4 ms·

I think it's somewhat of a disillusionment, like a boss you thought was a friend turning out to be just a normal boss. Google had such a great reputation. Don't

by netcan 13y ago

I think it's somewhat of a disillusionment, like a boss you thought was a friend turning out to be just a normal boss. Google had such a great reputation. Don't Be Evil. 'Unintrusive text links'. Effective advertising for small businesses. Free stuff. Empowering with information. Free webapps. 20% time. Nice to employees etc. etc. Over time several things have happened. We got used to some of the good things about Google and made them our baseline expectation. They got used to all that income and growth. To keep up growth they had to "optimize" and in many cases put profit before aesthetics/ethics. The "unintrusive text links" for high value searches got bigger and more intrusive. 'Contextual links' in Gmail became contextual to your digital life (eg scanning your emails and analyzing your browsing). You need a lot of goodwill believe 'Don't be evil.' From an average company it sounds phony. A lot if stuff has a tipping point. So when a free service gets shut down or rolled into another service its seen as putting profit first, herding users into profitable products or just generally sucking. Before it might have been seen as failing fast. When they ask users for a phone number now, they react with cynicism. Google started with a lot of goodwill. Perhaps too high. People react emotionally when you don't live up to perceived promises. Maybe there is a lesson here about over promising.

gnaffle 13y ago
I think they started off with that goodwill because they actually delivered on their promises. Lots of contributions to Open Source, Summer of Code etc. So there was this hope that this would be the Good Engineering Company that would make the Right Decisions. Maybe the best example was how they shut down their China operation instead of caving to pressure like many others did. In a way, I feel that Google has lost what they "were about". If Google overpromised anything, it was that they were the "open internet company". In many ways, that and "don't be evil" was what defined them.
- bsdetector 13y ago
  > Lots of contributions to Open Source, Summer of Code etc. Which is funny because these things were a smoke screen from day 1. Google is a past master at doing things for themselves, but throwing in a token benefit for everybody else so they look like the good guys. Summer of Code was primarily a recruiting tool for Google, not a contribution to open source. They spent 0.06% of profit on Summer of Code, and in exchange got access to some great developers and got a mostly-unpaid trial period to evaluate them. That's a HR recruiting gold mine. Despite their entire operation running on Linux, most years they contributed so little back to the kernel that they didn't even show up on most rankings -- and adjusted for corp size they were barely a footnote. It's only recently that they have started to contribute anything substantial to Linux. One of their largest contribution to Linux is cloning all the GPL code into BSD code so it can be sold for profit. Sure Google has done a few good things for Open Source, but far far less than one should expect.
  - baldfat 13y ago
    I see this through the eyes of every other big company; Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Adobe. In those glasses Google is still the saint. Give an example of WHAT company you going to go to? I hear this from so many people BUT explain to me a different scenario on how the largest Internet company can run things? I see the push back against the NSA, Open Sourced Android (Closed Google Apps), almost everything that came out better for the customers (Gmail 1GB storage, G+ (you decided in detail who can read your post) APIs that are extremely usable) Google Voice was/is amazing. My beloved Open Source products get millions of investment from Google. The BAD in my eyes: Killing off of many products (I don't use new Google products normally)
    - gnaffle 13y ago
      IBM has always been one of the biggest contributors to Linux. But I think a major difference is that these companies haven't sold themselves as the open source, pro-internet "don't be evil" company. Google has.

by netcan 13y ago

gnaffle 13y ago

I think they started off with that goodwill because they actually delivered on their promises. Lots of contributions to Open Source, Summer of Code etc. So there was this hope that this would be the Good Engineering Company that would make the Right Decisions. Maybe the best example was how they shut down their China operation instead of caving to pressure like many others did. In a way, I feel that Google has lost what they "were about". If Google overpromised anything, it was that they were the "open internet company". In many ways, that and "don't be evil" was what defined them.

bsdetector 13y ago
> Lots of contributions to Open Source, Summer of Code etc. Which is funny because these things were a smoke screen from day 1. Google is a past master at doing things for themselves, but throwing in a token benefit for everybody else so they look like the good guys. Summer of Code was primarily a recruiting tool for Google, not a contribution to open source. They spent 0.06% of profit on Summer of Code, and in exchange got access to some great developers and got a mostly-unpaid trial period to evaluate them. That's a HR recruiting gold mine. Despite their entire operation running on Linux, most years they contributed so little back to the kernel that they didn't even show up on most rankings -- and adjusted for corp size they were barely a footnote. It's only recently that they have started to contribute anything substantial to Linux. One of their largest contribution to Linux is cloning all the GPL code into BSD code so it can be sold for profit. Sure Google has done a few good things for Open Source, but far far less than one should expect.
- baldfat 13y ago
  I see this through the eyes of every other big company; Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Adobe. In those glasses Google is still the saint. Give an example of WHAT company you going to go to? I hear this from so many people BUT explain to me a different scenario on how the largest Internet company can run things? I see the push back against the NSA, Open Sourced Android (Closed Google Apps), almost everything that came out better for the customers (Gmail 1GB storage, G+ (you decided in detail who can read your post) APIs that are extremely usable) Google Voice was/is amazing. My beloved Open Source products get millions of investment from Google. The BAD in my eyes: Killing off of many products (I don't use new Google products normally)
  - gnaffle 13y ago
    IBM has always been one of the biggest contributors to Linux. But I think a major difference is that these companies haven't sold themselves as the open source, pro-internet "don't be evil" company. Google has.