5 ms·

What the hell happened to Google? Who are these complete idiots running the show?

da_chicken 5y ago
The same idiots looking ad and data mining revenue, and then seeing what their customer's demands are. Their customers being the ones who are buying services from Google. Not you. You're the product.
- beerandt 5y ago
  Tired of this excuse. If the audience is the product, Google still has an interest in selling a quality product. That means not running off more and more of the most tech savvy "product" segment.
  - da_chicken 5y ago
    > Tired of this excuse. When it stops being true, it will stop being trotted out as the explanation for why Google keeps making their browser better for their ad revenue business. > If the audience is the product, Google still has an interest in selling a quality product. That means not running off more and more of the most tech savvy "product" segment. Why do you think the most tech savvy segment is the target audience? Do you have any idea how many advertising dollars there are in the 12-17 and 18-24 brackets?
    - beerandt 5y ago
      >Why do you think the most tech savvy segment is the target audience? Tech savvy doesn't equal hn users. You think teenagers and college kids aren't using ad blockers or selectively clearing browser history? There are tech savvy users across all marketing demographics. >When it stops being true, it will stop being trotted out as the explanation It's not really an explanation, though. It's a half-baked observation. Movie theaters make money on concessions, but need the good movies to draw a crowd. Dealerships make their money on service, but still need to sell cars to get that customer base. Even if it's true by some skewed definition, it's mostly irrelevant. It implies that it doesn't matter what they do to users, and have no interest in keeping them satisfied, and that's false. They might want to increase ad business, but that don't do that by allowing users to slowly trickle to alternatives. Look at firefox's fall from the top. There wasn't a breaking point, but a constant trickle due to usability and performance.
  - brezelgoring 5y ago
    "Tech savvy" and "not tech savvy" are just 2 of hundreds if not thousands of tags put in your info, to steer it into the proper SALE buckets. The 'you are the product' adage is true, but there isn't a single quality you can have that makes you stand out from thousands if not millions of others. Advertising is a numbers game for them.
    - beerandt 5y ago
      Yeah, but there's an interest in keeping those numbers around, and they have a disproportionate influence. Who does grandma or cousin Bob call to "fix" their computer? Who's controlling what browsers get installed on corporate networks and at elementary schools? Or picking the online class systems (and compatible browsers) at universities? They run off more than the one segment they piss off.
  - ComputerGuru 5y ago
    > If the audience is the product, Google still has an interest in selling a quality product. Not if they are the only ones left in the game. Under Google’s tutelage, the scope and complexity of the web has grown to where it’s near impossible to create an alternative from scratch.
  - nobody9999 5y ago
    >If the audience is the product, Google still has an interest in selling a quality product. That means not running off more and more of the most tech savvy "product" segment. I'd say there's an argument to be made for pushing out the tech savvy from using Chrome. Compared to the total user base, those folks are a tiny minority who often cause problems by complaining about privacy invasions and develop/use privacy focused extensions. Why would Google want the small group of folks who draw attention to and sometimes (gasp!) create extensions that limit the ability of Google and Chrome to track/monitor the product herds? If the folks who actually have a clue as to what Google is up to and how they're implementing it are driven away from Chrome, there will be fewer folks implementing privacy and related extensions for Chrome. Anheuser-Busch doesn't care that a professional brewer is unlikely to buy cases of Bud Light. In fact, I'm sure they'd prefer they didn't, as that would likely invite negative feedback from those folks. Having a docile, uninformed pool of "product" to be sold to advertisers gives Google the opportunity to implement more and more tracking/advertising features into Chrome with less pushback from the "product" is likely seen as an unmitigated good by the rapacious and unethical scum who want ever more tracking/monitoring in browser-based interactions.
    - ByteJockey 5y ago
      Except that tiny minority includes nearly all developers, the people that make things to put ads on. To extend your analogy, it's not Anheuser-Busch pissing off the brewers. It's Anheuser-Bush pissing off all the hops farmers. Google's in the same position Microsoft was in the 00s. They don't make most of the stuff people actually want to use. You piss off the people making the stuff, eventually they start making stuff elsewhere.
      - nobody9999 5y ago
        >Google's in the same position Microsoft was in the 00s. They don't make most of the stuff people actually want to use. You piss off the people making the stuff, eventually they start making stuff elsewhere. I hope you're correct about that. That said, I won't hold my breath.
  - throw_m239339 5y ago
    The advertisers are the customers, your data is the product.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    >That means not running off more and more Googs: Fine, where are you going to go instead? FB: Fine, where are you going to go instead? Insta: see above Twit: see above These people are just fine without the 10 devs that might throw a hissy. (technically 9, because I have to count myself)
edoceo 5y ago
You may have forgotten: Cash rules everything around me. CREAM! Get the money man! Dolla dolla bill y'all. Wu-Tang is forever.
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  That is the rub though. The dialog to do this is basically 'done'. This means someone spent time and money to make this 'go away'? Why? Just leave it be seams reasonable?...
  - coldacid 5y ago
    Because Google figures, and they're probably correct, that removing it would prevent the average luser from even considering that they could take these privacy-friendly steps in the first place, which ends up putting more money in Google's pockets from the advertisers.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
when you've eaten everything you've got no choice but to start eating yourself

The same idiots looking ad and data mining revenue, and then seeing what their customer's demands are. Their customers being the ones who are buying services from Google. Not you. You're the product.

beerandt 5y ago
Tired of this excuse. If the audience is the product, Google still has an interest in selling a quality product. That means not running off more and more of the most tech savvy "product" segment.
- da_chicken 5y ago
  > Tired of this excuse. When it stops being true, it will stop being trotted out as the explanation for why Google keeps making their browser better for their ad revenue business. > If the audience is the product, Google still has an interest in selling a quality product. That means not running off more and more of the most tech savvy "product" segment. Why do you think the most tech savvy segment is the target audience? Do you have any idea how many advertising dollars there are in the 12-17 and 18-24 brackets?
  - beerandt 5y ago
    >Why do you think the most tech savvy segment is the target audience? Tech savvy doesn't equal hn users. You think teenagers and college kids aren't using ad blockers or selectively clearing browser history? There are tech savvy users across all marketing demographics. >When it stops being true, it will stop being trotted out as the explanation It's not really an explanation, though. It's a half-baked observation. Movie theaters make money on concessions, but need the good movies to draw a crowd. Dealerships make their money on service, but still need to sell cars to get that customer base. Even if it's true by some skewed definition, it's mostly irrelevant. It implies that it doesn't matter what they do to users, and have no interest in keeping them satisfied, and that's false. They might want to increase ad business, but that don't do that by allowing users to slowly trickle to alternatives. Look at firefox's fall from the top. There wasn't a breaking point, but a constant trickle due to usability and performance.
- brezelgoring 5y ago
  "Tech savvy" and "not tech savvy" are just 2 of hundreds if not thousands of tags put in your info, to steer it into the proper SALE buckets. The 'you are the product' adage is true, but there isn't a single quality you can have that makes you stand out from thousands if not millions of others. Advertising is a numbers game for them.
  - beerandt 5y ago
    Yeah, but there's an interest in keeping those numbers around, and they have a disproportionate influence. Who does grandma or cousin Bob call to "fix" their computer? Who's controlling what browsers get installed on corporate networks and at elementary schools? Or picking the online class systems (and compatible browsers) at universities? They run off more than the one segment they piss off.
- ComputerGuru 5y ago
  > If the audience is the product, Google still has an interest in selling a quality product. Not if they are the only ones left in the game. Under Google’s tutelage, the scope and complexity of the web has grown to where it’s near impossible to create an alternative from scratch.
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >If the audience is the product, Google still has an interest in selling a quality product. That means not running off more and more of the most tech savvy "product" segment. I'd say there's an argument to be made for pushing out the tech savvy from using Chrome. Compared to the total user base, those folks are a tiny minority who often cause problems by complaining about privacy invasions and develop/use privacy focused extensions. Why would Google want the small group of folks who draw attention to and sometimes (gasp!) create extensions that limit the ability of Google and Chrome to track/monitor the product herds? If the folks who actually have a clue as to what Google is up to and how they're implementing it are driven away from Chrome, there will be fewer folks implementing privacy and related extensions for Chrome. Anheuser-Busch doesn't care that a professional brewer is unlikely to buy cases of Bud Light. In fact, I'm sure they'd prefer they didn't, as that would likely invite negative feedback from those folks. Having a docile, uninformed pool of "product" to be sold to advertisers gives Google the opportunity to implement more and more tracking/advertising features into Chrome with less pushback from the "product" is likely seen as an unmitigated good by the rapacious and unethical scum who want ever more tracking/monitoring in browser-based interactions.
  - ByteJockey 5y ago
    Except that tiny minority includes nearly all developers, the people that make things to put ads on. To extend your analogy, it's not Anheuser-Busch pissing off the brewers. It's Anheuser-Bush pissing off all the hops farmers. Google's in the same position Microsoft was in the 00s. They don't make most of the stuff people actually want to use. You piss off the people making the stuff, eventually they start making stuff elsewhere.
    - nobody9999 5y ago
      >Google's in the same position Microsoft was in the 00s. They don't make most of the stuff people actually want to use. You piss off the people making the stuff, eventually they start making stuff elsewhere. I hope you're correct about that. That said, I won't hold my breath.
- throw_m239339 5y ago
  The advertisers are the customers, your data is the product.
- dylan604 5y ago
  >That means not running off more and more Googs: Fine, where are you going to go instead? FB: Fine, where are you going to go instead? Insta: see above Twit: see above These people are just fine without the 10 devs that might throw a hissy. (technically 9, because I have to count myself)

edoceo 5y ago

You may have forgotten: Cash rules everything around me. CREAM! Get the money man! Dolla dolla bill y'all. Wu-Tang is forever.

sumtechguy 5y ago
That is the rub though. The dialog to do this is basically 'done'. This means someone spent time and money to make this 'go away'? Why? Just leave it be seams reasonable?...
- coldacid 5y ago
  Because Google figures, and they're probably correct, that removing it would prevent the average luser from even considering that they could take these privacy-friendly steps in the first place, which ends up putting more money in Google's pockets from the advertisers.

micromacrofoot 5y ago

when you've eaten everything you've got no choice but to start eating yourself