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Lenovo’s Chief Technology Officer Discusses the Superfish Adware Fiasco

7 points by ghosh 12y ago

IvyMike 12y ago
> The original motivation for this was that the product team was being asked, “Can we do something to improve our consumer experience?” [...] The motivation was to enhance the experience. This nonsense could have been addressed with one follow-up question: Peter Hortensius, since it was so experience enhancing, do you have Superfish installed on your personal machines at home, and on your employee machines at Lenovo? Why not?
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  Actually it isn't nonsense. Some people, especially those who are non-technical consider everything their phone/tablet/laptop to do as 'magical' and incomprehensible. And to that group you can explain something with only the positive aspects and they will endorse it. To use a contrived example you can describe outdoor playgrounds as a fun way for your kids to exercise, or you can explain that they create about a dozen ways for your kids to break bones and get concussions. Both are "true". To a product designer, it no doubt sounds great that you can share ideas with your customers based on things they are looking at. They probably don't probe too deeply into either how that works, or in the hands of someone unscrupulous what it might allow. Because they are shipping stuff an moving forward.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ron0c 12y ago
>We are digging through. By the end of the week you will get an absolute statement on that. I do not believe there is any. But I want to be 1,000 percent sure. Lenovo could come out ahead on this thing IMO if they are honest and really clean up their default builds from here on out. Take note from your new acquisition Motorola and how they just add a little bit here and there to the AOSP builds. Not flood them with a bloatware and Motorola Email, Motorola Browser, and such like some companies do.
x0x0 12y ago
Q. How did Superfish even get onto Lenovo machines in the first place? A. The original motivation for this was that the product team was being asked, "Can we do something to improve our consumer experience?" Someone had the idea to improve their shopping experience in a novel way — not to own their experience, but just, if the consumer is looking at a desk, can we suggest an alternative product that looks like that desk? The motivation was to enhance the experience. This is some amazing bullshit: nothing like ads on my computer to 'improve my experience'. And if this is all about improving my experience, why is Lenovo getting paid by the adware vendor? It's pretty damn annoying the interviewer didn't push on this at all.
- m3rc 12y ago
  Not only that, but if that piece of fantastical bullshit is actually way worse if taken at face value. "Obviously, in retrospect, if we had known what that meant in terms of how it was implemented, we would have never done it." So they decided that the one thing their customers were missing from their experience was a targeted ad system, and they decided to implement that without doing any research into the company ?! They just went ahead and stuck a comprehensive spyware system into their laptops and did so without any knowledge of how it would work? There is no way that can be spun into a better version of events than "we're greedy assholes". That is pretending you weren't malicious by claiming you run a business like a bunch of high schoolers

7 points by ghosh 12y ago

> The original motivation for this was that the product team was being asked, “Can we do something to improve our consumer experience?” [...] The motivation was to enhance the experience. This nonsense could have been addressed with one follow-up question: Peter Hortensius, since it was so experience enhancing, do you have Superfish installed on your personal machines at home, and on your employee machines at Lenovo? Why not?

ChuckMcM 12y ago
Actually it isn't nonsense. Some people, especially those who are non-technical consider everything their phone/tablet/laptop to do as 'magical' and incomprehensible. And to that group you can explain something with only the positive aspects and they will endorse it. To use a contrived example you can describe outdoor playgrounds as a fun way for your kids to exercise, or you can explain that they create about a dozen ways for your kids to break bones and get concussions. Both are "true". To a product designer, it no doubt sounds great that you can share ideas with your customers based on things they are looking at. They probably don't probe too deeply into either how that works, or in the hands of someone unscrupulous what it might allow. Because they are shipping stuff an moving forward.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ron0c 12y ago

>We are digging through. By the end of the week you will get an absolute statement on that. I do not believe there is any. But I want to be 1,000 percent sure. Lenovo could come out ahead on this thing IMO if they are honest and really clean up their default builds from here on out. Take note from your new acquisition Motorola and how they just add a little bit here and there to the AOSP builds. Not flood them with a bloatware and Motorola Email, Motorola Browser, and such like some companies do.

x0x0 12y ago

Q. How did Superfish even get onto Lenovo machines in the first place? A. The original motivation for this was that the product team was being asked, "Can we do something to improve our consumer experience?" Someone had the idea to improve their shopping experience in a novel way — not to own their experience, but just, if the consumer is looking at a desk, can we suggest an alternative product that looks like that desk? The motivation was to enhance the experience. This is some amazing bullshit: nothing like ads on my computer to 'improve my experience'. And if this is all about improving my experience, why is Lenovo getting paid by the adware vendor? It's pretty damn annoying the interviewer didn't push on this at all.

m3rc 12y ago
Not only that, but if that piece of fantastical bullshit is actually way worse if taken at face value. "Obviously, in retrospect, if we had known what that meant in terms of how it was implemented, we would have never done it." So they decided that the one thing their customers were missing from their experience was a targeted ad system, and they decided to implement that without doing any research into the company ?! They just went ahead and stuck a comprehensive spyware system into their laptops and did so without any knowledge of how it would work? There is no way that can be spun into a better version of events than "we're greedy assholes". That is pretending you weren't malicious by claiming you run a business like a bunch of high schoolers