me switch to DDG from GSearch as well in late 2018. I use the terminal theme in DDG, and it's become the canonical SERP in my mind. When I do !g every now and then, it feels like GSearch has become AltaVista with a dash of MySpace.
jonas21 5y ago
> When was the last time they did anything good? Oh I dunno... how about that time they solved protein folding? https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03348-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03348-4
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rrobukef 5y ago
  Mad science to prove the point.
- nbardy 5y ago
  Or the other reams of world class machine learning research and model weights they've released freely.
  - sterlind 5y ago
    perhaps this is whoosh, but I thought Google wasn't releasing their model weights or source code, at least for a lot of things. like with WaveNet, it was easy to train but computationally infeasible to run the way they published the paper. then it turns out there's a trick that makes playing it forward far more efficient, which Google later acknowledged using internally, but didn't disclose.
    - CodesInChaos 5y ago
      What kind of trick? At a glance wavenet looks like you could reuse most of the computation from earlier timesteps (would gave to take a closer look to see if it'd actually work), but I assume you're talking about something less obvious?
    - nbardy 5y ago
      They don't always release weights and often the code and weights are delayed from the paper. But more often than not they release a lot of their weights and/or research code.
X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
That is very black and white thinking. Large organizations can do both good and terrible things. Google still serves are huge portion of search traffic which pretty clearly is a good thing. Youtube has an incredible wealth of tutorials & educational content. Deepmind is pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Various OSS projects continue to be pushed out. Gmail has been an amazing free resource for millions etc. They are also doing terrible things as well.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Yeah, google does awful shit every day but it's worth remembering that Maps, Search and YouTube are world-changing resources. All three have their problems (especially that third one) but they have done an incredible amount of Good in the world and they continue to do so every day.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    The world changing resource is OpenStreetMap. Google Maps is just an asset to better track users. As for YouTube, it is technically marvellous, but since they started censoring and silencing one side of a political spectrum, YT turned into a propaganda machine, no less.
    - scrollaway 5y ago
      I love OSM but without Google Maps it would not exist. It’s just not all black and white.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        Actually, OSM was launched before Google Maps, in August 2004, while Google Maps were launched only in February 2005, six months later.
        scrollaway 5y ago
dotcommand 5y ago
> Google definitely lived long enough to become a villain. I hate to break this to you but google was born a villain. Nobody innately good has to remind themselves "Don't be evil". Imagine walking down the street and meeting a stranger constantly repeating "Don't be evil" to himself?
- account42 5y ago
  Being able to group people into "good" and "bad" ones is convenient. It means you only need to find out once if someone is a "good" or "bad" person and once you have decided that someone is "bad" you can justify any of your own behavior towards them. But just because it is convenient does not make it true. People are people. Choices are bad or good or more likley somewhere in between. Nobody is innately good or bad - while some poeple my be wired to be more selfish than others, the choices they make throughout their lifes are as much dictated by the circumstances they are made in and by the experiences made before them as they are by the neurological makeup of the person.

This is outrageous. Google definitely lived long enough to become a villain. It is incredible how much goodwill they've lost in the past decade. When was the last time they did anything good?

maxwell 5y ago

I was glad they walked back on Dragonfly and (effectively) killed AMP. In the process they did lose me as a user of their free products though. And they lost me as a developer, I no longer opt for building with their tools, including Chrome, Android, Angular, GCloud, etc.

pengaru 5y ago
> and (effectively) killed AMP err, what? I still regularly get AMP links from news.google.com
- maxwell 5y ago
  I was referring to https://plausible.io/blog/google-amp https://plausible.io/blog/google-amp Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27192685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27192685
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- tyingq 5y ago
  The incentive to move to AMP is gone, since it's no longer needed to land in the carousel, but moving off of it is still a project/effort.
sintaxi 5y ago
AMP failed.
- nanidin 5y ago
  I switched to Duck Duck Go on mobile as a direct result of AMP. So not only did AMP fail, but Google lost most of the eyeball time they were getting from me and they're not getting it back any time soon.
  - maxwell 5y ago
    Yeah that was what made me switch to DDG from GSearch as well in late 2018. I use the terminal theme in DDG, and it's become the canonical SERP in my mind. When I do !g every now and then, it feels like GSearch has become AltaVista with a dash of MySpace.

jonas21 5y ago

> When was the last time they did anything good? Oh I dunno... how about that time they solved protein folding? https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03348-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03348-4

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rrobukef 5y ago
Mad science to prove the point.
nbardy 5y ago
Or the other reams of world class machine learning research and model weights they've released freely.
- sterlind 5y ago
  perhaps this is whoosh, but I thought Google wasn't releasing their model weights or source code, at least for a lot of things. like with WaveNet, it was easy to train but computationally infeasible to run the way they published the paper. then it turns out there's a trick that makes playing it forward far more efficient, which Google later acknowledged using internally, but didn't disclose.
  - CodesInChaos 5y ago
    What kind of trick? At a glance wavenet looks like you could reuse most of the computation from earlier timesteps (would gave to take a closer look to see if it'd actually work), but I assume you're talking about something less obvious?
  - nbardy 5y ago
    They don't always release weights and often the code and weights are delayed from the paper. But more often than not they release a lot of their weights and/or research code.

X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago

That is very black and white thinking. Large organizations can do both good and terrible things. Google still serves are huge portion of search traffic which pretty clearly is a good thing. Youtube has an incredible wealth of tutorials & educational content. Deepmind is pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Various OSS projects continue to be pushed out. Gmail has been an amazing free resource for millions etc. They are also doing terrible things as well.

scrollaway 5y ago
Yeah, google does awful shit every day but it's worth remembering that Maps, Search and YouTube are world-changing resources. All three have their problems (especially that third one) but they have done an incredible amount of Good in the world and they continue to do so every day.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  The world changing resource is OpenStreetMap. Google Maps is just an asset to better track users. As for YouTube, it is technically marvellous, but since they started censoring and silencing one side of a political spectrum, YT turned into a propaganda machine, no less.
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    I love OSM but without Google Maps it would not exist. It’s just not all black and white.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      Actually, OSM was launched before Google Maps, in August 2004, while Google Maps were launched only in February 2005, six months later.
      - scrollaway 5y ago

dotcommand 5y ago

> Google definitely lived long enough to become a villain. I hate to break this to you but google was born a villain. Nobody innately good has to remind themselves "Don't be evil". Imagine walking down the street and meeting a stranger constantly repeating "Don't be evil" to himself?

account42 5y ago
Being able to group people into "good" and "bad" ones is convenient. It means you only need to find out once if someone is a "good" or "bad" person and once you have decided that someone is "bad" you can justify any of your own behavior towards them. But just because it is convenient does not make it true. People are people. Choices are bad or good or more likley somewhere in between. Nobody is innately good or bad - while some poeple my be wired to be more selfish than others, the choices they make throughout their lifes are as much dictated by the circumstances they are made in and by the experiences made before them as they are by the neurological makeup of the person.