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A few weeks since Bing came back from the oblivion as a possible search contender and already we're getting the "big company can screw you over and there's noth

A few weeks since Bing came back from the oblivion as a possible search contender and already we're getting the "big company can screw you over and there's nothing you can do about it". This was/is a problem with Google (search, youtube, gcp etc.) where people's income relies on these services and the company just doesn't care. I've seen a bunch of posts on HN about problems like this where the comments are full of other people sharing similar stories. It's depressing, but the takeaway is to be smart about keeping content separate between domains and being prepared for the hammer to fall at any moment.

nobody9999 4y ago
>This was/is a problem with Google (search, youtube, gcp etc.) where people's income relies on these services and the company just doesn't care. I'm curious as to whether or not you think Google should care. I've seen many, many cases (as I'm sure, have you) of Google (as well as all the corps that got fat on the backs of their products'^W users' PII, browsing histories, social connections and personal health information -- what do you think Google is doing with all that non-HIPAA protected data from FitBit? --, not just Google) making sure their customers are well taken care of, at the expense of their users. They never seemed to care before, why should they start now? In fact, if they did start to care about their users, management would likely be ousted tout de suite, as it would negatively impact the stock price and profits. Google is a profit-making organization and, as such, they rightly (from the perspective of investors/Wall Street) optimize for profit, regardless of the impact to users/impact on their users' profits. Does that stifle commerce and innovation? Absolutely. But Google (and pretty much all for-profit organizations) only care about the health of their own businesses, not anyone else's. In an effort at 'reductio ad absurdum'[0], I posted this[1] in a different discussion here: If flooding every gmail user's inbox with Goatse[1] every six minutes would increase revenue (and/or stock price), a billion people would be intimately familiar with a stranger's rectum. And GOOG would laugh all the way to the bank. The long and short of it (at least IMHO) is that you shouldn't expect Google to act against its interests, and those are, more often than not, not that of their users. Ergo, folks (especially those trying to make a buck) should vote with their feet and shun Google, not just shrug and try to mitigate the risks of running afoul of Google's interests. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum [2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555781 [2] Upon further reflection, the actions I mention aren't all that absurd, rather the object in the example I gave of those actions are so.

nobody9999 4y ago

>This was/is a problem with Google (search, youtube, gcp etc.) where people's income relies on these services and the company just doesn't care. I'm curious as to whether or not you think Google should care. I've seen many, many cases (as I'm sure, have you) of Google (as well as all the corps that got fat on the backs of their products'^W users' PII, browsing histories, social connections and personal health information -- what do you think Google is doing with all that non-HIPAA protected data from FitBit? --, not just Google) making sure their customers are well taken care of, at the expense of their users. They never seemed to care before, why should they start now? In fact, if they did start to care about their users, management would likely be ousted tout de suite, as it would negatively impact the stock price and profits. Google is a profit-making organization and, as such, they rightly (from the perspective of investors/Wall Street) optimize for profit, regardless of the impact to users/impact on their users' profits. Does that stifle commerce and innovation? Absolutely. But Google (and pretty much all for-profit organizations) only care about the health of their own businesses, not anyone else's. In an effort at 'reductio ad absurdum'[0], I posted this[1] in a different discussion here: If flooding every gmail user's inbox with Goatse[1] every six minutes would increase revenue (and/or stock price), a billion people would be intimately familiar with a stranger's rectum. And GOOG would laugh all the way to the bank. The long and short of it (at least IMHO) is that you shouldn't expect Google to act against its interests, and those are, more often than not, not that of their users. Ergo, folks (especially those trying to make a buck) should vote with their feet and shun Google, not just shrug and try to mitigate the risks of running afoul of Google's interests. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum [2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555781 [2] Upon further reflection, the actions I mention aren't all that absurd, rather the object in the example I gave of those actions are so.