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That's missing the point of the article, which his update was added to clarify. This article is NOT saying "why is everybody angry at Google for being evil? We

That's missing the point of the article, which his update was added to clarify. This article is NOT saying "why is everybody angry at Google for being evil? We can't forget about all these other evil companies!" That's the common problem a lot of articles like this one run into, but not this one specifically. Tim's point is that "Google is /not/ evil. Google is doing something that may seem evil, but is in fact not. Google could do something in the future that may end up as evil, but that has yet to happen. To compare, let me show you an example of actual evil. [Enter Apple.]" Apple is used to demonstrate what, in his opinion, actual evil looks like and how that differs from what Google is doing, therefore making Google's actions not evil. The Apple example (which could be Ford or Monsanto, doesn't matter) does not serve to to excuse Google.

beatle 15y ago
A few points: -Google is also in the hardware business (Chromebooks) and soon (Motorola). -Google is the target of several antitrust and patent lawsuits. Two years ago, Google offered to buy Yelp, but the talks broke down. Last year, Google introduced Places, a Yelp-like service for listing businesses and collecting consumer reviews. A Google search for a restaurant often displays the Places entry — linked to a map, user reviews and other services — ahead of Yelp. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/technology/googles-to-face-congressional-antitrust-hearing.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha25 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/technology/googles-to-face... Actually here's a more complete (& funny) list from http://brianshall.com/content/google-are-pussies http://brianshall.com/content/google-are-pussies Yelp gets popular? Copy their info, shove Yelp to the bottom of the page and put Google Places and reviews at the top. Groupon won't sell? Spend billions from other businesses to destroy them. Twitter and Facebook innovate on search? Take their content, whine when they try and stop you then spend billions to prevent their growth and hopefully destroy them. Apple working on a touchscreen smartphone? Spend billions from another business and copy everything you can, down to swipes and apps. Need a smartphone operating system with Java. Take Java and use it for your own ends. Need a location mapping technology and Skyhook won't sell? Spend billions from your monopoly profits and strongarm your partners and drive Skyhook out of business. Buy up the big travel search sites. Claim you are open source but share nothing related to what your business claims to be about -- search, and nothing related to how you make your money -- advertising Claim you are open and standards based but control who gets access to your smartphone operating system Like all rich monopolists, they spend millions hiring high priced lobbyists and public relations teams inside the Beltway -- for their direct benefit The list goes on...
- zak_mc_kracken 15y ago
  > Two years ago, Google offered to buy Yelp, but the talks broke down. Last year, Google introduced Places, a Yelp-like service for listing businesses and collecting consumer reviews. So... what? At least they tried to buy the technology before building it in-house, which is more than what most companies do. Apple has run out of businesses a lot of companies by stealing their ideas outright and shipping them as part of MacOS (Konqueror widgets, Spotlight, etc...).
  - beatle 15y ago
    You conveniently forgot this. >>> A Google search for a restaurant often displays the Places entry — linked to a map, user reviews and other services — ahead of Yelp.
    - mayanksinghal 15y ago
      You should calm down, the furiousness with which you defending Apple would only lead to people assuming that you are not taking their points seriously. Now, Yelp case is where Google acted selfish. There is a thin line between a commercial entity being evil (not kill-people evil but steal-your-ideas-or-money-or-data evil) and it being selfish. Google definitely acted selfish, just like any other corporation should and does. The line that separates selfishness and evil is unfortunately subjective (and often biased) which means that while you see something as clearly evil, others find it just selfish - I am pretty sure that no one here is going to deem these actions selfless; we are not that naive. Now, to your points here and at other places: (1) Google made in Open Source Operating System. It is by definition (with some exceptions to how it was enforced), open source. If there was no Android, there would have probably been no competition to Apple and hence no leverage against them. (2) Android is not a necessary software; which means that if arbitrary restrictions like "Only to be used on labour-friendly devices" are put, there is no way a third party OEM is going to sign it; there are replacements available and we have already seen (with R. Stallman) that overly offensive campaigns do not go well with majority. (3) Google is not charging anything directly for the OS. This means that they cannot put forward conditions to manufacturers like "I will charge you $10 less, if the $10 goes to the labourers"; Apple should. Whether or not if that is a possibility for Apple is a different story altogether (one that I cannot comment about, I have no experience in Chinese Political system or in device manufacturing). (4) I am from sort-of a third world country. Our evil is way different from your evil - labour exploitation and fierce competition practices that we see, are way worse. While you are focusing on First world problems (e.g. order of information when a place is searched on Google, which BTW is not affected directly - the changes were on Google Places) only these companies are fairly global in their user base and development sites. There is a rating of evil that hence we have to consider; some actions that they are involved in on some continents would be way worse than others that they do on the North American and European continents. Evil - Good is definitely not a binary object.
Steko 15y ago
"Tim's point is that "Google is /not/ evil." Tim has spectacularly missed the forest for the trees. Google isn't just evil today because they updated their privacy policy. If turning a blind or half blind eye to suppliers in Asia is evil then they, like every other tech company, are evil and have been for a long time. Where do the 700,000 Android phones that get activated every day get made? Is Google blameless because they dont make it themselves? Would Apple be blameless if they just designed the phones and contracted someone else to build it? Well they did so I guess not... Look, it's clear that Apple, as the most visible brand, is going to get the lion's share of attention here the same way Nike was the target of sweatshop complaints in the 80's. That said, as opposed to just shaming the Big Bad Apple, I'd really love to see a detailed comparison between the standards and practices of Apple and other first world companies contracting with suppliers in Asia (and elsewhere).
- cooldeal 15y ago
  >Where do the 700,000 Android phones that get activated every day get made? Is Google blameless because they dont make it themselves? But..but..but...as we are tirelessly reminded by some folks here, Apple takes most of the profits of the mobile handset industry, so they're in the best position to lessen their huge margin by a few percentage points so as to not endanger the lives of the people that make the phones. If they make the most money from making people work in inhumane conditions, they deserve the most blame, esp. since they have the most leverage to pay more.
  - lloeki 15y ago
    According to Tim Cook's company email on the matter, they do. The fact is, you can't just pour money over the place and see what comes out of it. Especially in a country like China, and with multiple factories sizing in the range of 100'000s of workers. Hundred fscking thousands. This is the same order of magnitude as the whole of General Motors, for a single factory. The whole thing is architected to be able to reconfigure itself to produce whatever the demand needs almost overnight. This is incredible. There is no single country out there which has such a powerful tool. It's of thermonuclear scale, when the US tries to fight with a bunch of Winchesters (and even smaller countries like France are battling with swords and bows in a stone castle). Even if you're Apple you can't come in cash in hand and say 'Okay folks, this is not how we want things to work here' and re-architect the whole thing in a day. As you said they're in the best position to use leverage and I think they're doing it but moving such a huge block needs a freaking huge lever, and time.

beatle 15y ago

A few points: -Google is also in the hardware business (Chromebooks) and soon (Motorola). -Google is the target of several antitrust and patent lawsuits. Two years ago, Google offered to buy Yelp, but the talks broke down. Last year, Google introduced Places, a Yelp-like service for listing businesses and collecting consumer reviews. A Google search for a restaurant often displays the Places entry — linked to a map, user reviews and other services — ahead of Yelp. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/technology/googles-to-face-congressional-antitrust-hearing.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha25 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/technology/googles-to-face... Actually here's a more complete (& funny) list from http://brianshall.com/content/google-are-pussies http://brianshall.com/content/google-are-pussies Yelp gets popular? Copy their info, shove Yelp to the bottom of the page and put Google Places and reviews at the top. Groupon won't sell? Spend billions from other businesses to destroy them. Twitter and Facebook innovate on search? Take their content, whine when they try and stop you then spend billions to prevent their growth and hopefully destroy them. Apple working on a touchscreen smartphone? Spend billions from another business and copy everything you can, down to swipes and apps. Need a smartphone operating system with Java. Take Java and use it for your own ends. Need a location mapping technology and Skyhook won't sell? Spend billions from your monopoly profits and strongarm your partners and drive Skyhook out of business. Buy up the big travel search sites. Claim you are open source but share nothing related to what your business claims to be about -- search, and nothing related to how you make your money -- advertising Claim you are open and standards based but control who gets access to your smartphone operating system Like all rich monopolists, they spend millions hiring high priced lobbyists and public relations teams inside the Beltway -- for their direct benefit The list goes on...

zak_mc_kracken 15y ago
> Two years ago, Google offered to buy Yelp, but the talks broke down. Last year, Google introduced Places, a Yelp-like service for listing businesses and collecting consumer reviews. So... what? At least they tried to buy the technology before building it in-house, which is more than what most companies do. Apple has run out of businesses a lot of companies by stealing their ideas outright and shipping them as part of MacOS (Konqueror widgets, Spotlight, etc...).
- beatle 15y ago
  You conveniently forgot this. >>> A Google search for a restaurant often displays the Places entry — linked to a map, user reviews and other services — ahead of Yelp.
  - mayanksinghal 15y ago
    You should calm down, the furiousness with which you defending Apple would only lead to people assuming that you are not taking their points seriously. Now, Yelp case is where Google acted selfish. There is a thin line between a commercial entity being evil (not kill-people evil but steal-your-ideas-or-money-or-data evil) and it being selfish. Google definitely acted selfish, just like any other corporation should and does. The line that separates selfishness and evil is unfortunately subjective (and often biased) which means that while you see something as clearly evil, others find it just selfish - I am pretty sure that no one here is going to deem these actions selfless; we are not that naive. Now, to your points here and at other places: (1) Google made in Open Source Operating System. It is by definition (with some exceptions to how it was enforced), open source. If there was no Android, there would have probably been no competition to Apple and hence no leverage against them. (2) Android is not a necessary software; which means that if arbitrary restrictions like "Only to be used on labour-friendly devices" are put, there is no way a third party OEM is going to sign it; there are replacements available and we have already seen (with R. Stallman) that overly offensive campaigns do not go well with majority. (3) Google is not charging anything directly for the OS. This means that they cannot put forward conditions to manufacturers like "I will charge you $10 less, if the $10 goes to the labourers"; Apple should. Whether or not if that is a possibility for Apple is a different story altogether (one that I cannot comment about, I have no experience in Chinese Political system or in device manufacturing). (4) I am from sort-of a third world country. Our evil is way different from your evil - labour exploitation and fierce competition practices that we see, are way worse. While you are focusing on First world problems (e.g. order of information when a place is searched on Google, which BTW is not affected directly - the changes were on Google Places) only these companies are fairly global in their user base and development sites. There is a rating of evil that hence we have to consider; some actions that they are involved in on some continents would be way worse than others that they do on the North American and European continents. Evil - Good is definitely not a binary object.

Steko 15y ago

"Tim's point is that "Google is /not/ evil." Tim has spectacularly missed the forest for the trees. Google isn't just evil today because they updated their privacy policy. If turning a blind or half blind eye to suppliers in Asia is evil then they, like every other tech company, are evil and have been for a long time. Where do the 700,000 Android phones that get activated every day get made? Is Google blameless because they dont make it themselves? Would Apple be blameless if they just designed the phones and contracted someone else to build it? Well they did so I guess not... Look, it's clear that Apple, as the most visible brand, is going to get the lion's share of attention here the same way Nike was the target of sweatshop complaints in the 80's. That said, as opposed to just shaming the Big Bad Apple, I'd really love to see a detailed comparison between the standards and practices of Apple and other first world companies contracting with suppliers in Asia (and elsewhere).

cooldeal 15y ago
>Where do the 700,000 Android phones that get activated every day get made? Is Google blameless because they dont make it themselves? But..but..but...as we are tirelessly reminded by some folks here, Apple takes most of the profits of the mobile handset industry, so they're in the best position to lessen their huge margin by a few percentage points so as to not endanger the lives of the people that make the phones. If they make the most money from making people work in inhumane conditions, they deserve the most blame, esp. since they have the most leverage to pay more.
- lloeki 15y ago
  According to Tim Cook's company email on the matter, they do. The fact is, you can't just pour money over the place and see what comes out of it. Especially in a country like China, and with multiple factories sizing in the range of 100'000s of workers. Hundred fscking thousands. This is the same order of magnitude as the whole of General Motors, for a single factory. The whole thing is architected to be able to reconfigure itself to produce whatever the demand needs almost overnight. This is incredible. There is no single country out there which has such a powerful tool. It's of thermonuclear scale, when the US tries to fight with a bunch of Winchesters (and even smaller countries like France are battling with swords and bows in a stone castle). Even if you're Apple you can't come in cash in hand and say 'Okay folks, this is not how we want things to work here' and re-architect the whole thing in a day. As you said they're in the best position to use leverage and I think they're doing it but moving such a huge block needs a freaking huge lever, and time.