4 ms·

The implicit claim is that the people running Google are not sociopaths, yet he presents no evidence to support this claim. He attributes these upheavals to the

by aristus 17y ago

The implicit claim is that the people running Google are not sociopaths, yet he presents no evidence to support this claim. He attributes these upheavals to the "march of technology" and expects the reader to swallow this without objection. What exactly makes Eisner a "sociopath" and Brin & Page "normal decent people"? It's apparently that Google makes things people want and Disney does not. I'm not sure this holds up. Disney doesn't make desirable things?

RyanMcGreal 17y ago
Disney got its start by taking content out of the public domain, making it proprietary and selling it. Google got its start doing pretty much the opposite.
NathanKP 17y ago
Also the proof that Google is "good" is that they haven't banned their competitors from search results? That seems like a pretty weak argument to me. Perhaps Google is more ethical that some of other companies. At least they aren't like Microsoft, ripping off Plurk, but that doesn't make them "good".
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
novum 17y ago
Can you imagine the deafeningly loud outcry, wailing, and gnashing of teeth that would surely follow any attempt by Google to selectively censor search results for competitors or their products? I think this is one of those times when "don't be evil" is conveniently the same thing as "build the best (or most profitable) search engine". That Google is not censoring search results says nothing of whether they're "good" or "evil"; it just seems like a smart business move.
drats 17y ago
"The thing that’s hard for the sociopaths to get their head around is that this isn’t because one of their rivals has outsmarted them — it’s just the march of technology. " I don't get this quote. It's quite clear Brin and Page did outsmart them. Murdoch's latest rantings clearly show he doesn't understand we live in a world of algorithms now and just having a team of content producers has nothing on having a team of programmers, a host of servers and the capacity to find people the content they need in the vast expanse of the Internet/long tail. Newspapers are second best at almost everything now, world news (vs. the top blogs or state-funded like BBC), local news (vs. long tail of blogs), dating (vs. numerous sites, craigslist), classifieds (vs. ebay, craigslist), book reviews/sales (vs. amazon), reviews (vs. tons of sites), advertising (vs. algorithmically placed ads). A bundle of second bests, the newspaper, was the best when it was the only thing you could buy. It was a very effective delivery mechanism that far exceeded trying to subscribe to multiple newsletters/pamphlets/zines to cover each base. But tabbed browsing (or even sequential browsing untabbed) just slaughters that delivery mechanism in specialization/choice, cost and cost of delivery, time of delivery and place of delivery. Murdoch will be able to charge for some financial news, perhaps even some political news for a while, he will be able to put some sports he gets the exclusive rights to on mobile pay-per-view (banning twittering sportsmen/women and banning video/enforcing "IP rights" at sports events). But in the end he can't beat the fact that a newspaper or a TV station is just a bundle of second bests and isn't customized. He probably knows this deep down and is just looking to "hide the decline" until he retires (which has to be in the next 10 years given how old he is) so that his legacy is intact. But my will he be biting his fingernails in retirement. And frankly, this is how it should be in any somewhat capitalist system. I don't want to hear a journalist expound on economic matters when they don't have a degree in economics, only in journalism (or no degree at all). I can just go onto one of the many economic blogs, quite a few run by professors of economics. Ditto political news. Ditto tech news on reddit, HN or slashdot where there are multiple commentators who often have graduate degrees in the subject matter and certainly many links posted to peer reviewed articles or at least Wikipedia. So often tech journalism is just the recycling of press releases, or science journalism pops up with, yet again, a correlation/causation fallacy with all of the interesting details cropped out for a mass audience. I am glad journalism is dying, the bailouts were insane enough, but there was actually a stage where some journalists tried to float the idea of bailouts for all the big newspapers and media groups. Absolutely disgusting. Hopefully they will never get any more "IP" rules passed or sabotage net neutrality and the world of information plenty that we happy few live in can be expanded to the rest of the population on the planet (half of whom have yet to make a phonecall, which is humbling when you see the resources at our fingertips).
- ryanwaggoner 17y ago
  I don't want to hear a journalist expound on economic matters when they don't have a degree in economics, only in journalism (or no degree at all). I can just go onto one of the many economic blogs, quite a few run by professors of economics. Ditto political news. Ditto tech news on reddit, HN or slashdot where there are multiple commentators who often have graduate degrees in the subject matter and certainly many links posted to peer reviewed articles or at least Wikipedia. So often tech journalism is just the recycling of press releases, or science journalism pops up with, yet again, a correlation/causation fallacy with all of the interesting details cropped out for a mass audience. I am glad journalism is dying... The thing is, journalism as you paint it isn't dying. The medium is changing, but the landscape is still dominated by journalists, meaning people who write stories on subjects they don't deeply understand, for a mass audience who doesn't know any better. And I'm really not sure that the quality is improving at all. Look at the top 10 tech blogs, or political news sites, or whatever, and tell me I'm wrong. The fact of human nature is that we're predisposed to believe people who sound like they know what they're talking about, and who can write in a persuasive manner. And our info economy has driven us to a shallower understanding of the world, I think, so we're satisfied with getting Twitter-sized updates every 10 seconds on a thousand different topics. The places like Aol and Demand Media who build content farms get this, and that's why they're going for volume and scale instead of deep quality. HN and places like it will never be mainstream, because people don't like to spend this much time thinking about stuff.
  - pyre 17y ago
    > so we're satisfied with getting Twitter-sized updates every 10 seconds on a thousand different topics. At least for local news, I'm happy about twitter-sized updates. This way I can get a gist of what's going on without the unnecessary details. For example: Gunman shoots 3 people in X town I now know that a gunman shot three people in X town, but I don't have a name, face, etc. If I end up on a jury I'm less biased towards saying that the defendant is guilty. Normally local press would try to pack as many details as possible into this report, when a gist is really good enough (at least until there's a trial).
  - mistermann 17y ago
rdtsc 17y ago
> What exactly makes Eisner a "sociopath" and Brin & Page "normal decent people"? Because Google proclaimed that they will "do no evil". So therefore they are not evil ... fire up your blogs praising Google in 1...2.... Of course a few dissidents who were turned in by Google to face long prison sentences in countries with oppressive regimes might have something to say about the track record of the "do no evil" policy, but somehow everyone already forgot about that. Once a company outgrows its founders, becomes a publically-traded behemoth, it is really not that different from other publically-traded behemoths. Some just learn from the mistakes of others, and handle their marketing and PR better (e.g. Microsoft is considered the "Evil Empire" so we will market ourselves as "good" on the moral spectrum). For instance, it helped Google's PR tremendously to take a "moral stand" as a company. Perhaps their cost-analysis showed that when they do something immoral nobody will notice and they'll use their awesome marketing skill, and everyone will forgive and forget. It worked great in that respect. But that typifies sociopathic behavior. Now I am not blaming Google too much. I think it is the legal environment that creates a Darwinian competition where sociopaths rise to the top. If companies had personalities (I don't think they do, at least not to the extent that everyone anthropomorphizing them), most would be diagnosed as dysfunctional sociopaths. Those that aren't, we never hear about.
- pyre 17y ago
  > Of course a few dissidents who were turned in by Google to face long prison sentences in countries with oppressive regimes might have something to say about the track record of the "do no evil" policy, but somehow everyone already forgot about that. No offense, but saying that they were 'turned in' is a little loaded. The governments queried Google for identities and got them. I never heard of a story where Google was actively searching for dissidents to turn into the government like some sort of bounty hunter.
  - rdtsc 17y ago
    No offense but "queried" them is a little loaded as well. Can't imagine these dissidents displayed their, name and address in the open. So "queried" is more like, "turning in the IP address and the time-stamp" at the request of the Chinese government. And I don't really buy the "we have no idea why the Chinese govt. would want these" possible excuse from Google. Never-mind their active participation in blocking information and issues relating to Tibet and thus contributing to the problem. Well, I expected to get down-voted on HN for even alluding that Google would do something wrong, and for not worshiping Sergey & Larry. This is definetly Google fanboy country. "Hail Almighty Google!" -- there, fixed it now. Let the points roll in.

by aristus 17y ago

RyanMcGreal 17y ago

Disney got its start by taking content out of the public domain, making it proprietary and selling it. Google got its start doing pretty much the opposite.

NathanKP 17y ago

Also the proof that Google is "good" is that they haven't banned their competitors from search results? That seems like a pretty weak argument to me. Perhaps Google is more ethical that some of other companies. At least they aren't like Microsoft, ripping off Plurk, but that doesn't make them "good".

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

novum 17y ago

Can you imagine the deafeningly loud outcry, wailing, and gnashing of teeth that would surely follow any attempt by Google to selectively censor search results for competitors or their products? I think this is one of those times when "don't be evil" is conveniently the same thing as "build the best (or most profitable) search engine". That Google is not censoring search results says nothing of whether they're "good" or "evil"; it just seems like a smart business move.

drats 17y ago

"The thing that’s hard for the sociopaths to get their head around is that this isn’t because one of their rivals has outsmarted them — it’s just the march of technology. " I don't get this quote. It's quite clear Brin and Page did outsmart them. Murdoch's latest rantings clearly show he doesn't understand we live in a world of algorithms now and just having a team of content producers has nothing on having a team of programmers, a host of servers and the capacity to find people the content they need in the vast expanse of the Internet/long tail. Newspapers are second best at almost everything now, world news (vs. the top blogs or state-funded like BBC), local news (vs. long tail of blogs), dating (vs. numerous sites, craigslist), classifieds (vs. ebay, craigslist), book reviews/sales (vs. amazon), reviews (vs. tons of sites), advertising (vs. algorithmically placed ads). A bundle of second bests, the newspaper, was the best when it was the only thing you could buy. It was a very effective delivery mechanism that far exceeded trying to subscribe to multiple newsletters/pamphlets/zines to cover each base. But tabbed browsing (or even sequential browsing untabbed) just slaughters that delivery mechanism in specialization/choice, cost and cost of delivery, time of delivery and place of delivery. Murdoch will be able to charge for some financial news, perhaps even some political news for a while, he will be able to put some sports he gets the exclusive rights to on mobile pay-per-view (banning twittering sportsmen/women and banning video/enforcing "IP rights" at sports events). But in the end he can't beat the fact that a newspaper or a TV station is just a bundle of second bests and isn't customized. He probably knows this deep down and is just looking to "hide the decline" until he retires (which has to be in the next 10 years given how old he is) so that his legacy is intact. But my will he be biting his fingernails in retirement. And frankly, this is how it should be in any somewhat capitalist system. I don't want to hear a journalist expound on economic matters when they don't have a degree in economics, only in journalism (or no degree at all). I can just go onto one of the many economic blogs, quite a few run by professors of economics. Ditto political news. Ditto tech news on reddit, HN or slashdot where there are multiple commentators who often have graduate degrees in the subject matter and certainly many links posted to peer reviewed articles or at least Wikipedia. So often tech journalism is just the recycling of press releases, or science journalism pops up with, yet again, a correlation/causation fallacy with all of the interesting details cropped out for a mass audience. I am glad journalism is dying, the bailouts were insane enough, but there was actually a stage where some journalists tried to float the idea of bailouts for all the big newspapers and media groups. Absolutely disgusting. Hopefully they will never get any more "IP" rules passed or sabotage net neutrality and the world of information plenty that we happy few live in can be expanded to the rest of the population on the planet (half of whom have yet to make a phonecall, which is humbling when you see the resources at our fingertips).

ryanwaggoner 17y ago
I don't want to hear a journalist expound on economic matters when they don't have a degree in economics, only in journalism (or no degree at all). I can just go onto one of the many economic blogs, quite a few run by professors of economics. Ditto political news. Ditto tech news on reddit, HN or slashdot where there are multiple commentators who often have graduate degrees in the subject matter and certainly many links posted to peer reviewed articles or at least Wikipedia. So often tech journalism is just the recycling of press releases, or science journalism pops up with, yet again, a correlation/causation fallacy with all of the interesting details cropped out for a mass audience. I am glad journalism is dying... The thing is, journalism as you paint it isn't dying. The medium is changing, but the landscape is still dominated by journalists, meaning people who write stories on subjects they don't deeply understand, for a mass audience who doesn't know any better. And I'm really not sure that the quality is improving at all. Look at the top 10 tech blogs, or political news sites, or whatever, and tell me I'm wrong. The fact of human nature is that we're predisposed to believe people who sound like they know what they're talking about, and who can write in a persuasive manner. And our info economy has driven us to a shallower understanding of the world, I think, so we're satisfied with getting Twitter-sized updates every 10 seconds on a thousand different topics. The places like Aol and Demand Media who build content farms get this, and that's why they're going for volume and scale instead of deep quality. HN and places like it will never be mainstream, because people don't like to spend this much time thinking about stuff.
- pyre 17y ago
  > so we're satisfied with getting Twitter-sized updates every 10 seconds on a thousand different topics. At least for local news, I'm happy about twitter-sized updates. This way I can get a gist of what's going on without the unnecessary details. For example: Gunman shoots 3 people in X town I now know that a gunman shot three people in X town, but I don't have a name, face, etc. If I end up on a jury I'm less biased towards saying that the defendant is guilty. Normally local press would try to pack as many details as possible into this report, when a gist is really good enough (at least until there's a trial).
- mistermann 17y ago

rdtsc 17y ago

> What exactly makes Eisner a "sociopath" and Brin & Page "normal decent people"? Because Google proclaimed that they will "do no evil". So therefore they are not evil ... fire up your blogs praising Google in 1...2.... Of course a few dissidents who were turned in by Google to face long prison sentences in countries with oppressive regimes might have something to say about the track record of the "do no evil" policy, but somehow everyone already forgot about that. Once a company outgrows its founders, becomes a publically-traded behemoth, it is really not that different from other publically-traded behemoths. Some just learn from the mistakes of others, and handle their marketing and PR better (e.g. Microsoft is considered the "Evil Empire" so we will market ourselves as "good" on the moral spectrum). For instance, it helped Google's PR tremendously to take a "moral stand" as a company. Perhaps their cost-analysis showed that when they do something immoral nobody will notice and they'll use their awesome marketing skill, and everyone will forgive and forget. It worked great in that respect. But that typifies sociopathic behavior. Now I am not blaming Google too much. I think it is the legal environment that creates a Darwinian competition where sociopaths rise to the top. If companies had personalities (I don't think they do, at least not to the extent that everyone anthropomorphizing them), most would be diagnosed as dysfunctional sociopaths. Those that aren't, we never hear about.

pyre 17y ago
> Of course a few dissidents who were turned in by Google to face long prison sentences in countries with oppressive regimes might have something to say about the track record of the "do no evil" policy, but somehow everyone already forgot about that. No offense, but saying that they were 'turned in' is a little loaded. The governments queried Google for identities and got them. I never heard of a story where Google was actively searching for dissidents to turn into the government like some sort of bounty hunter.
- rdtsc 17y ago
  No offense but "queried" them is a little loaded as well. Can't imagine these dissidents displayed their, name and address in the open. So "queried" is more like, "turning in the IP address and the time-stamp" at the request of the Chinese government. And I don't really buy the "we have no idea why the Chinese govt. would want these" possible excuse from Google. Never-mind their active participation in blocking information and issues relating to Tibet and thus contributing to the problem. Well, I expected to get down-voted on HN for even alluding that Google would do something wrong, and for not worshiping Sergey & Larry. This is definetly Google fanboy country. "Hail Almighty Google!" -- there, fixed it now. Let the points roll in.