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It doesn't seem very obvious that any of GrubHub, Ticketmaster, Yelp, eBay, Microsoft, Tesla, AirBnb, Amazon, Oracle are "morally superior" to work at than Goog

It doesn't seem very obvious that any of GrubHub, Ticketmaster, Yelp, eBay, Microsoft, Tesla, AirBnb, Amazon, Oracle are "morally superior" to work at than Google. I think Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, Palantir, Comcast, Juul, Uber, any defense contractor, Nestle, Philip Morris, etc are at least arguably less ethical work than even Meta, and get less flak just by being behind slightly less visible to users. While there's many legitimate serious criticisms of both Meta and Google, I think many of the concerns are misdirected or overexaggerated. The omnibox thing mentioned in the comic is a pretty concrete example to me of a false criticism: the Chrome feature is that it fetches query suggestions for what you've typed so far, which means it's going to be sending what you've typed to a server. Firefox also does exactly same thing and continuously sends what you are typing to Google or Bing to fetch query suggestions, and I don't see people writing this same comic about how Firefox is somehow evil to implement such a feature.

cma 5y ago
Chrome really does have the file scanner they mention that you can't turn off. On android, try turning off search suggestions, it is a literal maze as depicted: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/106230?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/106230?hl=en&co=... In firefox android it is a simple toggle button under settings->search.
- esrauch 5y ago
  I have both Firefox and Chrome on my phone and I just checked and it's literally exactly the same to turn it off: on Android Chrome it is Settings > Google Services > toggle button. They're even in almost the same position in the settings menus. I believe the linked documentation is account wide including going to google.com in Microsoft Edge and then typing into the search box on the website. It's not surprising to me that turning off behavior on across your account in any context can't be done in browser settings.
  - cma 5y ago
    You are right, I was looking under privacy, and began searching where to find it and found the above link which was too complex to fully comprehend.
the_other 5y ago
> the Chrome feature is that it fetches query suggestions for what you've typed so far, which means it's going to be sending what you've typed to a server. Sure, but it’s not just querying based on what you type in. It takes what you typed, adds it to the model of you built from your past searches and web history and tailors the results to match a mixture of A) what it thinks today-you wants based on yesterday-you B) what someone else is willing to pay to inset above the results of a) It’s way less benign than you make out. They also aggregate all the similar searches and correlate that over geography and demographics, and probably sell that. They can predict infection progress through a population from search terms. Admittedly, that’s useful… but it also feels “underhand” in a way that simpler “product->fee->customer” relationships used to work.
- esrauch 5y ago
  I don't actually think that (a) is nefarious; I'm pretty sure any of the companies that I listed will personalize any server responses based on the user. If logging interactions with the product and personalizing based on that is an ethical concern at that level then I don't think you'll be able to justify working at any major web/app companies in general. I had a Bloomberg interview where the systems design question was to implement exactly "user logging for contextual personalization in other places". I think most users genuinely do prefer to get personalized suggestions instead of irrelevant ones. Firefox is still doing this by default implies pretty strongly to me that the feature is a meaningful benefit to the product, and isn't just in Chrome as a covert data collection mechanism. I don't believe that (b) is true for Google (paid placement in autocomplete). Google, for all it's flaws, does consistently mark Ads as Ads. I'm pretty sure smaller companies like Yelp and Uber are much more likely to be doing some "secretly paid placement" than Google (but I'd still presume any one of them is not).
  - the_other 5y ago
    > I think most users genuinely do prefer to get personalized suggestions instead of irrelevant ones. Firefox is still doing this by default implies pretty strongly to me that the feature is a meaningful benefit to the product, and isn't just in Chrome as a covert data collection mechanism. You're probably right. I also muddled "search results" and "autocomplete suggestions".

cma 5y ago

Chrome really does have the file scanner they mention that you can't turn off. On android, try turning off search suggestions, it is a literal maze as depicted: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/106230?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/106230?hl=en&co=... In firefox android it is a simple toggle button under settings->search.

esrauch 5y ago
I have both Firefox and Chrome on my phone and I just checked and it's literally exactly the same to turn it off: on Android Chrome it is Settings > Google Services > toggle button. They're even in almost the same position in the settings menus. I believe the linked documentation is account wide including going to google.com in Microsoft Edge and then typing into the search box on the website. It's not surprising to me that turning off behavior on across your account in any context can't be done in browser settings.
- cma 5y ago
  You are right, I was looking under privacy, and began searching where to find it and found the above link which was too complex to fully comprehend.

the_other 5y ago

> the Chrome feature is that it fetches query suggestions for what you've typed so far, which means it's going to be sending what you've typed to a server. Sure, but it’s not just querying based on what you type in. It takes what you typed, adds it to the model of you built from your past searches and web history and tailors the results to match a mixture of A) what it thinks today-you wants based on yesterday-you B) what someone else is willing to pay to inset above the results of a) It’s way less benign than you make out. They also aggregate all the similar searches and correlate that over geography and demographics, and probably sell that. They can predict infection progress through a population from search terms. Admittedly, that’s useful… but it also feels “underhand” in a way that simpler “product->fee->customer” relationships used to work.

esrauch 5y ago
I don't actually think that (a) is nefarious; I'm pretty sure any of the companies that I listed will personalize any server responses based on the user. If logging interactions with the product and personalizing based on that is an ethical concern at that level then I don't think you'll be able to justify working at any major web/app companies in general. I had a Bloomberg interview where the systems design question was to implement exactly "user logging for contextual personalization in other places". I think most users genuinely do prefer to get personalized suggestions instead of irrelevant ones. Firefox is still doing this by default implies pretty strongly to me that the feature is a meaningful benefit to the product, and isn't just in Chrome as a covert data collection mechanism. I don't believe that (b) is true for Google (paid placement in autocomplete). Google, for all it's flaws, does consistently mark Ads as Ads. I'm pretty sure smaller companies like Yelp and Uber are much more likely to be doing some "secretly paid placement" than Google (but I'd still presume any one of them is not).
- the_other 5y ago
  > I think most users genuinely do prefer to get personalized suggestions instead of irrelevant ones. Firefox is still doing this by default implies pretty strongly to me that the feature is a meaningful benefit to the product, and isn't just in Chrome as a covert data collection mechanism. You're probably right. I also muddled "search results" and "autocomplete suggestions".