4 ms·

As a company whose goal is to make money can you blame them? It's the people who naively believe in the propaganda.

by barista 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago
There is nothing wrong with Google trying to make money. Making money is great. It's the utterly insufferable "we're not just making money, we're changing the world!" rationalization that accompanies it. Fact is that Google is an advertising company (95% of its revenues come from ads), selling eyeballs to companies peddling cheap Chinese crap. They're incredibly good at it. They should just embrace that and stop pretending they're something else.
- psbp 13y ago
  I've been reading responses on this site for the past day, and I think some of you are a little insane. You don't think Google Maps changed the world? Translate, search, etc.? We should all understand that google doesn't deserve relentless praise, but some of these counterpoints are more baseless and distasteful.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Making a good product people like to use is not "changing the world." Not to mention that MapQuest, Babelfish, and Altavista were all reasonably good and useful before the Google counterparts existed.
  - Anechoic 13y ago
    You don't think Google Maps changed the world? Translate, search, etc.? Those examples "changed the world" in the same way the iPod and iPhone changed the world: extremely elegant implementations of products and ideas that had been out there already.
    - roc 13y ago
      The Model T was hardly the first car either. Sometimes getting the details right -- turning a curiosity for the rich into a tool for the masses -- really is a key advance worthy of its own recognition.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        Altavista was hardly a curiosity--it had 13 million queries a day at its peak. In any case, nobody is denying Google recognition for building a damn good search engine/advertising platform.
        roc 13y ago
        And there was something like a half million automobiles sold before the model T. In any case, my point wasn't that the analogy is particularly apt in this specific case. It was that extending "what has been done" to "what works for people", in general, is a noteworthy accomplishment in and of itself. So while one can certainly still argue that Google hadn't 'changed the world', they ought not simply point to the prior existence of alternatives. They would also need to show that it didn't unleash untapped demand/usage. And the snarky, though not entirely-irrelevant, reply to altavista's peak usage is: 13 million queries? Sounds a million people had to search about a dozen times each to get a decent hit.
  - enraged_camel 13y ago
    >>You don't think Google Maps changed the world? Translate, search, etc.? Did MapQuest change the world? Did AltaVista or Yahoo!? What about the thousand translation sites that exited before Google? I'll tell you who is changing the world. SpaceX. It is led by a man who started it despite all odds. A man whose sole drive is to get humanity to Mars so that if something happens to Earth, it doesn't wipe out our entire species. A man who believes he has a mission, and believes in that mission so strongly that he is willing to invest every last penny of his personal fortune in it, and work himself to death to see it accomplished. THAT is changing the world. Not being able to look at pictures of a street from your computer or find the translation of a spoken phrase accurately or make payments via your email - all the while being served shitty, mostly useless ads. I'm sorry, I love Google and the convenience it provides, but at the end of the day, it is just an advertising company. And you cannot change the world with advertising.
    - pyre 13y ago
      | he is willing to invest every last penny Did he not also invest/build Tesla Motors? Let's not overstate things here.
    - dchichkov 13y ago
      It is pieces of the puzzle really. You need machine learning, computer vision, robotics and ultimately AI plus some kind of self-assembling machines to really make it work. We don't have the tech yet. But it is getting there. Being able to find the translation of a spoken phrase, or answer a spoken question accurately is actually difficult. You pretty much need your phone to be aware of the environment; if you want to get good results that is. So projects like Siri, Google Now or Glass are actually important and potentially can be crucial and 'world changing'.
      - rayiner 13y ago
        Except it's e.g. SRI doing the "world changing" part of Siri.
      - enraged_camel 13y ago
        >>Being able to find the translation of a spoken phrase, or answer a spoken question accurately is actually difficult. I guess what I'm trying to say is that every world-changing problem is difficult to solve, but not every difficult problem is world-changing when solved. I have no doubt that Google engineers overcame countless challenges that would fry the brains of most people here. Does that mean the solutions they produced changed the world? No. Rather, they ended up as products and features in Google's massive advertising machine. You mentioned other projects. Let's take Google Glass. It is quite promising. But let's face it: at the end of the day, it will be yet another means of showing people ads. They will be more accurate ads perhaps, since Google will know exactly where you are and what you are looking at - but they will still be ads.
  - feduphacker 13y ago
    What a crock of shit. Have you heard of MapQuest, Bing Maps, or Yahoo! Maps? How about AltaVista or Yahoo! Search? BabelFish ring a bell? If Google changed the world through all their ad-infested crap, it certainly was late to do so.
    - pyre 13y ago
      | Bing Maps This was another 'me too' product from Microsoft. IIRC, Microsoft didn't have web maps prior to Google maps.
      - feduphacker 13y ago
        They're fucking maps. All of them are 'me too' products.
      - dchichkov 13y ago
        Er. There was a certain scalability demo of Microsoft SQL server, of all things. Some time back in 1997 or 1998 it was... Terraserver was the name. Just a tidy bit before google.
  - OGinparadise 13y ago
    Don't you think Microsoft changed the world? Don't you think Apple changed the world? Don't you think Facebook changed the world? Don't you think Skype changed the world? Don't you think Napster changed the world? Don't you think [] changed the world? Map products did exist before Google and so did translation tools. Google search was much better than others but search did exist and similar-enough-to-google search tech exists today.

As a company whose goal is to make money can you blame them? It's the people who naively believe in the propaganda.

by barista 13y ago

As a company whose goal is to make money can you blame them? It's the people who naively believe in the propaganda.

There is nothing wrong with Google trying to make money. Making money is great. It's the utterly insufferable "we're not just making money, we're changing the world!" rationalization that accompanies it. Fact is that Google is an advertising company (95% of its revenues come from ads), selling eyeballs to companies peddling cheap Chinese crap. They're incredibly good at it. They should just embrace that and stop pretending they're something else.

psbp 13y ago
I've been reading responses on this site for the past day, and I think some of you are a little insane. You don't think Google Maps changed the world? Translate, search, etc.? We should all understand that google doesn't deserve relentless praise, but some of these counterpoints are more baseless and distasteful.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Making a good product people like to use is not "changing the world." Not to mention that MapQuest, Babelfish, and Altavista were all reasonably good and useful before the Google counterparts existed.
- Anechoic 13y ago
  You don't think Google Maps changed the world? Translate, search, etc.? Those examples "changed the world" in the same way the iPod and iPhone changed the world: extremely elegant implementations of products and ideas that had been out there already.
  - roc 13y ago
    The Model T was hardly the first car either. Sometimes getting the details right -- turning a curiosity for the rich into a tool for the masses -- really is a key advance worthy of its own recognition.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      Altavista was hardly a curiosity--it had 13 million queries a day at its peak. In any case, nobody is denying Google recognition for building a damn good search engine/advertising platform.
      - roc 13y ago
        And there was something like a half million automobiles sold before the model T. In any case, my point wasn't that the analogy is particularly apt in this specific case. It was that extending "what has been done" to "what works for people", in general, is a noteworthy accomplishment in and of itself. So while one can certainly still argue that Google hadn't 'changed the world', they ought not simply point to the prior existence of alternatives. They would also need to show that it didn't unleash untapped demand/usage. And the snarky, though not entirely-irrelevant, reply to altavista's peak usage is: 13 million queries? Sounds a million people had to search about a dozen times each to get a decent hit.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  >>You don't think Google Maps changed the world? Translate, search, etc.? Did MapQuest change the world? Did AltaVista or Yahoo!? What about the thousand translation sites that exited before Google? I'll tell you who is changing the world. SpaceX. It is led by a man who started it despite all odds. A man whose sole drive is to get humanity to Mars so that if something happens to Earth, it doesn't wipe out our entire species. A man who believes he has a mission, and believes in that mission so strongly that he is willing to invest every last penny of his personal fortune in it, and work himself to death to see it accomplished. THAT is changing the world. Not being able to look at pictures of a street from your computer or find the translation of a spoken phrase accurately or make payments via your email - all the while being served shitty, mostly useless ads. I'm sorry, I love Google and the convenience it provides, but at the end of the day, it is just an advertising company. And you cannot change the world with advertising.
  - pyre 13y ago
    | he is willing to invest every last penny Did he not also invest/build Tesla Motors? Let's not overstate things here.
  - dchichkov 13y ago
    It is pieces of the puzzle really. You need machine learning, computer vision, robotics and ultimately AI plus some kind of self-assembling machines to really make it work. We don't have the tech yet. But it is getting there. Being able to find the translation of a spoken phrase, or answer a spoken question accurately is actually difficult. You pretty much need your phone to be aware of the environment; if you want to get good results that is. So projects like Siri, Google Now or Glass are actually important and potentially can be crucial and 'world changing'.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      Except it's e.g. SRI doing the "world changing" part of Siri.
    - enraged_camel 13y ago
      >>Being able to find the translation of a spoken phrase, or answer a spoken question accurately is actually difficult. I guess what I'm trying to say is that every world-changing problem is difficult to solve, but not every difficult problem is world-changing when solved. I have no doubt that Google engineers overcame countless challenges that would fry the brains of most people here. Does that mean the solutions they produced changed the world? No. Rather, they ended up as products and features in Google's massive advertising machine. You mentioned other projects. Let's take Google Glass. It is quite promising. But let's face it: at the end of the day, it will be yet another means of showing people ads. They will be more accurate ads perhaps, since Google will know exactly where you are and what you are looking at - but they will still be ads.
- feduphacker 13y ago
  What a crock of shit. Have you heard of MapQuest, Bing Maps, or Yahoo! Maps? How about AltaVista or Yahoo! Search? BabelFish ring a bell? If Google changed the world through all their ad-infested crap, it certainly was late to do so.
  - pyre 13y ago
    | Bing Maps This was another 'me too' product from Microsoft. IIRC, Microsoft didn't have web maps prior to Google maps.
    - feduphacker 13y ago
      They're fucking maps. All of them are 'me too' products.
    - dchichkov 13y ago
      Er. There was a certain scalability demo of Microsoft SQL server, of all things. Some time back in 1997 or 1998 it was... Terraserver was the name. Just a tidy bit before google.
- OGinparadise 13y ago
  Don't you think Microsoft changed the world? Don't you think Apple changed the world? Don't you think Facebook changed the world? Don't you think Skype changed the world? Don't you think Napster changed the world? Don't you think [] changed the world? Map products did exist before Google and so did translation tools. Google search was much better than others but search did exist and similar-enough-to-google search tech exists today.