3 ms·

One example is Google maps. There are two ecosystems: Google and Apple. Apple is kinda meh but lacks user information (ie: menu photos for a restaurant). Google

by csomar 2y ago

One example is Google maps. There are two ecosystems: Google and Apple. Apple is kinda meh but lacks user information (ie: menu photos for a restaurant). Google maps has become simply horrendous but here is the catch: There is no third viable alternative. There used to be Foursquare for finding stuff nearby but that's gone. It's a very legitimate market. Businesses want to be found. Users want to find information and legitimate ratings. Money can be made as Google is monetizing Maps. Sometimes I wonder if the free market has stopped working.

0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
How, specifically, has Google Maps become horrendous? >Sometimes I wonder if the free market has stopped working. The "free market" means people have the freedom to compete. It doesn't mean they are guaranteed do so. You might as well blame society for getting lazy and complacent.
- wolvesechoes 2y ago
  "The "free market" means people have the freedom to compete." The "free market" means nothing as nothing like that existed at any point of human history.
  - benreesman 2y ago
    Like anything, the term “free market” fluctuates in semantics like hemlines. But “the effective freedom to compete” is a reasonable TLDR on versions of it that lead to peace and prosperity. The “money for nothing” kind of capitalism? That kind gets regimes and their apologists killed in my reading of history. I’ll admonish you to endorse a better plan.
- benreesman 2y ago
  It’s got the same disease as the rest of Google? What gained monumental trust by being a useful and accessible library of high-quality information is now a place to shove higher oCPM because fuck everyone? I really admire Google over time, it’s a special place that still has engineers you can’t find many places. But once they let climber TPMs write their own performance review by just ransacking the dwell? An even worse crop (Altman, Amodei) was inevitable.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
    Can you give me three recent instances where you were trying to accomplish something with Google Maps, and you weren't able to because it's gone to shit? Without concrete examples your comment is just vibes. You don't seem to be arguing that Google is a bad company actually. You're arguing that it was once a good/altruistic company, and now it's more ordinary. This strikes me as an entitled attitude. A company behaves in a good/altruistic way, people get used to it, they don't show appreciation, but they do start cursing if the altruism diminishes even a little. "No good deed goes unpunished"
- immibis 2y ago
  The reason we like the free market is that there is guaranteed to be competition in a free market and that's guaranteed to lower prices and improve features, which are not things that happened in communism. If those things aren't actually true then why do we like the free market - how's it any better than communism?
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
    "Guaranteed to happen" vs "doesn't happen at all" is a false dichotomy. If you think a company is doing a bad job of serving its customers, compete with it. If you're right, and you can do a better job of serving those customers, you are likely to become rich. If you aren't interested in competing, maybe you don't actually believe it is possible to do much better. I agree that in principle, there can be a role for the government in removing structural barriers to competition. I haven't seen that role particularly well-articulated in this thread, though.
homebrewer 2y ago
2GIS is fantastic, it's light years ahead of both on map quality, and has very detailed information about companies, various points of interest, restaurants, etc. But it only covers a few ex-Soviet countries and is very unlikely to come to your side of the world under the current political climate.
benreesman 2y ago
Markets sometimes experience market failure: markets are a great tool but they’re no more divinely infallible than any other human institution. High-paying work in the US right now and software in particular is in a bit of a doldrums where the locally useful needles are like, friction to leave the platform, and the absolute limit of remnant ad load before people throw their phone at a wall, and taking a big cut out of everything, and lying constantly about what foundation models can and can’t do and shit. I suspect it feels this way because this is a pretty exceptional run where the Valley just doesn’t have shit for the LPs. It was Web3 and then the Apple Watch (or vice versa) and then it was WeWork and then it was the Metaberse and now it’s “AI”. But it will get better: dumb, lazy, corrupt management eventually gets rotated out. This crop is really hanging on by their fingernails, but the writing is on the wall.

by csomar 2y ago

0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago

How, specifically, has Google Maps become horrendous? >Sometimes I wonder if the free market has stopped working. The "free market" means people have the freedom to compete. It doesn't mean they are guaranteed do so. You might as well blame society for getting lazy and complacent.

wolvesechoes 2y ago
"The "free market" means people have the freedom to compete." The "free market" means nothing as nothing like that existed at any point of human history.
- benreesman 2y ago
  Like anything, the term “free market” fluctuates in semantics like hemlines. But “the effective freedom to compete” is a reasonable TLDR on versions of it that lead to peace and prosperity. The “money for nothing” kind of capitalism? That kind gets regimes and their apologists killed in my reading of history. I’ll admonish you to endorse a better plan.
benreesman 2y ago
It’s got the same disease as the rest of Google? What gained monumental trust by being a useful and accessible library of high-quality information is now a place to shove higher oCPM because fuck everyone? I really admire Google over time, it’s a special place that still has engineers you can’t find many places. But once they let climber TPMs write their own performance review by just ransacking the dwell? An even worse crop (Altman, Amodei) was inevitable.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
  Can you give me three recent instances where you were trying to accomplish something with Google Maps, and you weren't able to because it's gone to shit? Without concrete examples your comment is just vibes. You don't seem to be arguing that Google is a bad company actually. You're arguing that it was once a good/altruistic company, and now it's more ordinary. This strikes me as an entitled attitude. A company behaves in a good/altruistic way, people get used to it, they don't show appreciation, but they do start cursing if the altruism diminishes even a little. "No good deed goes unpunished"
immibis 2y ago
The reason we like the free market is that there is guaranteed to be competition in a free market and that's guaranteed to lower prices and improve features, which are not things that happened in communism. If those things aren't actually true then why do we like the free market - how's it any better than communism?
- 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
  "Guaranteed to happen" vs "doesn't happen at all" is a false dichotomy. If you think a company is doing a bad job of serving its customers, compete with it. If you're right, and you can do a better job of serving those customers, you are likely to become rich. If you aren't interested in competing, maybe you don't actually believe it is possible to do much better. I agree that in principle, there can be a role for the government in removing structural barriers to competition. I haven't seen that role particularly well-articulated in this thread, though.

homebrewer 2y ago

2GIS is fantastic, it's light years ahead of both on map quality, and has very detailed information about companies, various points of interest, restaurants, etc. But it only covers a few ex-Soviet countries and is very unlikely to come to your side of the world under the current political climate.

benreesman 2y ago

Markets sometimes experience market failure: markets are a great tool but they’re no more divinely infallible than any other human institution. High-paying work in the US right now and software in particular is in a bit of a doldrums where the locally useful needles are like, friction to leave the platform, and the absolute limit of remnant ad load before people throw their phone at a wall, and taking a big cut out of everything, and lying constantly about what foundation models can and can’t do and shit. I suspect it feels this way because this is a pretty exceptional run where the Valley just doesn’t have shit for the LPs. It was Web3 and then the Apple Watch (or vice versa) and then it was WeWork and then it was the Metaberse and now it’s “AI”. But it will get better: dumb, lazy, corrupt management eventually gets rotated out. This crop is really hanging on by their fingernails, but the writing is on the wall.