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I can empathize with you and the linked writer feeling frustrated that public perception isn't able to match your privileged perspective as an insider... but in
by spdif899 3y ago
I can empathize with you and the linked writer feeling frustrated that public perception isn't able to match your privileged perspective as an insider... but in both cases I feel my eyes roll involuntarily here.
From the outside looking in, Google has acted as a giant self-serving monopolistic hoarder of wealth and power, and has spent decades systematically absorbing and puppeteering creativity and optimism to squeeze as much long term profit as possible.
The only difference we can see recently is they are more interested in short term profit than long term, which makes their insidious power grabs more obvious and less convoluted.
Actions speak louder than words and I don't see how someone could look at Google's actions over the past 20 years and objectively claim the company hasn't always been the poster child of capitalism
- debatem1 3y agoThe point being made is exactly that your inference about Google's motives early on was wrong. Common. But wrong.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago"Our motto is "Don't be evil"" is not an inference. It's a quote.
- debatem1 3y agoThe inference you made is that Google actually was evil all along.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoI haven't made any inference at all. You seem to be telling the GP that they made a (common) mistake in thinking that early Google had non-evil motives.
- debatem1 3y agoWell, given that you aren't who I thought I was talking with at least one of us is confused, but I suspect both of us are now. The post I replied to was stating, essentially, that in their opinion Google had always been evil and only the timescales had changed. My point is that multiple insiders (including myself) can confirm that Google took "Don't Be Evil" really seriously for a long time and that the cynics were wrong then to believe otherwise.
- spdif899 3y agoI'm the one you originally replied to, and yes that's roughly what I'm saying - maybe the individual engineers and designers that built features were trying their best not to be evil, but the company as a whole always had dark motives. They always funneled user data into ad revenue, always drove people to use their versions of things with overly pushy dark patterns, always collected way more telemetry than necessary. They bought Android and turned it into a profit center, bought YouTube and have spent basically the whole time making user hostile actions with ad UX and weird algorithms. Despite individuals' best efforts, I posit that Google the corporation's modus operandi has always been to co-opt good ideas and good people and twist them towards the grey, rarely crossing any defined line but always stretching every one of them to suck more private data, more telemetry, and more ad value. Just because they invest in an open source programming thing (that gets people to use their platforms and ecosystem for more ad dollars) doesn't make them good.
- debatem1 3y agoBeing frank, I think you have an ideological position which is both satisfyingly consistent ('google is evil and always has been') and which provides a mechanism to discount any contrary facts ('you were just boots on the ground and didn't understand the corporation as well as I, being an enlightened person, did'). But I was actually there, and while I can't tell you any of the many times I saw Google do the right thing when it hurt its bottom line I can tell you that I saw it happen a lot and in big ways. You don't have to believe me, poor little deluded cog that I am, but I think I will take my messy, complicated, first person understanding of the place over the reductive ideology any day.