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I have a pet theory that all of these recent Google bloopers could be explained easily if you start from the assumption that Google internal incentives promote

by lhorie 5y ago

I have a pet theory that all of these recent Google bloopers could be explained easily if you start from the assumption that Google internal incentives promote efforts to cut costs such as storage. "Garbage" docs, inactive email accounts, less search results etc can all be reasonably explained by a desire to not spend money on storage for "low value" data (i.e. data that is unlikely to be accessed in a way that translates to profit for Google). Users, having been trained to rely on free services and the magic of search to summon stuff, have zero incentives to clean up their digital "pollution", and at some point, something's gotta give.

munificent 5y ago
I don't think there's anything specific to Google. I think the chain of events was basically: 1. Storage is expensive, so software designers and users build tools and habits that are parsimonious with it. Programs would store files in carefully designed binary formats to save space because space was expensive. Users would periodically go through directories on our computers and manually delete old stuff. Apps required users to explicitly choose what to save. 2. Storage gets much cheaper. 3. Seeing that, companies like Google and others offer "unlimited storage" by projecting the observed user behavior from (1) onto the storage costs of (2). 4. But now users and app developers change their behavior since the incentive environment is now (3). Camera apps automatically save every photo you take. Phones record higher and higher resolution video. Users stop deleting anything and rely on search to wade through their sea of bits. 5. Companies how have to adapt to the reality of (4). I don't think there was anything particularly nefarious or shitty on the part of any participant. It's just the nature of big complex iterated systems with emergent properties.
- lhorie 5y ago
  > I don't think there was anything particularly nefarious or shitty on the part of any participant. It's just the nature of big complex iterated systems with emergent properties. I find it interesting that one can draw some parallels to physical consumerism and its impact of ecology. We don't generally consider buying day-to-day stuff as nefarious either, until we pay attention to the aggregate impact of the entire supply chain machine, and then it's "80% less polinators" this, and "donated clothes landfills" that. The big difference is that Google as an organization can make the call to - and follow through on - telling users directly to back off if users' consumption patterns themselves become a significant enough liability on the sheets.
withinboredom 5y ago
> explained by a desire to not spend money on storage for "low value" data I think this "just happens" when you reach a certain scale. For example, I was looking at our reporting at my job the other day and realized for 10k people a day, something wasn't working with our emails. We decided it was a "low priority" because it's "only" 10k people when we send over 30 million emails a day. I'm sure those 10,000 people (a small city's worth!) don't feel that way.
Gigachad 5y ago
They don't delete flagged content. I have had stuff be flagged and locked and then a while later it gets unblocked. There are much easier ways to prune inactive accounts than to pretend to copyright flag them.

by lhorie 5y ago

munificent 5y ago

I don't think there's anything specific to Google. I think the chain of events was basically: 1. Storage is expensive, so software designers and users build tools and habits that are parsimonious with it. Programs would store files in carefully designed binary formats to save space because space was expensive. Users would periodically go through directories on our computers and manually delete old stuff. Apps required users to explicitly choose what to save. 2. Storage gets much cheaper. 3. Seeing that, companies like Google and others offer "unlimited storage" by projecting the observed user behavior from (1) onto the storage costs of (2). 4. But now users and app developers change their behavior since the incentive environment is now (3). Camera apps automatically save every photo you take. Phones record higher and higher resolution video. Users stop deleting anything and rely on search to wade through their sea of bits. 5. Companies how have to adapt to the reality of (4). I don't think there was anything particularly nefarious or shitty on the part of any participant. It's just the nature of big complex iterated systems with emergent properties.

lhorie 5y ago
> I don't think there was anything particularly nefarious or shitty on the part of any participant. It's just the nature of big complex iterated systems with emergent properties. I find it interesting that one can draw some parallels to physical consumerism and its impact of ecology. We don't generally consider buying day-to-day stuff as nefarious either, until we pay attention to the aggregate impact of the entire supply chain machine, and then it's "80% less polinators" this, and "donated clothes landfills" that. The big difference is that Google as an organization can make the call to - and follow through on - telling users directly to back off if users' consumption patterns themselves become a significant enough liability on the sheets.

withinboredom 5y ago

> explained by a desire to not spend money on storage for "low value" data I think this "just happens" when you reach a certain scale. For example, I was looking at our reporting at my job the other day and realized for 10k people a day, something wasn't working with our emails. We decided it was a "low priority" because it's "only" 10k people when we send over 30 million emails a day. I'm sure those 10,000 people (a small city's worth!) don't feel that way.

Gigachad 5y ago

They don't delete flagged content. I have had stuff be flagged and locked and then a while later it gets unblocked. There are much easier ways to prune inactive accounts than to pretend to copyright flag them.