6 ms·

Shutting down a free service that they own... evil?

gnaffle 14y ago
If Starbucks invaded your city and used their cash pile to give away free coffee for years until there were no more independent coffee bars left, and then suddenly decided to close up shop leaving you with no decent coffee bars, would that make them evil? At least it would make them careless and insensitive. A better option would be to a) charge a price and compete fairly in the first place, or b) open source or sell off the product so it could live on.
- andyhmltn 14y ago
  Open source coffee. We could be on to something...
  - gnaffle 14y ago
    Here you go: http://code.google.com/p/artisan/ http://code.google.com/p/artisan/
- icebraining 14y ago
  Assuming Starbucks coffee wasn't the crap it is, I'd be glad if they did so. New coffee bars can and would be opened once they left anyway, and until then, we'd get free coffee. Seems like an excellent deal to me. In any case, "Starbucks" didn't prevent me from having some good homemade coffee for a few months now.
  - dugmartin 14y ago
    The problem is that after so many years of free coffee almost nobody will want to pay for it again.
    - digitalsushi 14y ago
      you've never had one of those headaches you get on the third day of not getting a cup.
    - iand 14y ago
      So starbucks wouldn't be able to hike the price after giving it away for free? Consumer still wins.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      If nobody else can sustain a free model then either the price will rise or people didn't actually want coffee all that much anyway.
      - gnaffle 14y ago
        ..or maybe Starbucks successfully pushed the consumers to some other way of consuming coffee (for instance hypothetical store-bought Starbuck espresso capsules)
        notdrunkatall 14y ago
        ...and if the consumer is satisfied with his new way of consuming coffee, then what harm was done?
        gnaffle 14y ago
        Maybe most consumers are satisfied, but the ones that are not don't make up a big enough population to sustain a good coffee bar?
        DannyBee 14y ago
        So then it turns out that your small group doesn't matter as much as you think it did, and it turned out to be smaller than you thought. That is, as they say, tough. Look, just because you want something to happen doesn't make it viable in the long term, and someone who demonstrated it was not viable in the long term doesn't become evil because they sped that process up. If they actually burned down all the other coffee bars in the process, that's one thing, but they didn't. They convinced folks to be satisied with something else. You have literally just said "What if the remaining users are not enough to support a viable product I liked". Then there aren't enough to support a non-viable product you liked, and that wouldn't be any different no matter how it happened. The only difference is it happened in 5 years instead of 50. If the other way was still something that satisfied people, one would assume others would eventually revert to it. All drugs have some set of side effects, and usually very badly effect some small percentage of the population that won't know until the take them. Does this alone make releasing any drug evil? If not, can we please just move the discussion along into social utility territory, instead of the "well, it hurt someone somewhere, so it's evil" stuff? Contrary the misquoting a few parents up, the statement was "don't be evil" not "do no evil". This is an attempt to be guided by doing the right thing, not an attempt to ever avoid harming anyone. Basically, whether someone is being evil or not is not about you, it's about them.
- rplnt 14y ago
  > If Starbucks invaded your city and used their cash pile to give away free coffee for years until there were no more independent coffee bars left That's why it is illegal (in some countries at least).
  - tomkarlo 14y ago
    So should free Internet sites be illegal? The NYT used to be free, now it's paid. Is that evil? Is HN evil for not charging? Anti-dumping laws make sense when you're talking about hard goods with a concrete marginal cost of goods sold (like coffee.) Theydon't make much sense for web sites and software.
    - rplnt 14y ago
      It's not about being free or not. You shouldn't operate with loss only to drive customers away from competition. That being said, I don't believe these laws should apply to online services. It's entirely different market. I was mentioning it because the example with Starbucks couldn't happen, thus it was a bad example.
- _mulder_ 14y ago
  Google aren't closing their main product offering though (Search). A better analogy might be if they decided to give away little biscuits for free for many years and then one day stopped it... point being their main product is subsidising the other 'free' product as a way to get people to use Starbucks. A real-life example might be their 'free WiFi'. They are well within their rights to stop doing this tomorrow if they choose to. Good luck to anyone who complains because their business is affected because they chose to base themselves out of a Starbucks!
  - gnaffle 14y ago
    True, that's a better analogy, especially if they drove local bakeries out of business by giving away muffins and other baked goods for free.
a3n 14y ago
"Evil" has special meaning with Google, since their unofficial motto in the early days was "Don't be evil." Which was an ironically hyperbolic way of saying "Don't be a dick." Which they often are these days.
cthhhkzz 14y ago
you failed this city!!!

If Starbucks invaded your city and used their cash pile to give away free coffee for years until there were no more independent coffee bars left, and then suddenly decided to close up shop leaving you with no decent coffee bars, would that make them evil? At least it would make them careless and insensitive. A better option would be to a) charge a price and compete fairly in the first place, or b) open source or sell off the product so it could live on.

andyhmltn 14y ago
Open source coffee. We could be on to something...
- gnaffle 14y ago
  Here you go: http://code.google.com/p/artisan/ http://code.google.com/p/artisan/
icebraining 14y ago
Assuming Starbucks coffee wasn't the crap it is, I'd be glad if they did so. New coffee bars can and would be opened once they left anyway, and until then, we'd get free coffee. Seems like an excellent deal to me. In any case, "Starbucks" didn't prevent me from having some good homemade coffee for a few months now.
- dugmartin 14y ago
  The problem is that after so many years of free coffee almost nobody will want to pay for it again.
  - digitalsushi 14y ago
    you've never had one of those headaches you get on the third day of not getting a cup.
  - iand 14y ago
    So starbucks wouldn't be able to hike the price after giving it away for free? Consumer still wins.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    If nobody else can sustain a free model then either the price will rise or people didn't actually want coffee all that much anyway.
    - gnaffle 14y ago
      ..or maybe Starbucks successfully pushed the consumers to some other way of consuming coffee (for instance hypothetical store-bought Starbuck espresso capsules)
      - notdrunkatall 14y ago
        ...and if the consumer is satisfied with his new way of consuming coffee, then what harm was done?
        gnaffle 14y ago
        Maybe most consumers are satisfied, but the ones that are not don't make up a big enough population to sustain a good coffee bar?
        DannyBee 14y ago
        So then it turns out that your small group doesn't matter as much as you think it did, and it turned out to be smaller than you thought. That is, as they say, tough. Look, just because you want something to happen doesn't make it viable in the long term, and someone who demonstrated it was not viable in the long term doesn't become evil because they sped that process up. If they actually burned down all the other coffee bars in the process, that's one thing, but they didn't. They convinced folks to be satisied with something else. You have literally just said "What if the remaining users are not enough to support a viable product I liked". Then there aren't enough to support a non-viable product you liked, and that wouldn't be any different no matter how it happened. The only difference is it happened in 5 years instead of 50. If the other way was still something that satisfied people, one would assume others would eventually revert to it. All drugs have some set of side effects, and usually very badly effect some small percentage of the population that won't know until the take them. Does this alone make releasing any drug evil? If not, can we please just move the discussion along into social utility territory, instead of the "well, it hurt someone somewhere, so it's evil" stuff? Contrary the misquoting a few parents up, the statement was "don't be evil" not "do no evil". This is an attempt to be guided by doing the right thing, not an attempt to ever avoid harming anyone. Basically, whether someone is being evil or not is not about you, it's about them.
rplnt 14y ago
> If Starbucks invaded your city and used their cash pile to give away free coffee for years until there were no more independent coffee bars left That's why it is illegal (in some countries at least).
- tomkarlo 14y ago
  So should free Internet sites be illegal? The NYT used to be free, now it's paid. Is that evil? Is HN evil for not charging? Anti-dumping laws make sense when you're talking about hard goods with a concrete marginal cost of goods sold (like coffee.) Theydon't make much sense for web sites and software.
  - rplnt 14y ago
    It's not about being free or not. You shouldn't operate with loss only to drive customers away from competition. That being said, I don't believe these laws should apply to online services. It's entirely different market. I was mentioning it because the example with Starbucks couldn't happen, thus it was a bad example.
_mulder_ 14y ago
Google aren't closing their main product offering though (Search). A better analogy might be if they decided to give away little biscuits for free for many years and then one day stopped it... point being their main product is subsidising the other 'free' product as a way to get people to use Starbucks. A real-life example might be their 'free WiFi'. They are well within their rights to stop doing this tomorrow if they choose to. Good luck to anyone who complains because their business is affected because they chose to base themselves out of a Starbucks!
- gnaffle 14y ago
  True, that's a better analogy, especially if they drove local bakeries out of business by giving away muffins and other baked goods for free.

a3n 14y ago

"Evil" has special meaning with Google, since their unofficial motto in the early days was "Don't be evil." Which was an ironically hyperbolic way of saying "Don't be a dick." Which they often are these days.

cthhhkzz 14y ago

you failed this city!!!