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Google Will Eat Itself (2005)
- codevark 4y ago
- Vladimof 4y agoThey own ~$400k... More then I thought
- lifthrasiir 4y agoThe ownership counter has been never updated since circa 2008 [1], and there has been a 2-for-1 stock split in 2014 so they actually own (819 * 2) stocks * 2228.55 USD per stock ~= 3.65 million USD today. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20080814021128/http://www.gwei.org:80/index.php https://web.archive.org/web/20080814021128/http://www.gwei.o...
- Sebb767 4y agoOr, alternatively, only 202.345.102 years (instead of 202.345.117) until GWEI fully owns Google.
- joshspankit 4y agoIs there any record of how much more they’ve purchased?
- lifthrasiir 4y agoThe Wayback Machine indicates that the ownership counter was steadily increasing until that point, so that's presumably the record. Of course as others pointed out in other threads, this "counter" might be just a fake as well.
- alpaca128 4y agoThat website's background drives me insane. Why would you animate the whole background? > 202.345.117 Years until GWEI fully owns Google. Oh well. It's a funny idea though.
- TAKEMYMONEY 4y agoI'd argue it's an accessibility concern, not just an annoyance https://www.w3.org/TR/coga-usable/#distractions-user-story https://www.w3.org/TR/coga-usable/#distractions-user-story Userstyle to remove it: @-moz-document domain("gwei.org") { body { background-image: none; background-color: #333; } } (can be installed with Stylus or similar plugin)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- natly 4y agoThe author didn't claim it was an accessibility concern.
- kingcharles 4y agoI think perhaps they were trying to be cool, like their namesake [1] and failed. [1] https://www.thedesignersrepublic.com/pop-will-eat-itself https://www.thedesignersrepublic.com/pop-will-eat-itself
- oli5679 4y agoI wish them the best of luck in this endeavour!
- sbf501 4y agoAre those numbers real? Or is this a late (early?) April Fools? I can't even tell anymore.
- United857 4y agoGoogle share price $495 -- this is over a decade out of date
- backtoyoujim 4y agoAlthough they have a 20 to 1 split coming up in July.
- airstrike 4y agoWhich has virtually zero impact on anything at all whatsoever other than making it affordable to retail investors, which also has zero impact on anything other than black swan meme stocks
- colechristensen 4y agoFractional shares are a pretty widespread feature at brokerages these days making it even less of an issue. Perhaps it increases the liquidity of their options market though.
- hamburglar 4y agoA high share price has a large impact on who is able to trade options.
- tylerhou 4y agoIt also helps employees' vesting schedules by smoothing them out.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jffry 4y agoHere's a recent mirror if the site's still getting hugged to death: https://web.archive.org/web/20220612225118/https://www.gwei.org/index.php https://web.archive.org/web/20220612225118/https://www.gwei.... The short description from the page itself is: "We generate money by serving Google text advertisments on a network of hidden Websites. With this money we automatically buy Google shares. We buy Google via their own advertisment! Google eats itself - but in the end "we" own it!"
- KennyBlanken 4y agoHuh. I thought it was commentary on how Google will grow to become such a large organization that it cannot function effectively. Seems to me we're well past that. There isn't a single google product I'd recommend to anyone. They seem pathologically incapable of innovation. A trick pony hasn't come out of the barn in a decade, they've killed off or left to stagnate numerous products, and they're driving youtube into the ground. Their core user-facing feature, search, is arguably the worst it's ever been. Garbage results thanks to over-thesaurus-ing your search terms and "quick cards" that are laughably terrible accuracy-wise. The risks of relying on Google for anything are enormous. Even if you're a 1,000 seat organization using their products, stories abound about how they don't care what happens to you. Even at 10,000 seats they still don't seem to care.
- mccorrinall 4y agoNone? I know a lot of products which I could recommend: Go, Android, Maps, Youtube w Adblock, Search (for the average joe, I prefer using kagi). Of course products such as yt and search are far from being perfect, but they are still in a commendable state.
- dvt 4y ago> yt and search are far from being perfect My thesis is that YouTube and Google Search are in an almost perfectly optimized position, where ±5% product quality would not make anyone switch to another service (this is why DDG isn't taking over, for example), but ±10% (or higher, in the + case) is probably around an order of magnitude more difficult to achieve. In other words, no one other than Google can make a better Google.
- lelandfe 4y agohttps://www.theregister.com/2008/08/13/google_will_eat_itself/ https://www.theregister.com/2008/08/13/google_will_eat_itsel... Note that The Register deemed them a hoax (although they did not elaborate). Made by this artist (who insists it is real): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubermorgen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubermorgen. An interview with the artist: https://culturejamming.realvinylz.net/interviewIe.html https://culturejamming.realvinylz.net/interviewIe.html
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- shadowgovt 4y agoIt's a cute idea, but it fundamentally doesn't work the way one might think. A majority of the voting shares are owned by the founders, who are not obliged to sell at any price. It is functionally impossible to do a hostile takeover of Google without causing one of them to defect.
- onenite 4y agoWho isn’t eating themselves these days? It’s 2022. Autophagy. We’ve been doing this for millennia, for all time. Get with the program.
- dang 4y agoRelated: Google Will Eat Itself (2005) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24008297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24008297 - July 2020 (85 comments) Google Will Eat Itself (2005) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19784400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19784400 - April 2019 (65 comments) Google Will Eat Itself - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7410732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7410732 - March 2014 (126 comments) GWEI: Plot to make Google eat itself - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2628328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2628328 - June 2011 (21 comments) GWEI - Google Will Eat Itself - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=273337 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=273337 - Aug 2008 (13 comments) Presumably loosely related? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_Will_Eat_Itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_Will_Eat_Itself
- sshagent 4y agoIt did indeed make my brain unearth old memories of enjoying PWEI. Had completedly forgotten about them until this GWEI link.
- MiscIdeaMaker99 4y agoI remember Pop Will Eat Itself! They opened for Nine Inch Nails back when I was in high school (the early half of the 90s), and I remember the local radio station here playing one of their songs for the firs time. I bought their CD after that.
- melony 4y agoThey need a more sophisticated trading strategy for this to work, because as long as they are providing cashflow for Google, their share purchases will never catch up to Google's valuation.
- harvie 4y agoThank you :-)
- SMAAART 4y agoart piece by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubermorgen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubermorgen Clever.
- AlbertCory 4y agoMaps monetization: I find it hilarious (in a sad way) that they're finally embracing that, if they are. Former Googler here. I was the Ads emissary to the Owned and Operated Properties (like Maps and YouTube) in 2010. I managed to increase the RPM by a small but noticeable amount. They used to have ads on the bottom of the screen, which was the revenue source I was optimizing. Then later I was actually IN Maps when Marissa Mayer was nominally in charge. We were trying to develop "maps for business." That all came to naught when they decided it wasn't worth the bother. Maps is fabulous PR for Google. I can't count the times someone outside of Google said to me, "Oh, I love Google Maps!" But it's a gigantic money loser and always will be. "What about imputed revenue?" you ask? They don't want to measure that, because then every patent litigant would use it against them, and Maps attracts a LOT of patent lawsuits.
- randomsearch 4y agoCan’t they just sell maps data eg restaurant listings, traffic data, to third parties? Then the user wins with the app and the network effects ensure valuable data.
- IceWreck 4y agoThey do sell API access to Google Maps which includes all that.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoI could imagine a scheme where companies can pay to promote themselves and end up higher or more prominent in business searches. Maps is how I usually search for e.g. plumbers.
- technovader 4y agoHow does one own a company by serving ads. I don't get it
- dewey 4y agoGoogle pays you if you deliver ads from their network on your website. They have a bunch of websites that can show ads, Google pays them. They use the money to buy Google shares.
- dusted 4y agoOh, in a mere 200 million years, neat! sits back and waits
- dt3ft 4y agoAny minute now, right? /s
- DeathArrow 4y agoSince Google grows at a much faster rate than their ability to buy shares, their owned part of Google will always be insignificant.
- MrBuddyCasino 4y agoBy establishing this autocannibalistic model we deconstruct the new global advertisment mechanisms by rendering them into a surreal click-based economic model. artists not sounding like pseudo-intellectual humanities academics challenge: impossible
- susrev 4y agoGreat idea, but wow the background on the website is SO unbelievably annoying