[HN Gopher] Googlespeak - How Google limits thought about antitrust
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Googlespeak - How Google limits thought about antitrust
Author : cyrusshepard
Score : 895 points
Date : 2021-08-24 20:06 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (zyppy.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (zyppy.com)
| clipradiowallet wrote:
| The author could use another search engine, or put their business
| efforts(SEO) into a field _not_ dependent on another
| company(Google) making zero changes to their services. They aren
| 't the power company(or another utility), they are a for-profit
| corporation, behaving in a manner the shareholders of a for-
| profit corporation expect them to.
|
| Or is that...unreasonable?
| mcrad wrote:
| Okay so do shareholders of public companies encourage the
| management to commit fraud and deception?
| coldacid wrote:
| What good would "[putting] their business efforts" towards
| other companies accomplish, other than cutting off their own
| air supply? With how much of search is dominated by Google, you
| have to deal with them if your job is SEO, simply because all
| of their search competitors _combined_ don 't add up to the Big
| G.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > Or is that...unreasonable
|
| Yes. And I suppose that is what your downvoters mean too.
| disillusioned wrote:
| My friend has told me that Amazon has much the same _very strict_
| limitations on language and messaging around certain terms,
| especially in any retained messaging. He also mentioned that his
| unit doesn't retain Chimes past 30 days or so, specifically to
| avoid ever having it used in discovery.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| If Google would like to return the public investments in the
| creation of The Web perhaps then and only then should we allow
| them to destroy it.
| realjohng wrote:
| You know you're good when you get to top of HN with polar
| opposite stories: driving the future with waymo and killing the
| future with monopoly.
|
| Somebody should beat Google w features. bing anybody?
| benatkin wrote:
| It can get pretty nasty. Last year @jaffathecake who works at
| Google called @getify's "language" Trump-like for trying to raise
| the alarm about Chrome looking at hiding the path from the URL
| bar until the URL bar is focused, like Safari does. The original
| tweet is deleted, so you can't check whether it was "sowing
| division", but it wasn't IMO.
|
| https://twitter.com/jaffathecake/status/1275030931577896962
|
| Edit: This is very similar to how Google used their blog to
| criticize Rand Fishkin, as mentioned in the article. Here's the
| official post from Google, which reads like a personal attack:
| https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-sends-more...
| afterburner wrote:
| > But to the Googlers, it was as if I was speaking another
| language.
|
| I mean, they are literally being paid not to understand.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I don't particularly like Google, but it is obvious that they are
| in the "Everything you say may be used against you" situation and
| they cannot simply take the fifth and cut off any communication
| among employees.
|
| If you need to take into account that every single message sent
| over internal media may be one day combed by hostile
| investigators for anything that might be considered your
| wrongdoing, you need to be careful, regardless of your size.
| ineedasername wrote:
| For a more complete look at the concept that linguistic structure
| & lexicon set the boundaries of thought, see the Sapir-Whorf
| Hypothesis [0]. Spoiler alert: the "strong" version doesn't quite
| hold up under experimental scrutiny, but the "light" version has
| some legs.
|
| As a bonus, follow-up with George Lakoff's _Metaphors we Live
| By_.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
| kens wrote:
| I second your recommendation of _Metaphors we live by_. It is a
| book that had a lasting impact on how I view the world and I
| think most HN readers would find it interesting.
| ryankupyn wrote:
| I think that a lot of this makes sense from Google's legal
| perspective, where antitrust litigation is a constant
| consideration and any internal document mentioning market share
| or competitors could be used against them.
|
| I'm sure that there is a great deal of discussion about potential
| anticompetitive issues within Google and with their outside
| counsel, but in a context where legal privilege protects against
| disclosure.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| One could argue that they position themselves as an
| accomplished monopoly already, because their internal
| correspondence pretends competition doesn't even exist, or is
| of no consequence whatsoever.
| coinomega wrote:
| Being a monopoly (or to be precise: to be in a dominant
| position), is not problematic in EU competition law. It is
| the abuse of said position that is illegal!
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/competition/publications/factsheets/ant.
| ..
| ec109685 wrote:
| >It's difficult to imagine any new flight search, no matter how
| innovative, winning today with Google acting as the web's
| gatekeeper.
|
| Google results are dominated by the Expedia Group (a conglomerate
| of tons of different brands:
| https://www.expediagroup.com/home/default.aspx). While Google's
| practices have definitely hurt, it's a _huge_ business, and
| probably a larger reason why a new flight search competitor can
| 't get off the ground.
|
| As a customer, it's annoying there isn't more diversity anymore.
| Generic travel searches are dominated by these brands, plus
| articles full of affiliate links that are hard to trust.
| ummonk wrote:
| It's not just legal risk but PR risk as well it's hat they're
| trying to avoid. Notice how the press often gets its hands on and
| makes a big deal out of shocking comments made by a few random
| employees in a company employing tens of thousands.
| jewelry wrote:
| A lot of discussion of 1984 here in US. The truth is most of the
| people here have no idea of what 1984 looks like, unless they've
| lived in China for more than 5 years. That's the combination of
| money, power and brain power to lock the intelligence and wash
| the brains.
| a_imho wrote:
| The other way around, classic 'It is difficult to get a man to
| understand something when his salary depends upon his not
| understanding it'. Googlespeak can be a crutch in the process,
| but I don't think it is the root cause.
| graderjs wrote:
| It's interesting this language creates a reality where only
| Google exists. Apart from the legal and 'anti-trust' aspects, I'm
| sure this is useful for creating a sense of manifest destiny,
| where Google is the only service that people see. I'm sure that
| is eventually inevitable, that search becomes like an intelligent
| agent and there is a single company that provides it. Other
| people see a future based on individuals granting different AIs
| permission to mine their personal data in return for personalized
| services...which would also be an interesting future.
|
| But I think we are definitely headed for a single-massive company
| providing all intelligent search at least for a time. It just
| seems like that will be the best way to get the best version of
| that product, until we actually know what that product really is.
|
| That AI search company may not be Google, and if not that would
| be a fascinating story to see how such a player emerged as
| underdog to become the dominant search provider in a Google-
| dominated world. Exciting times!
| deathanatos wrote:
| This is such an uncharitable interpretation of the training
| materials. The material there is not saying "if you want to speak
| about things that raise antitrust concerns, use this coded
| language", it's saying "don't do these things, and just focus on
| building a good product".
|
| Like, the thing here that really boggles my mind: if the training
| materials had said _literally the exact opposite_ of what they
| do: "crush the competition, find ways to prevent competitors
| from competing fairly with us" etc. -- someone like the author
| would write an article vilifying them. (And rightly so.) So the
| company instead says "focus on our product; competition is good
| and okay" and ... they're vilified for it. Damned if they do,
| damned if they don't.
|
| By this article's twisted logic, any company focused on their
| product is just engaging in newspeak for thinly veiled anti-
| competitive behavior. Or is it just if Google does it?
|
| (It kills me to argue this, since I think normally these
| threads/articles spawn good debate about the size and scope of
| FAANG. But... this one is ridiculous.)
| B-Con wrote:
| Every now and then I'm reminded of a) how much of HN has never
| worked for a large company, and b) how unfamiliar much of HN is
| with common business and legal practices.
|
| Too many thought leaders masquerading as engineers.
| kettleballroll wrote:
| You're being cryptic. The people your criticizing (this might
| include me, i have no way of knowing) will not be able to
| learn anything from your reply. It would be more constructive
| I'd you shared your thoughts so we'd have a chance to
| improve. What is your point, exactly? Spell it out for us,
| please.
| imhelpingu wrote:
| I would encourage readers to compare this disingenuous top
| comment with the other disingenuous top comment.
|
| edit: And those of you trying to suppress that comparison with
| downmods can cry more.
| moeris wrote:
| Am I supposed to come away thinking they're both reasonable
| interpretations which accurately critique the main argument
| in this article? Because that's what I came away with.
|
| (At the moment, the other to comment is about how focusing on
| positive goals is a good business strategy, not just light-
| stepping on legal egg shells.)
| imhelpingu wrote:
| I pasted the current top comment for you since you seem to
| be having trouble finding it or reading it:
|
| >When I was at IBM 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a
| monopoly, since there were plenty of competitors in the
| hardware space (HP, Sun, Dell, etc) and in the software
| space (Oracle, SAP, etc.) and in the Services space
| (Accenture, PwC, KPMG, etc.) employees still had to
| complete annual legal training that was very similar to
| what was described in the post.
|
| >Any large company with half-way competent legal counsel is
| going to tell their employees not to say, "our goal is to
| crush our competitors, dominate the market, and hear the
| lamentation of their women." Instead they will tell their
| employees to focus on making life better for their
| customers. It's a much healthier way for product managers
| to focus, and what you might do if the goal is
| "crush/dominate the competition" is _not_ the same than if
| the goal is delight the customer. So it 's not just a
| messaging strategy to prevent embarassing e-mails from
| coming out at trial; it's a business strategy, too.
|
| Hope this helps.
| mwint wrote:
| Can you explain what you're trying to say? I feel like
| I'm supposed to see something damning in these two
| paragraphs, but I'm not seeing it. Writing styles seem
| dissimilar enough that I don't think they're the same
| person, if that's it.
| shrimpx wrote:
| You're being downvoted because your comments make no sense.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _This is such an uncharitable interpretation of the training
| materials. The material there is not saying "if you want to
| speak about things that raise antitrust concerns, use this
| coded language", it's saying "don't do these things, and just
| focus on building a good product"._
|
| That is a very charitable interpretation of the training
| materials.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Your comment shows that it works, exactly like the article says
| it does.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Accusing interpretations of being "uncharitable" feels really
| odd when we're talking about communication training material.
| It's not some Slack thread taken out of context, we're reading
| quotes from reviewed and crafted material.
|
| Also I don't see how changing "Cut off competitors' access to
| target" to "Integrate target with Google" matches your
| idealistic view of "focus on our product; competition is good
| and okay".
|
| They basically acknowledge competition will be crushed, and are
| asking for appropriate communication to avoid troubles. It
| makes sense from Google's point of view, but I don't see why we
| should be advocating for them in any way.
| ma2rten wrote:
| I think you are reading something into it that is not
| necessarily there. The slides give examples of things that
| are appropriate to say and are not appropriate to say. It
| doesn't necessarily mean that one thing has to changed into
| the other.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| That "good vs bad" table doesn't work if the element on the
| same line don't refer to the same situations/behaviors. The
| examples above of reneging "Dominant" for "Successful" is a
| clear example of that.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Just like the 1984 party so the article is spot on.
| krsdcbl wrote:
| But it is not training material that tries to convey "focus on
| the product".
|
| It's literally communication guidelines of a profit oriented
| company dominating it's market in a monopolistic way that says
| "avoid talking about market or market share, this is bad"
|
| The only way to have a "charitable" interpretation of this is
| to partake in their game, imho.
| Yizahi wrote:
| To simplify - if the actions of an entity are bad (or perceived
| as bad), then whether they are saying truth about those actions
| or lies - DOESN'T MATTER AT ALL. So yes, indeed, Google will be
| damned whatever they say, as long as their actions stay the
| same.
| dennisblue wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| When I was at IBM 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a
| monopoly, since there were plenty of competitors in the
| hardware space (HP, Sun, Dell, etc) and in the software space
| (Oracle, SAP, etc.) and in the Services space (Accenture, PwC,
| KPMG, etc.) employees still had to complete annual legal
| training that was very similar to what was described in the
| post.
|
| Any large company with half-way competent legal counsel is
| going to tell their employees not to say, "our goal is to crush
| our competitors, dominate the market, and hear the lamentation
| of their women." Instead they will tell their employees to
| focus on making life better for their customers. It's a much
| healthier way for product managers to focus, and what you might
| do if the goal is "crush/dominate the competition" is _not_ the
| same than if the goal is delight the customer. So it 's not
| just a messaging strategy to prevent embarassing e-mails from
| coming out at trial; it's a business strategy, too.
| audunw wrote:
| Whether it is charitable or uncharitable depends on your
| subjective interpretation of the intent of the training
| material. But I think the focus on not talking about market
| share is a huge sign that this material is not written with
| good intentions. That makes very little sense.
|
| If the material was written exactly the opposite, it'd almost
| make more sense, most companies want a high awareness of their
| market share... unless they're worried about being hit with an
| anti-trust case.
|
| And so, when it comes to banning phrases like "crush the
| competition" it's not that rule alone which is worrying, it's
| the whole package.
|
| Your argument is also a bit flawed, in that the alternative
| isn't training material that encourages talking about "crushing
| the competition". The realistic alternative is that the
| training material wouldn't have to mention it at all. Either
| because the company doesn't have a problem with that kind of
| culture, or because the company isn't close to being a
| monopoly, such that talking about "crushing the competition"
| would just be interpreted as healthy competitiveness.
| dleslie wrote:
| While looking at the tables of good versus bad phrasing I
| couldn't shake the feeling that I was reading something not so
| dissimilar to how leaders of organized crime historically avoided
| prosecution. By not naming the crime, by speaking about it
| indirectly and with softer language, they hoped to invigorate
| doubt in a hypothetical jury.
|
| It's a method of avoiding responsibility oft credited to Henry
| II, who stated off-hand "Will no one rid me of this turbulent
| priest?"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
| JadeNB wrote:
| Or the earlier example "Edwardum occidere nolite timere bonum
| est" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_
| sen...).
| roenxi wrote:
| Yeah, but that isn't even a hint of a problem. It would be like
| observing that Google and the mafia also both use accounting
| principles to organise their finances.
|
| These large companies are _going_ to be involved in lawsuits,
| no matter what. Their written communications are _going_ to be
| trawled through, more than likely. Everyone in the company
| would have to be a bit simple for there not to be some
| preparations to defend against legal discovery.
|
| Even if you believe yourself to be completely innocent of any
| crime, it is still stupid to make life easier for some legal
| assailant.
| dleslie wrote:
| If the behaviour doesn't warrant prosecution then there would
| be no need for careful use of language to conceal it.
| eunoia wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder how much of the push against remote work from
| certain large companies comes down to the increased
| discoverability (in the legal sense) of employee communications
| over Slack/Teams/etc vs in person...
| eunoia wrote:
| Can't edit anymore, so replying. Can anyone tell me why this is
| apparently not a concern? Genuinely curious especially in light
| of this article.
| bickeringyokel wrote:
| How large a market share does a company need to be a monopoly?
| Search seems like more of an oligopoly, is there a legal
| definition of market size for something to be a monopoly or is it
| more of a case by case thing?
|
| I'd say youtube is probably the closest thing they have to a
| monopoly, but even then there's tiktok, ig/Facebook etc. Those
| probably count as video "creator" platforms.
| tytso wrote:
| When I was at IBM 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a
| monopoly, since there were plenty of competitors in the hardware
| space (HP, Sun, Dell, etc) and in the software space (Oracle,
| SAP, etc.) and in the Services space (Accenture, PwC, KPMG, etc.)
| employees still had to complete annual legal training that was
| very similar to what was described in the post.
|
| Any large company with half-way competent legal counsel is going
| to tell their employees not to say, "our goal is to crush our
| competitors, dominate the market, and hear the lamentation of
| their women." Instead they will tell their employees to focus on
| making life better for their customers. It's a much healthier way
| for product managers to focus, and what you might do if the goal
| is "crush/dominate the competition" is *not* the same than if the
| goal is delight the customer. So it's not just a messaging
| strategy to prevent embarassing e-mails from coming out at trial;
| it's a business strategy, too.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Here's Adam Curtis' brief history of Google's relationship to
| "the customer" (false label: advertisers are the customers, not
| search engine users)
|
| 1998 Idealism. "I think I want to make the world a better
| place."
|
| https://youtu.be/55jSx4pRZqI?t=1789s
|
| 2000 Disaster and desperation. VCs tell SB what Google must do.
|
| https://youtu.be/55jSx4pRZqI?t=2249s
| jollybean wrote:
| Neither having a child out of wedlock or even with someone on
| staff, and, quoting Conan the Barbarian have anything to do
| with anything really.
|
| Sergei Brin pushed the company to invest in his wife's
| company, had an affair with a subordinate, and probably
| quotes some other funny things along the way, it might say
| 'something' but I'm not sure if it speaks to 'competence'.
|
| I'm not sure if this attack on the character of the
| companies, while maybe somewhat relevant, really speaks to
| the 'legal posture' of the companies.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "The only thing in my head is a conviction that our
| fascination with modern technology and the internet may go
| very quickly. It doesn't mean the internet will disappear -
| but it will just become suddenly seen as mundane. And not
| threatening. And quite a lot of it a bit of a con." - Adam
| Curtis
| equality_1138 wrote:
| Healthier way? This is wrong. First, to admit your goal is to
| crush your competitors is completely appropriate. That is the
| exact way the market is supposed to work. Thoughts about hiding
| this inherent part of any businesses strategy is, well, fine
| for lawyers, but essentially ignorant for engineers. Lawyers
| are not paid to make things, nor to develop your strategy. They
| are paid to manipulate laws and the truth. To write ethical
| issues off as lawyers just lawyering is a terrible way to
| approach business or technology.
| vasco wrote:
| You can win a 100 meter race by having a goal of running sub
| 8 seconds, or you can win a race by having a goal of crushing
| the other athletes. It's up to you if during your training
| you're focused on the times versus on the other athletes.
| It's also up to you if during the race you're looking left
| and right to see how fast they're running or if you're just
| focused on going the fastest you can. I think this is the
| difference in approach that they were mentioning. Obviously
| you still defeat the competition as a byproduct of being the
| fastest, but they are very different approaches.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Except in the race, your goal is to be the first, not to
| eliminate your competition. On the market, your goal is
| _literally to crush your competitors_ in any legally
| possible way. Making _the best_ product is one way to do
| it, though not the most effective one.
|
| People seem to forget that the market, as a system of
| competing actors, doesn't care. It's like the
| lawnmower/Oracle mentioned elsewhere in the thread. It just
| doesn't give a damn. All the wealth any member of society
| enjoys is merely a side effect - the same way the motive
| force for a car is a side effect of combustion in the ICE.
| Gasoline doesn't give a damn about you being late for work,
| it only wants to violently oxidize. We make the market
| economy work the same way we make a car work - by carefully
| harnessing powerful forces that, inadequately constrained,
| are _deadly_.
| grecy wrote:
| Which is hilarious, because I remember very clearly when
| McDonald's was crushing Burger King and the head of McDonald's
| said, on the record, "You know what you do when your
| competitors are drowning. ... step on their head".
|
| I guess burger joints can't be monopolies.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Burger joints compete in the "fast food" market which also
| includes fried chicken joints, taco joints, and the like.
| They also have more broad competition from the "fast casual"
| market, "restaurant dining" market, and the "food" market.
|
| The question antitrust has historically asked here is the
| concentration, and the extent to which have they have pricing
| power.
| account42 wrote:
| In other news: Googler doesn't see anything wrong with Google.
| Frost1x wrote:
| But do the means justify the ends? Most people understand that
| unethical behavior or concerning actions to get a desired
| 'good' result isn't acceptable.
|
| But the current approach is to mask the ends, the end goal may
| actually not be what we desire, e.g. corrupt monopolies
| leeching off society. But as long as we create approaches and
| incentive structures that get us to the same ends that are
| deemed acceptable, then it's just an "undesired side effect" we
| can handwave away, or so many managing businesses think.
|
| Both the ends and the means matter.
| bogwog wrote:
| At what point does *market share* not become a KPI? At what
| point does market share become so irrelevant, that you stop
| tracking it altogether in your entire multibillion-dollar
| megacorp, and make your employees stop talking about it?
|
| Answer: When you become a monopoly (or are on your way there),
| and need to hide from regulators. That's the point where the
| market becomes irrelevant, so tracking market share is nothing
| more than a liability.
|
| The "improve life for customers" stuff is all fluff that you
| might read in a training manual alongside photos of happy
| employees playing ping pong at work.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> The "improve life for customers" stuff is all fluff that
| you might read in a training manual alongside photos of happy
| employees playing ping pong at work.
|
| I'd say Google is redefining the word "customers". What they
| really mean is users. Customers are traditionally those who
| pay for products or services. I'm sure Google also makes
| things easy for those who pay them, but that's not who they
| mean by "customers".
|
| If I'm not mistaken the GoogleSpeak word for "companies we
| extort money from to maintain relevance in search results" is
| probably "partners".
| ekianjo wrote:
| if you create a product thats unique or defines a category
| you start by having a market share of 100 percent. Market
| share does not define monopolies. What defines monopolies is
| the absence of alternatives. Like you know, the postal
| service to send letters. funnily nobody talks about those.
| jollybean wrote:
| The economic definition of monopoly is 'price setter' as
| opposed to 'price taker'. The government actually defines
| that as 'market power'. But in order for it to be something
| 'anti trust' etc. then it's more complicated.
|
| Sherman Act, Section 2 [1] - definitely worth a read.
|
| [1] https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-
| single-...
| yakubin wrote:
| _> Any large company with half-way competent legal counsel is
| going to tell their employees not to say, "our goal is to
| crush our competitors, dominate the market, and hear the
| lamentation of their women." Instead they will tell their
| employees to focus on making life better for their customers._
|
| The lawn mower would like to have a word with you:
| <https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2040>
| CrazyCatDog wrote:
| Reference is not until about the 38:30 mark, link starts
| sooner but provides greatly amplifying context!
| georgeecollins wrote:
| That is an amazing talk! Thank you for sharing.
| throwaway201025 wrote:
| > Any large company with half-way competent legal counsel is
| going to tell their employees not to say, "our goal is to crush
| our competitors, dominate the market, and hear the lamentation
| of their women."
|
| I don't think that's true. I work for Samsung and we talk about
| market share and competitors _all the time_.
|
| I mean, why shouldn't we? Being crystal clear is a very good
| step to achieve a goal. We need to be more honest.
| 2hatredboned wrote:
| Somehow related Comic: >
| //s20.directupload.net/images/210825/v4dbak6h.png ^^
|
| BTW: (Yesterday-News) "News For South African Looters As
| Samsung Moves To Block Stolen TVs..."
| delusional wrote:
| I agree that others do the same, but the observation that
| vocabulary somewhat affects thought is still interesting. As an
| example, the sentence about "defensive rationale" didn't just
| reformulate the sentence, it completely changed the meaning.
|
| If people aren't allowed to talk about "crushing competition"
| they also can't think about it. If they can't think about it
| they also can't recognize it when it happens.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The policy isn't to avoid crushing competition or becoming a
| monopoly in some market, it's to avoid specifically setting
| out to do so. Unless Google intentionally slows
| development/cuts resources, the amount of capital and level
| of talent they put into products makes "make the product
| better for users" a plan very likely to result in naturally
| taking over the market.
| smhost wrote:
| That's the policy that the Biden team is trying to change.
| Following from what you said, do you expect Google to
| change its behavior once the natural monopoly policy
| loophole gets fixed?
| judge2020 wrote:
| > That's the policy that the Biden team is trying to
| change.
|
| Source? the FAAMG plan with horizontally scaling the
| business into more markets is ultimately "benefit the
| consumer", so disallowing such expansion is effectively
| making products worse (for the majority; the minority
| customers unhappy with the new FAAMG-backed competing
| product do indeed suffer). If this policy is that narrow,
| they'll just slow acquisitions/product development and
| either start spinning off more companies or increasing VC
| spending, which doesn't move the needle besides detaching
| the company's name from their money.
| smhost wrote:
| You justified natural monopolies in your first comment.
|
| What do you think Biden meant when he said "capitalism
| without competition isn't capitalism"?
| judge2020 wrote:
| > What do you think Biden meant when he said "capitalism
| without competition isn't capitalism"?
|
| Until we see some antitrust action that's an actual
| breakup and not 'locked down devices that aren't game
| consoles need to allow third party App Stores' we won't
| know the actual extent to which Biden is serious about
| doing anything to natural horizontal monopolies.
| dannyw wrote:
| Trust me, every Google exec thinks hard about crushing
| competition. They just don't put it in writing.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Do they? Googles competition is Facebook (advertising). But
| Google seems very wary about going into FB dominated areas
| (Google+ notwithstanding), and FB is very wary about going
| into Google areas (no FB phones or tablets).
|
| They kind of agree Google is the search/Android company,
| and FB is the social network company, and that way they can
| both sell ads.
|
| Even Reddit, Snapchat, and TikTok, FBs main competitors,
| were never "crushed." There was never a full out assault on
| them.
|
| FBs attitude seemed to be to watch them, learn from them,
| and adopt their best practices.
| smhost wrote:
| What exactly is the logic here, that because IBM used to do the
| same thing Google is doing, and because IBM was not a monopoly,
| that we should be okay with Google behaving this way?
| simcop2387 wrote:
| The logic is that this isn't a sign of google being a
| monopoly and that it has more implications than _just_ being
| there to avoid anti-trust actions.
| smhost wrote:
| That doesn't follow. You can read it in the exact opposite
| direction, that every other company culture is already
| behaving as if it is a monopoly.
| jollybean wrote:
| It's much more simple once you realize that 'language is
| not reality'.
|
| People can use all sorts of language, colloquially, and
| it can be interpreted in many ways.
|
| You could absolutely use language within the company like
| 'crush the competition' wherein the culture is fully
| product oriented, great quality, support etc. and 'win
| the market'. That's perfectly legal and frankly ethical.
|
| Legal's job is to protect from scrutiny and litigation,
| in which case, they will, among other things, say 'don't
| use this language'. Because it could be used as a kind of
| evidence, even if it's totally contextualized and
| misunderstood.
|
| They will also obviously advise the CEO and product
| leadership on materially illegal activities, but it's
| unlikely that rank and file are going to hear about that.
|
| For example, colluding with your industry partners on
| hiring practices ... you're not going to be privy to
| that.
|
| If the company is not getting sued, legal is doing it's
| job. The rest of the equation mostly up to the rest of
| the executive team.
| smhost wrote:
| "Language is not reality" _is_ the problem at stake,
| because language is really how people and organizations
| think. Language structures the field of possible self-
| justifications, and it 's the ruler against which
| behaviors are measured. But, like you said, the fact that
| monopoly-related language is prohibited doesn't change
| reality. All the prohibition does is that it stops the
| organization's (and regulators') ability to measure its
| behavior against possible self-justifications. It's a
| strange legal technology.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > is really how people and organizations think. Language
| structures the field of possible self-justifications, and
| it's the ruler against which behaviors are measured
|
| This works less well when employees are not taught from
| birth only the language Google's legal team want them to
| learn.
| regnull wrote:
| Literally every other company does this. I'm not sure what is
| the story here - the lawyers are coaching the employees not
| to put anything that can be used against the company in
| writing? The author tried to make it about Google for
| whatever reason.
| smhost wrote:
| That's an indictment of every other company as well then.
| The point is about anti-competitive ideology. If "anything
| that can be used against the company" also includes anti-
| competitive thinking, then that's the conflict.
| randomperson_24 wrote:
| true
| UncleMeat wrote:
| There have been a handful of these. Somebody leaks the
| communications training and then somebody writes an article
| is shock that a company with 150,000 employees has
| communication training.
| travoc wrote:
| Every company does this? I've worked at quite a few Fortune
| 500's and never experienced this.
| ajb wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| Via market share, competition amplifies the rewards of being
| better. if you make your product 1% better than the
| competition, you might go from 30% to 70% market share. But to
| do so, you have to actually gain the market share. You can't
| just "build it and they will come"; in many industries, someone
| has to go out and win the market after the product is built.
| And so a lot of people in companies are really, really, really,
| motivated to gain market share. That's what increases their
| share option value, and gets their bonuses. And that's what
| tempts companies towards lock-in and all the rest.
| zeteo wrote:
| Public relations has been around for a hundred years now. It
| shouldn't be news to anyone that large companies are careful
| with phrasing things and have full time employees devoted to
| the nuances of messaging.
|
| And yes, when armies of lawyers are routinely descending on
| your internal communications then it sucks but PR-speak has to
| become the norm for all. Most people don't like it, but the
| consequences of not doing it are even worse.
| kens wrote:
| > 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a monopoly
|
| I think some historical background is necessary here. Nowadays
| IBM isn't a monopoly but during the 20th century, IBM was more
| or less a monopoly. IBM's antitrust problems go back to their
| 1936 consent decree and 1956 consent decree. IBM was subject to
| a _huge_ antitrust case that went on from 1969 to 1982 as well
| as many other antitrust lawsuits.
|
| The first point is that of course IBM and other at-risk
| companies will have training to keep people from writing things
| that will cause antitrust problems. (Their antitrust case had
| 30 million pages of discovery.)
|
| Second, antitrust cases hinge on the "market" (as a legal
| term), so it's not surprising that Google wants employees to
| avoid using that word. In an antitrust case, each side will
| argue over what is "the market", and you don't want to lose the
| case because of a random email discussing the "market".
| Google's recommendation to say "Area" instead of "Market"
| hardly limits thought, but it makes a big different in
| antitrust.
|
| Third, I don't want to go all CLS, but antitrust law is pretty
| much incoherent and illogical. Even after the antitrust case
| against IBM ended (by fizzling out after 13 years), nobody
| agrees on whether IBM was violating antitrust laws or not.
| slownews45 wrote:
| No question that anti-trust is currently pretty much
| incoherent.
|
| One frustration is that it has morphed from things around
| consumer harm to a new focus on harm to other ... businesses.
|
| Google downranks some crappy content farm / shopping
| aggregator - bam - antitrust complaint. Yes, it hurt that
| business and so helps google shopping - but no one asks - do
| users like these crap content farms? Same with google finance
| - I liked it. Now google can't prioritize that - even through
| I want it and so I get sent to a giant ad laden garbage fest
| of another finance / stock quote site.
|
| The other issue consumers no longer have any leverage with
| respect to very large businesses and govt is no where. So
| Apple can build a very valuable offering by playing "cop" in
| their closed garden. That is a consumer benefit.
|
| In other words, you individually would never be able to
| negotiate a deal where someone would let you sign up for
| their service anonymously, but apple can force that.
|
| They can force trials signups to have full details of
| renewals (same font).
|
| They can force folks to allow you to cancel subscriptions
| without huge advance warnings and will remind you of
| subscriptions in advance. Yes, this sucks for developers, but
| the consumer is helped by these steps.
|
| Until govt steps in, I'd love for them to back off on folks
| creating these places where the tons of crap the govt allows
| on the broader internet is not permitted.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _One frustration is that it has morphed from things
| around consumer harm to a new focus on harm to other ...
| businesses._
|
| This is the root of most hullabaloo around Apple, isn't it?
| Many of the things they do, like limiting exploitation by
| third-party payment systems (e.g. which rarely offer
| refunds for regretful purchases, unlike the App Store which
| always complies) or hiding your email from personal data
| farmers, ultimately benefit consumers, but of course
| Apple's competitors would love to break those walls down
| and invade the garden.
| slownews45 wrote:
| It's interesting because the coalition for "app fairness"
| is a whose who almost of folks who have repeatedly paid
| fines / penalties (which barely covers the cost) for
| their billing and other practices.
|
| We already know how the other guys do it, they screw you.
| must cancel 30 days in advance or you get a 1 year
| renewal. Meanwhile, when I delete an app that has a
| subscription apple reminds me and suggests cancelling
| subscription!
|
| The problem is individuals have NO / ZERO leverage in
| these deals these days. This is not your corner grocer.
| Match Group etc are major companies - and yes, they will
| do everything they can to extract every $, long term
| brand strength be darned.
| mpweiher wrote:
| > morphed from things around consumer harm to a new focus
| on harm to other ... businesses.
|
| As far as I know, it is actually the focus on "consumer
| harm" that is, well was, the new thing, introduced in the
| 1980s under Reagan, and it largely gutted antitrust law.
| And that was exactly the purpose.
|
| _For much of that history, including the seminal breakup
| of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil in 1911, the ruling
| antitrust theory was "harmful dominance." That's the idea
| that companies that dominate an industry are potentially
| dangerous merely because they are dominant. With dominance
| comes the ability to impose corporate will on workers,
| suppliers, other industries, people who live near
| factories, even politicians and regulators._
|
| _The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 saw the rise of a
| new antitrust theory, based on "consumer welfare." Consumer
| welfare advocates argue that monopolies can be efficient,
| able to deliver better products at lower prices to
| consumers, and therefore the government does us all a
| disservice when it indiscriminately takes on monopolies._
|
| https://wolfstreet.com/2021/08/14/antitrust-bombshells-in-
| th...
| pencilcode wrote:
| Monopolies in the long term tend to lead to higher prices
| because without good competition what's the incentive to
| sell with low profit margins? So, sell cheap for years,
| kill any competition, then the market is yours and you
| can do whatever you want to the inevitable detriment of
| the consumer. The consumer also looses in monopolies.
| slownews45 wrote:
| But the complaints against apple have focused on things
| they do that at least too me seem helpful and a positive
| part of my experience with apple. I feel MUCH more
| comfortable spending money via apple then I do almost
| anywhere else.
|
| Software on the web - endless issues buying / refunding /
| renewing.
|
| And if I don't like apple (which only has like 15% market
| share) I can switch to any number of android phones.
|
| It's just weird seeing the FTC going after a player that
| is generally doing things consumers like. Meanwhile,
| android phones ship with rom loaded rootkits / trackers /
| overlays and app stores and what do we hear from FTC?
| Crickets - literally.
| belorn wrote:
| If apple allowed other stores on their phones you could
| still buy exclusively from apple. All your applications
| to could have a "verified by apple" sticker.
|
| Nothing prevents apple from providing the exact same
| experience and still have a setting in the phone that
| allow third party markets from installing their
| applications. It would be just like the app store in
| windows.
| roenxi wrote:
| > Nothing prevents...
|
| Nothing prevents you working 10 minutes a day on
| something I want you to do - and yet I suspect you will
| not.
|
| Apple has proven to be the most competent organisation on
| the planet, in the 50 odd year history of mobile phones,
| at getting consumers what they want. Suggesting that they
| should run things some other way needs some much stronger
| arguments and is going to be highly debatable.
|
| To get to this point they've taken on all the major tech
| giants, the mobile phone industry, the telecoms and
| various foundational web technologies (including Flash,
| happily) and out-competed anyone in the business of
| making profits. At every step of the way they proved to
| be much better at anticipating what was a good idea than
| everyone. Much more serious voices were made to look
| foolish than the backseat drivers.
|
| If you don't want what Apple is selling, buy something
| else.
| oblio wrote:
| Buy what? There's only Apple and Google and they collude
| to dominate the market.
| lozenge wrote:
| But there's a lot that would help consumers that Apple
| conspicuously don't do.
|
| It took them ages to deal with kids making unauthorised
| in app purchases and AFAIK they still haven't dealt with
| scam apps and scam subscriptions ($150/year QR code
| scanning app).
|
| Consumers would appreciate PWAs but it doesn't suit
| Apple's corporate strategy so they are poorly supported.
|
| You can't pay through the Netflix or Kindle app due to
| their ridiculous rules.
|
| They look for ways to keep market dominance and move into
| more markets and then they think about consumer benefits
| they can add on the side.
| freen wrote:
| Monopolies also breed more monopolies.
|
| If there is only one buyer/seller then in order to fight
| their price making power, you can't form a cartel
| (illegal price collusion!) but you can consolidate into
| another monopoly and push the monopoly price making power
| elsewhere in your benefit.
| richardfey wrote:
| > Now google can't prioritize that - even through I want it
|
| Of course they can: they could let you opt-in to this
| specific facet of customised search results. The general
| issue is about the default search results.
| gambler wrote:
| How would a consumer know that they are "harmed" by
| Google's shenanigans when those shenanigans involve
| deleting the competition before it gets the chance to
| compete? This sounds like a catch 22 type of definition of
| monopoly. Businesses need competition for the free market
| to work properly.
| [deleted]
| srswtf123 wrote:
| Okay, but we can agree that IBM powered the holocaust, and
| that those tattoos on survivor's arms represented the punch
| cards for IBM systems, right?
|
| Because really, when there's a profit to be made, American
| companies are there to fill a "need", right?
| kortilla wrote:
| What point are you trying to make?
| srswtf123 wrote:
| Every corporation has secrets they'd like to hide. No one
| is beyond reproach.
|
| I don't think anyone is disputing that -- but every thing
| Google is doing is the result of fallible humans acting
| in pursuit of profit.
|
| It doesn't matter who or when. What matters is that
| people put aside their ethics in pursuit of profits. I
| think that needs to end.
|
| </soapbox>
| imglorp wrote:
| That's horrifying. I was not aware. The horror is hundreds
| of IBM employees were directly involved in extermination
| activities; literally maintaining tabulation machines on
| prem, as it were, in the camps.
|
| I hope every HN reader has the awareness and moral strength
| to resist, where the corporations are unable, the next time
| such a job comes.
|
| https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/52879
| endominus wrote:
| I wouldn't get my hopes up. The number of times I've seen
| people, even here, equate legality and morality is
| frightening.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > I wouldn't get my hopes up. The number of times I've
| seen people, even here, equate legality and morality is
| frightening.
|
| I have literally never seen anyone here argue that
| "murder and genocide isn't morally wrong if it is legally
| right".
|
| Are you sure you aren't equivocating "I don't support
| $FOO political position" with "I support murder and
| genocide"?
|
| Because I _have_ seen a number of people argue that some
| aspect of their personal moral code, which isn 't
| currently written into law, should be written into law
| and enforced on the rest of the people who don't have
| that moral code.
| endominus wrote:
| No, I wasn't even thinking of political positions. I'm
| not trying to dog-whistle around red-tribe/blue-tribe
| signaling, I actually mean what I said. I was in a
| comment thread some time ago about the ethics of self-
| driving cars. Another user believed that they should base
| the decisions of who to save on the cultural mores,
| history, and laws of the region where they are sold. On
| the one hand, it's hard to see a business doing
| otherwise. On the other, that's exactly how we get Zyklon
| B and legal slavery in the third world.
|
| I was discussing the trolley problem with a lawyer a few
| years ago, and her conclusion to the dilemma, no joke,
| was literally "It depends if I would be legally culpable
| in the country I'm in." Which is a very legalistic, and
| utterly amoral answer.
| lelanthran wrote:
| My apologies, I read your comment more uncharitably than
| you intended.
|
| > Another user believed that they should base the
| decisions of who to save on the cultural mores, history,
| and laws of the region where they are sold.
|
| This brings up a different issue: the product will then
| be considered amoral in the particular region that it is
| deployed in. That's the problem with using "morals" as a
| yardstick - it's too subjective because every culture has
| their own set of morals, and these morals change over
| time anyway.
|
| For a product sold in multiple regions, it makes sense to
| follow the cultural mores of that region. If you don't
| like their morals, don't do business with them.
| gambiting wrote:
| Holy shit, that's an incredible story. I live right in
| front of Auschwitz and I had no idea.
|
| Also that quote from the article, from IMB's spokesman:
|
| "We are a technology company, we are not historians."
|
| That's fucking rich. Imagine Bayer saying the same when
| questioned if their company used to make Zyklon B.
| srswtf123 wrote:
| I wonder how much has been spent over the years
| suppressing this?
| ahoka wrote:
| Wait till you read about Academi or McKinsey.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/world/asia/mckinsey-
| china... https://www.propublica.org/article/new-york-
| city-paid-mckins...
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/07/01/blackwaters-
| descendants...
| durnygbur wrote:
| Americans will fuell all sides of the conflict to reap the
| financial and political profits, disregarding human lives
| including unaware civilians. With their official army,
| intelligence agencies, corporations, and many other
| entities we have no clue about.
|
| The fascinating part of the deal of IBM with Nazi Germany
| is that it boils down to _tracking_of_individuals_. Their
| personal profile, location, capabilities, health status.
| simonh wrote:
| It sounds like German employees in Germany and it's
| territories working for the german subsidiary did work for
| the German government yes, and after the war was declared
| they did some very shady stuff. Similarly American citizens
| working for German companies in America did work for the US
| government during the war.
|
| I don't really see what's surprising about any of this. The
| implication seems to be that the US directors of IBM were
| supposed to do something about it, but I'm not sure what.
|
| Of course if some of these contracts for the concentration
| camps and such were tendered during peacetime, and this was
| known and it was possible for the US operation to exercise
| oversight, that would be incredibly damning.
| hnbad wrote:
| This comment is peak HN. Congratulations.
| lozenge wrote:
| The Just World Fallacy is incredibly strong in this one.
|
| Sure, the US imprisoned its citizens of Japanese
| ethnicity during WWII, a practice approved by its highest
| court, but they would never imprison Jewish people just
| for their ethnicity, right?
| simonh wrote:
| If I'm committing a fallacy, it's probably just assuming
| that individual American IBM executives probably wouldn't
| have actively and knowing facilitated genocidal policies.
| Also that if German IBM employees did do so, that's on
| them, not necessarily US execs who may have had no
| knowledge or awareness of it.
|
| That turns out to be false though, it's seems apparent
| that US execs had a pretty good idea what their machines
| were being used to do at last up to 1942. Not in detail,
| they probably weren't aware of the specific activities
| happening at say Treblinka, I don't think anyone in the
| US did, but they were aware that German government policy
| was the registration and oppression of Jews and other
| minorities and that IBM machines were facilitating it.
| lozenge wrote:
| You pretty much just hoped something wasn't true, even
| though references were easily available, so you started
| making excuses, caveats and assumptions instead of
| following up on those references. Really what was your
| comment going to achieve?
|
| Your fallacy is to repeatedly make assumptions in favour
| of the US without any evidentiary basis. When history is
| as well studied as it is, there's no need to propagate
| your assumptions.
|
| Now you're at it again - I just Googled "when was us
| aware of the holocaust" and found an interesting Time
| article. There were already rumours of mass killing. And
| the existence of concentration camps, ie not merely
| "registration and oppression" but active imprisonment,
| was very well known. The number of victims was
| underestimated in the common mind - but IBMs contribution
| of record keeping systems was to help increase that
| number.
| hnbad wrote:
| Nah, this is just the ultimate conclusion of the Friedman
| doctrine: there is no morality, only legality. Unless you
| can conclusively prove that IBM US C-level executives
| knew about the Holocaust while it was happening, it was
| just business as usual which makes it okay by definition.
|
| Actually if I put it that way, it's just hating Mondays.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yts2F44RqFw
| Y_Y wrote:
| Are you just guessing though? There certainly was
| coordination between IBM in the US and IBM in Nazi
| Germany even during the war. Look at IBM and the
| Holocaust by Edwin Black for example.
|
| We can argue about the scale of involvement and its
| meaning, but if you're not just speculating you should
| mention a source.
| simonh wrote:
| My apologies, I thought it was clear I was speculating.
| Hence "sounds like" and "that would be incredibly
| damning". Thanks for the reference.
| roenxi wrote:
| > antitrust law is pretty much incoherent and illogical
|
| Most things antitrust are incoherent and illogical. The
| unofficial plan seems to be literally to find market leaders
| who are offering substantially better products than the
| competition and then attack them for unspecified and likely
| immeasurable gains. Whether or not we've seen benefits from
| past antitrust actions, I don't believe measurements and
| observations of the actual outcomes are part of the debate.
| There is just an assumption that because they happened and
| big companies are bad ergo the outcome must have been good.
|
| The article alludes to Google's 92% search engine market
| share as some sort of concealed monopoly. As a problem, this
| doesn't make sense! There is absolutely nothing stopping
| anyone switching to another search engine except the other
| search engines aren't generally very good. Google is better
| at providing search results than they are. Or presumably it
| is, I don't know since I stopped using Google Search a long
| while ago. This is a monopoly only in the sense that everyone
| agrees Google is a better option.
|
| The problem with Google is that it is likely integrated with
| the US intelligence services. No antitrust suit is ever going
| to attack that; because it is the part that the government
| supports.
| webmaven wrote:
| Monopolies aren't necesarily bad in-and-of-themselves. The
| trouble starts when a monopoly in one market is used to
| gain an advantage in another.
|
| So, having a monopoly in the search engine market isn't
| necessarily a problem (especially given the low switching
| costs you noted), but leveraging that monopoly to compete
| with non-search-engine companies by essentially choking off
| their search engine traffic is a BIG problem.
|
| The exact means used that results in said choking-off may
| or may not matter (this is where the incoherence pops up),
| but the fact is that the conduct of any company with a
| monopoly (including entirely legitimate and legal ones)
| MUST face additional scrutiny for how it affects other
| markets.
|
| When it was just starting out, Google was proud of how
| quickly users left Google search results by clicking a
| link. AFAICT, that didn't change until sometime well after
| AdWords was introduced (in fact, how quickly users left was
| an AdWords selling point and increased competition for the
| top ad slots), but at some point, Google started
| cannibalizing their SERP traffic in various ways. It was
| going to bite them in the ass sooner or later.
| tibbetts wrote:
| Once upon a time US regulators recognized that limited
| competition and market dominance can be a problem all by
| themselves, for their chilling effect on innovation.
| Unfortunately under Reagan the DOJ changed their policy and
| started arguing that concrete consumer harm has to be
| demonstrated for a business to be subject to antitrust.
| That's a much higher bar. Imagine trying to build the
| modern internet under a telco monopoly, and trying to argue
| that consumers were being harmed because internet access
| was limited. Who would even want internet access under
| those circumstances?
|
| The same is true of Google. It's hard to show concrete harm
| (though wrecking flight search counts for me) when we have
| no counterfactual to consider. For example, in a truly
| competitive display ad market (instead of a duopoly), maybe
| our civilization would have figured out that display ads
| are a waste of money and consumer product manufacturers and
| retailers would stop buying them. But it's hard to know.
| This is why we should go after any company that is dominant
| in any market.
| roenxi wrote:
| Helpfully this is exactly the sort of argument I'm
| complaining about. The basic form is "the regulators did
| this", its "hard to show concrete harm" but therefore "we
| should go after any company that is dominant in any
| market".
|
| If we skip to the handwave, what is and how solid is the
| evidence that the regulator's actions were sensible?
| Targeting the most competent company for harassment is,
| on the face of it, a bad strategy.
|
| > Imagine trying to build the modern internet under a
| telco monopoly
|
| "Before the 1996 Act was passed, the largest four ILECs
| owned less than half of all the lines in the country
| while, five years later, the largest four local telephone
| companies owned about 85% of all the lines in the
| country." [0]
|
| Yeah, that'd be really hard. But the major problem is
| poor regulation creating monopolies/incentives for them.
| The correct approach is to go for the root cause -
| competition stifling regulation - rather than setting up
| monopolies and then ineffectually trying to fight them in
| courts.
|
| "Antitrust" is a distraction from the actual problem -
| bad regulation and incentives. And if the coversation
| revolved around actual attempts at showing evidence the
| antitrust stuff is hard to sustain. The examples are
| trivial. People on HN were whinging about Google removing
| an alert box in Chrome the other week.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_
| of_1996
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The problem with this is that I can't really point to a
| competition-stifling regulation that actually benefits
| Google.
|
| Copyright and patent law would be the closest thing, but
| Google's core business isn't selling licensing
| agreements. They owned the search market way before
| Android was even a public project, much less the open-
| core monstrosity it is today. Google got to where it is
| because it legitimately hunted the rest of it's
| competitors into extinction, not because it got better at
| throwing red tape at them.
| roenxi wrote:
| Can you point to actual harm done by Google that people
| can't walk away from?
|
| I've been working to untangle myself from them for a
| while. It isn't particularly hard, there are just a lot
| of really good services that need to be replaced.
|
| The only thing I can't evade is the constant snooping all
| over the web. And that isn't something antitrust
| regulators are going to be dealing with.
| pjerem wrote:
| > Can you point to actual harm done by Google that people
| can't walk away from?
|
| The idea that things such as access to information,
| mailbox, applications, storage, ... should not cost you
| any money and that it's acceptable (for the few people
| who even know) to pay with a log of every move you do.
|
| Just go read any paid app reviews on any of the App Store
| to read tons of comments like << 1/5 It's not free >>.
| sokoloff wrote:
| In what way did they wreck search? If I'm going to a new
| city, I usually start on Google flights and find it okay
| to good.
|
| If I need more, I'll go to a specific carrier's site or
| to Matrix, but I'm usually using Google to get the
| overview picture (and it seems to work well).
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| Google recently removed use of its sync API (and others)
| from Chromium. What you call a "search engine" is really a
| vast network of integrated services that Google can pull
| the plug on at any moment for any reason.
|
| If you want to make money from your site/channel, you pony
| up to Google's ad services to get ads from Google's ad
| networks to show up higher in Google's search engines so
| your customers with Google accounts can easily sign into
| your site running Google's authentication and feed metrics
| back into Google's web browser that's optimized for Google
| content. That's some kind of vertical integration, baby.
|
| I'm deliriously sleepy, but I'm sure I got like, 70% of
| that right. I don't want to just de-Google, I want to be
| able to extricate and cordon off it and everything related
| to it on the web like I do with Facebook. But how?
| sidlls wrote:
| No rational person is going to see "Area" in this context as
| anything but a synonym for "Market."
| rprwhite wrote:
| That's true, but if this didn't make news then what
| would've happened in the future? Thousands, millions maybe,
| of documents talking about areas and no mention of markets
| make discover more difficult for a future anti-trust case.
| pc86 wrote:
| _Especially_ when Google is distributing documentation
| saying to use the word "Area" explicitly instead of
| "Market."
| gugagore wrote:
| IANAL but it seems that it would succeed in requiring an
| additional layer of argumentation that "area" is code for
| "market". My rough sense is that nothing is trivial in
| cases like this, but how difficult would it be to argue
| this?
| lugged wrote:
| Las I checked judges don't love it when you try to be
| clever or cute.
| cormacrelf wrote:
| Establishing the use of the word "market" in an email is
| not the end goal. The end goal is establishing the
| violation of US antitrust laws by, e.g. buying out the
| competition and taking actions that unreasonably restrict
| trade (generally in your competitors' goods/services).
|
| But there are two ways to hold a company to account. One
| is a civil mechanism, producing civil penalties and
| consent decrees (or damages, maybe?). The other is by the
| prosecution of a criminal offence. Enforcement via the
| latter is harder to do. It requires showing the actions
| were done intentionally, just like every criminal
| prosecution. It also has a very high standard of proof.
| Using the word "crushing the competition" in the context
| of buying competitors or engineering them out of the
| first page of search results is evidence of that. Google
| doesn't want exposure to criminal liability. It is
| undoubtedly harder to prove they did this stuff
| intentionally if they deliberately refrain from talking
| about it and do it in winks and nods.
|
| I don't know what you're referring to by "try to be
| clever or cute" but using these language guidelines to
| decode discovered materials and show a criminal intent to
| do things that constitute criminal violations of
| antitrust law is not cute, and neither is relying on the
| absence of directly incriminating language to absolve
| yourself.
| rpmisms wrote:
| "Your honor, my case is kawaii. The defense rests."
|
| In all seriousness, a clever argument can be very good,
| as long as it's also solid. Not mutually exclusive.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| q: why do you ask people to use the word area instead of
| market?
|
| a: Because imprecise language clouds thinking and makes
| things less intelligible, and Google is a company that
| makes its money from intelligence. People have been
| incorrectly referring to areas as markets, in order to
| better communicate we laid down guidelines. We often lay
| down guidelines about corporate communications to
| heighten their efficiency, as do other companies
|
| on edit: I'm not saying that this is true, but one can
| easily make an argument as to why you use area instead of
| market in communication and ask your workers to do
| likewise. I would think the courts would require more
| evidence than that.
| sidlls wrote:
| You're suggesting that an answer which explicitly makes
| "area" a synonym for "market" is a defense against the
| suggestion that using "area" is an attempt to obfuscate
| that they're really referring to "market". That, uh,
| doesn't add up.
| sidlls wrote:
| It's not that complex. Judges aren't computers, and the
| words of a law are not an imperative program that judges
| "execute" against the evidence and arguments. The
| attempted ruse isn't that clever, and it's more likely to
| piss a judge off than wow him or her.
| aflag wrote:
| Using area still murk the waters. Some people may be
| legitimately meaning something other than market when
| they say area. So it's not really possible to say that
| every market occurrence can be replaced with market in
| the internal emails. This is not the definitions section
| of a contract, it's a guideline. So, it's probably still
| worth doing. If they don't, then people using market have
| 100% chance of meaning market, whereas after the
| guideline, usage of area has less than 100% chance of
| meaning market and being accepted like so.
| jollybean wrote:
| 'Legal's job is much more about language than approach.
|
| They will require you not to say 'crush competitors' because it
| would be used as evidence.
|
| The issue 'make a better product vs. crush competitors' is
| usually a more of a strategic issue.
|
| Edit: it's not illegal to want to 'crush competitors' FYI the
| issue is the language that would point in a particular
| direction. The evidence of my point is Google's existence - I
| would argue it participates in a number of anti-competitive
| practices for which it's very smart legal team has made sure
| the language they use doesn't support legal scrutiny.
| twirlock wrote:
| Way to explain exactly what the fucking article said.
| greatgib wrote:
| I was a direct witness of such a brain washing case a few years
| ago.
|
| Google was about to release a new version of Android or of Nexus
| phones. (I don't remember the exact details)
|
| And there was an insider leak, so the details of the innovation
| were published on internet a few days before the official
| announcement.
|
| Leaks are now very common and often organized by companies, but a
| few years ago it was not yet the case.
|
| I had a lunch with a few people including some Google engineers a
| few days after the leak. A discussion started about this topic,
| and the googlers said things like: "what a scandal the leak, we
| hate so much the person that did that, that we would have like to
| have him dead. If anyone in the company find who he his, we would
| seriously punch his face".
|
| I was surprised, because, this was just a leak of the features,
| same content has what would have been disclosed in the PR
| announcement. Personally I would be happy that people have so
| much interest in my product that they spontaneously reshare early
| details about it. I did not see where the offense was for some
| random engineers of the company.
|
| So, I asked them, and they told me that they felt that the
| insider "stole their announcement of their product".
|
| I told them that it is ridiculous, because as an engineer you
| should like that your product is known, and that people hear and
| talk about it. But it should personally make no difference if the
| feature list/preview is published a few days earlier by a leak
| instead of by a random PR guy or by a big head of the company.
|
| The only offended one might be the big head and the PR/marketing
| guys that had their plan ruined, but not common Google software
| engineer salarymen.
|
| But the Googlers were not able to understand this idea, and then,
| they became hostile to me for the rest of the lunch for even
| having suggested that their feeling might not be justified.
|
| So then I realized that they were brain washed by the company
| internal communication to feel that anything annoying for Google
| was bad for them personally!
|
| In the exact same way that there are dictator led countries were
| most of the inhabitants are blindly following whatever the
| dictator says is the truth!
| toast0 wrote:
| To some degree, having the work discussed is great. But
| depending on the way it leaked, it can diminish the focus on
| the product, and sometimes it can make the official release
| flop and that's not great.
|
| From what I hear, Google has/had a policy/culture of largely
| free information flow inside the company while not having
| information flow outside the company; a leak undermines that
| culture/policy and leads to more locked down information flow
| on the inside, and it's reasonable to be upset about that.
|
| > they became hostile to me for the rest of the lunch for even
| having suggested that their feeling might not be justified.
|
| People don't usually apprechiate it when they're upset and
| others tell them their feelings aren't justified and they
| should feel differently. That's simply not a good way to engage
| people.
| aix1 wrote:
| > Google has/had a policy/culture of largely free information
| flow inside the company
|
| Sadly, this is "had" rather than "has" (it was the latter
| until a few years ago). As you point out, not least due to
| leaks.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yes, this happened at Google, in a huge way. Ten years ago
| you would hear interesting things at TGIF, the weekly
| informational company-wide event people would demo not-yet-
| launched software and hardware, discuss R&D, etc. After such
| a lot of cumulative leaks people stopped saying anything
| interesting at TGIF. You'd get information faster by reading
| the company press releases than by waiting for Friday.
|
| It's not like the leakers did some kind of noble service,
| either. They were just assholes who destroyed something nice.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| > So then I realized that they were brain washed by the company
| internal communication to feel that anything annoying for
| Google was bad for them personally!
|
| I think your interpretation of this experience is incorrect.
| Their visceral reaction was against leaking specifically, not
| negative information generally. Part of the propaganda behind
| TGIF, the internal newsletters, and so on is the idea that this
| inside information is part of what makes you special as a
| Googler.
|
| > "...we hate so much the person that did that, that we would
| have like to have him dead."
|
| While I'm sure you caught a big fish that day, I'm also sure it
| wasn't that big (come on: the retelling of this anecdote does
| not need quite that much exaggeration).
| greatgib wrote:
| > While I'm sure you caught a big fish that day, I'm also
| sure it wasn't that big (come on: the retelling of this
| anecdote does not need quite that much exaggeration).
|
| I don't exaggerate that point, the sentence was not exactly
| that but something very excessive and very close to that.
|
| This is the intensity and violence of their feeling that
| shocked me to the point that I still remember this case after
| around 5/6 years or more.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| During my tenure, just about every leak was accompanied by
| howling about the people who dared leak the information.
| Termination? Yes. Blackballing? Yes. _Summary execution_?
| No.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I've never even worked at Google, but if my team is working
| towards something and our announcement is pre-empted, yeah, I'm
| going to be upset. I would never wish anyone dead over it, but
| I would definitely be pissed at them.
|
| There's a lot of work that goes into those announcements. It's
| not just advertising the product that is the goal, it's
| presenting it their way.
|
| Similarly, when someone is telling a joke and someone else
| tells the punchline, they get upset about it. According to your
| logic, they shouldn't. The joke was told, and the audience
| heard it. But I've yet to meet anyone who wouldn't be upset
| about someone else telling the punchline to their joke.
|
| They were not brainwashed. You were incredibly insensitive to
| their feelings.
| greatgib wrote:
| If you are an engineer working on the software, the
| announcement really has little interest. You just want it to
| be wide and sure not being done in a way that put a bad light
| on your product.
|
| This kind of things happened in my case, and I was more happy
| to see the interest of the potential users than knowing who
| disclosed it as it would not be me anyway in all cases.
|
| It might not be true in a small company/team/product. But in
| a big tech corps, the guy that will do the official
| announcement is usually quite far and unrelated to the
| engineers that did the feature.
|
| Also, maybe a piece that was missing from my story is that
| the Googlers were not even in a team working or related to
| the disclosed thing. For example they were in the chrome team
| and it was an Android announcement or something like that.
|
| Another point is that, at Google, it looks like that each big
| product team is firewalled from the other team. For example,
| people not working on Android core will not know anything
| about it or it's development and be in separated buildings
| and co.
| mostdataisnice wrote:
| This is just completely false - if you're working on a
| feature, you want a PR splash controlled by you, not a
| stream of silent leaks. PR begets other PR.
|
| You're being super presumptuous by saying engineers
| shouldn't care about the PR around the feature they worked
| on, even if someone else is running the PR
| greatgib wrote:
| If it was silent leaks, no one would have even cared
| about it!
| amelius wrote:
| As an engineer you should be focused on delivering objective
| value, not subjective value.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| As an engineer my ultimate goal is to help people, not push
| metrics. The subjective value is the thing that matters.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The reason Googlers get really ticked off about leaks is that
| they ruined the very candid and open internal culture we _used_
| to have. In the 10 years I 've been there I've seen us go from
| TGIF sessions where Larry and Sergey and Eric openly discussed
| things that every other employer I'd had before would have kept
| quiet ... to the situation now which is a lot less like that.
| And it has a lot to do with leaks from those very TGIFs.
|
| Now I certainly wouldn't be talking about "punching people" or
| "wanting them dead"... But I am not happy when my coworkers
| violate trust by leaking. Unless we're talking about gross
| ethics violations, harassment, etc. leaking internal stuff
| doesn't improve anything for anybody except maybe the ego of
| the leaker.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| On the contrary, the leaker is sharing with the public, often
| things people deserve to know. It's the height of selfishness
| to be upset that Larry and Sergey stopped telling you about
| their dirty laundry, because the public was finding out.
| rossjudson wrote:
| Sounds like you're comfortable with having all of your
| conversations transcribed directly to twitter! Let us know
| where we can read that.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I think that is an extremely false equivalence. While
| there's an inherent irony about Sergey and Larry's woeful
| desire for privacy, whilst buying yachts bought by
| stripping everyone else of their own... I think it's fair
| to say that a public company affecting the lives of
| billions has drastically less right to privacy than a
| private individual. ;)
|
| I'll leave you with a quote: "If you have something that
| you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be
| doing it in the first place." - Eric Schmidt, former CEO
| and chairman.
|
| The fact that Google locked down communication in
| response to the leaks, is a tacit confirmation that they
| are doing things they probably shouldn't be doing in the
| first place.
| botverse wrote:
| I don't follow this reasoning. The leaks were of internal
| but not secret as in "scandal" information.
| randomperson_24 wrote:
| It is also not just Google. Google atleast curates the content,
| but has anyone used MSN or Edge (that comes with Windows)?
|
| It has all news stories copied word to word from other news
| websites. Its worse than AMP. The publication name is not
| mentioned till the end of the page.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Good: Google's mission is to sell more ads
|
| Bad: Google's mission is to organize the world's information
| ekianjo wrote:
| Thats not Googlespeak. Thats legal protection. Whenever a company
| is open to investigation you can bet emails will be searched and
| if something suggesting something borderline illegal is written
| there it can be used against you. A lot of companiea give such
| trainings to their employees.
| playpause wrote:
| Unclear how any of this means it's not Googlespeak.
| altgoogler wrote:
| It's not clear to you how standard business practices aren't
| some sort of Google-specific Orwellian new-speak?
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Well I don't know about OP but, no, its not clear to me! Or
| at least, I don't know about the Orwell parallel precisely
| here, but this way of thinking/speaking is very weird to
| me, however much its "business as usual." Can't really
| critique it, but you can't tell me its not a weird view of
| the world!
| _nalply wrote:
| Perhaps you could view Googlespeak as a side-effect of the
| legal protection.
| bigcorp-slave wrote:
| Every large company has these trainings. I personally have worked
| at multiple companies with very similar trainings.
|
| With thousands of employees, a company can't take the risk that
| some random college hire mouths off over Slack on something they
| don't know anything about and it shows up in discovery for
| something in the future and is used as evidence of planned
| malfeasance on the part of the company. I know we don't like
| Google but this is not a Google thing, it's a "opposing lawyers
| will take speculation from random low level engineers wildly out
| of context and judges and juries are too dumb to put it in
| context" thing.
| [deleted]
| bertttles wrote:
| "Google's Growing Antitrust Tsunami" - says it all!
| hospadar wrote:
| On a literary note: another great sci-fi reference point is
| Samuel Delaney's "Babel 17" - the hook is that a government
| creates a language that enables extreme thought capabilities, but
| prevents you from conceptualizing the opposing government as
| anything but an enemy.
| johan_felisaz wrote:
| Totally out of topic, but I highly recommend it ... (Not
| technically a spoiler) I really liked the parallel betweens the
| bad guys' language, which was manipulative to the extreme, and
| the good guys' language, which was of course less extreme but
| still contained deceiving vocabulary (i.e. Babel 17 is
| critiqued because the good guys are called "who are invading",
| yet the bad guys are themselves called "invaders" in English
| ...)
| mavhc wrote:
| People who go to live in other countries are called expats,
| people coming to live in your country are called immigrants
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's a shame about the downvotes, because that's a perfect
| example of loaded language which imposes a conceptual frame
| for both speaker and listener.
|
| It's not an abstract point. It has very real consequences
| because it's supposed to - and does - trigger expected
| emotions and behaviours.
|
| PR consultants, politicians, lawyers, ad copy writers, and
| others who use rhetoric professionally use this kind of
| loading very deliberately.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| But are there two groups at Google:
|
| Group A: not allowed to talk about monopoly
|
| Group B: The group tasked with maintaining the monopoly.
| NoblePublius wrote:
| I was expecting some analysis of what you tweeted to the Google
| people that was outside their vocabulary.
| indiantinker wrote:
| Longtime ago, I made a small installation [1] at an HCI conf
| about the same larger issue. Increasing Search Engines seem to
| train people by judging their inherent confirmation bias. I think
| many recommendation engines also try to do the same to a lower
| extend by keep the 'subject' happy. It was interesting to see how
| designers from leading companies present never thought their work
| actually makes people live in bubbles and they always think it
| was 'UX friendly'.
|
| [1] http://rohitg.in/2017/09/03/whowe/
| snarf21 wrote:
| It is far more widespread than an interaction with a Google
| employee. The phenomenon is everywhere. It was distilled
| perfectly by Upton Sinclair quite a while ago: "It is difficult
| to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
| upon his not understanding it!"
| prox wrote:
| Same with asking people here to stop using Chrome to get rid of
| the way it dominates the web.
|
| When you are tied to the hip to something, you will never
| change. The network effect keeps you on the same Ferris wheel.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > It is far more widespread than an interaction with a Google
| employee.
|
| Yes, it's systemic, not just in capitalism, through all of
| nature.
|
| In cell biology, it's the Krebs cycle.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28219702/
| SCUSKU wrote:
| While I wholeheartedly agree with this article, I can't help but
| think, why would Google or Googlers encourage discussion about
| anti-trust in the first place? I understand that Google certainly
| does dominate the market, but can you really blame them for
| wanting to keep it that way?
| Lammy wrote:
| Google wants to be anthropomorphized. It is a non-physical but
| conscious/living entity, and yeah I do empathize with its
| desire to continue to exist:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore
| Barrin92 wrote:
| probably because for a company that prides itself on
| innovation, it's a long term bad idea to prioritize eliminating
| wrong-think and hiring people who are okay with that over
| people who actually believe in competition and open thought
| hnbad wrote:
| It's odd to see so many comments siding with Google on this one
| considering HN historically celebrates small startups
| "disrupting" existing markets and sides against big monopolists
| and Google especially.
|
| I wonder if this is a consequence of early-stage underdog
| startups having grown to significant sizes over time (or being
| bought out by the more established competitors) and loyalties
| continuing to align with those companies rather than their
| original positions.
|
| Maybe the US's political polarization of the discourse around
| regulating "big tech" (with the anti-regulation Republicans
| insisting on tight regulations and the "pro-regulation" Democrats
| siding against it in response) is also having an effect.
|
| I don't know when I last saw so many people implicitly arguing
| Google is not acting anti-competitively or that antitrust laws
| are just a pesky legal technicality that is moral and just to
| guard against by shaping your company's internal communication
| about your market dominance.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| This sort of reminds me of how the public sector establishment
| limits the acceptable language around cultural flashpoints, like
| gender identity.
|
| I was told that using the term "biological female" was
| transphobic in the context of gender identity, and the individual
| in question was pressing the issue to the point where I thought
| there was a reasonable possibility I would be banned from the
| forum if I persisted. I was told I have to use cis-female. But
| that not only limits the expressive efficacy of my statement, by
| substituting a well known term with one that a significant
| fraction of the population does not know, it also, under the
| guise of fighting diminution of the marginalized, narrows the
| concept of a biological female, with the end goal clearly to be
| to effect a change in the definition of "female" itself.
|
| We see this same kind of language narrowing in the corporate
| world, with Google's rules on how to discuss issues relevant to
| monopoly, but I suspect this is defensive, and motivated by the
| legal threat of anti-trust action, as such language used by
| employees can directly impact the outcome of an anti-trust trial.
| harryf wrote:
| Not directly related but I have a theory that Google has shaped
| public opinion online - and been very good at it- in a couple of
| instances when there was a risk to their business.
|
| The first was net neutrality, where you found various think tanks
| doing stuff like YouTube explaining why it's bad to lose net
| neutrality. Once I dug into who was funding one of those think
| tanks and it looked a lot like Google. Given the % of bandwidth
| that is people watching YouTube, Google had potentially some big
| bills coming their way with the loss of net neutrality.
|
| The other one is Kevin Rudd in Australia taking on Rupert Murdoch
| while Google is at risk of having to share ad revenue on news
| with NewsCorp. I haven't researched this much but the question is
| simply who's funding Kevin Rudd to fight Murdoch.
| poof131 wrote:
| It amazes me that the consumer welfare standard has become so
| ingrained in legal antitrust. How is a company town, feudalism,
| or even slavery not the purest endgame of this logic? Own nothing
| and forever be indebted. "Wow, everything is free for most
| consumers, I guess we created a great world!" Can we move on to
| the total welfare standard, please. [1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements...
| amelius wrote:
| That font ...
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| Times New Roman?
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah, looks like a Firefox rendering problem.
| Animats wrote:
| The real issue is redefining the market. This is common in
| antitrust cases.
|
| I could see an antitrust decision that forced Google to sell off
| the third-party ad, ad tracking, video streaming, email,
| messaging, and phone businesses, while retaining the search and
| search ad business. Then at least they couldn't use one monopoly
| to promote others.
| trhway wrote:
| Now somebody should make a reverse translation app to produce
| real meaning behind that BS bingo Googlespeak. And it probably
| may find the use well beyond the Googlespeak - just look at any
| business or political PR/spin.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| monopolies, conglomerates, cartels, monocultures, oligarchies,
| fragility, lack of diversity, lack of options, lack of checks and
| balances, inequity...
|
| any way you slice it this cluster of words represents a way of
| organizing society that is suboptimal and detrimental. anything
| that can be done by one entity can be done better by multiple
| competing entities if they are forced to operate in a coopetitive
| environment.
|
| nobody should have to "prove" anything in the messy specific
| circumstances of particular industries and companies. society and
| its economic/political organization should have automatic
| triggers and disincentives that would prohibit the formation of
| such structures in the first place.
| loopion wrote:
| When he mention the bad word << market >> and << competitors >>
| this is also the case at PayPal on our compliance program. But
| this is under Anti-Bribery program. It's just to avoid having
| proof against you.
| ilaksh wrote:
| No one is going to appreciate this but I will say it anyway just
| because I think it's important and maybe one person will get it.
|
| The solution to these type of technopolies is not better laws or
| lawsuits. The solution is technical. It's about creating
| protocols for decentralized systems.
|
| Now, am I saying that it's obvious or easy to replace Google with
| decentralized systems? Of course not. But what I hope people will
| eventually realize is that open source distributed protocols are
| in fact extremely powerful and perfect for creating better public
| online commons.
| echelon wrote:
| There was a point in time when monopolies weren't understood as
| economic constructs.
|
| We're in a new era where the Famgopolies are something entirely
| new with an even greater reach. They're all-encapsulating bubbles
| that ensnare people across all the interactions they perform on a
| daily basis, then tax every single point of ingress or egress.
|
| If they keep growing, the classic _Demolition Man_ scene where
| everything is Taco Bell will come true. Everything we see, buy,
| eat, date, or think will come from the Famgopolies.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| You really need to define 'famgolopy' every time you use it.
| It's not in urbandictionary and the only search results on the
| topic link back to these threads.
|
| It's too much of a neologism to trust that people understand
| what you mean from context.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Forget about "competition" and "who provides the service" for
| just a moment. (I'll return to them below.) I'm saying all of
| this as someone who _doesn 't use Google search_. I would like to
| see more competition in search engines. But anyone seeking to
| work in that space needs to think about how users actually use
| search engines, and stop thinking in the conceptual model of
| "finding sites for the given search terms".
|
| "65% of searches don't result in a click" is a feature. You asked
| a question, you got the answer to that question. A search engine
| isn't a tool to find sites, it's a tool to find information; once
| upon a time that meant finding a site for that information, but
| ideally, it means _finding the information_. Sometimes you might
| be looking for "a site that has X", but often you're just
| looking for X. For that matter, 100% of searches via Google
| Assistant don't result in a "click", because the information has
| to be digested and presented via a voice interface.
|
| It's _accurate_ to say that Google is in competition with every
| site that provides information to users. Anyone in the business
| of providing information to users needs to treat Google as their
| competitor.
|
| So, yes, a regulator or competitor who speaks in terms of how
| Google isn't driving users to other sites or prioritizing its own
| sites, and doesn't acknowledge that doing so is _answering the
| user 's question_, is indeed speaking a foreign language.
|
| If we were in some post-scarcity world, someone trying to help
| user's find information should be taking a very similar approach
| to Google (or finding something even better), and finding more
| ways to make information more digestible and presentable this
| way, and encouraging sites to provide information in a way that
| can answer questions like this.
|
| In today's non-post-scarcity world, there is _absolutely_ an
| anti-competitive issue here. But the problem is that the most
| efficient and often most useful way to answer a user 's question
| may well be _incompatible_ with the "just present links to sites
| given search terms" model.
|
| In seeking to solve that problem, we can't start out by
| preventing people from presenting information in whatever way
| users find most useful and efficient. We shouldn't seek to
| shoehorn a search engine back into a simple "here are the results
| for your search terms" model. Any approach that unthinkingly
| tries to foster competition by _breaking_ the ability to present
| information in the most useful way possible is rightfully treated
| as some outside hostile force that 's destroying something
| useful.
|
| And _because_ so much of the effort to regulate this as an anti-
| competitive issue has been unthinkingly treating a search engine
| as nothing more than mapping search terms to outbound site links,
| that has generated a backlash even _outside_ of Google (for
| instance, here on HN), from people who see how much value would
| be destroyed by such an approach.
|
| Not all efforts to foster competition have been this unthinking.
| I've seen proposals that try to introduce the use of APIs to
| present such information from a variety of sources (e.g. "here's
| the service I prefer to use for flights/hotels/etc"). I don't
| know if that's the _right_ approach, or if it 's _fair_ , or if
| it's _necessary_ , but it's at least closer to the right
| direction, and it isn't _destroying_ useful things like
| "answering user's questions" or "building a useful voice
| assistant".
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I read a certain amount of entitlement in TFA too. Like "I
| deserve to have my site on the front page of Google, rather
| than its paid advertisers or its own pages".
|
| Why? This isn't a government-provided public service. It's a
| commercial product. Why should they direct traffic to your site
| for free? They, like everyone else, walk the line between
| providing an excellent product for customers and creating
| revenue for shareholders.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Google since they stopped not
| being evil. But I'm not sure that having a competing set of
| search engines would solve the author's problem - they would be
| writing passionate blog posts about "why can't we have a single
| set of SEO rules so I can get my site to the front page of all
| of them with no hassle?"
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The entitlement may be sourced to the fact that the author is
| an SEO company.
|
| As a sidebar... SEO companies would love to see Google
| knocked out of its current market position. Google has gotten
| very good at relying on signal that SEO companies can't
| control. They would much prefer a more gamable engine take
| Google's position from it.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| We've seen this play out with the browser wars, though -
| different standards mean that each target needs a different
| approach. You'd end up having to create a different site
| with different content organisation for each search engine
| and then serve the right site to the right crawler.
|
| It might be more gamable, but the competition isn't the
| search engine, or normal people posting normal non-gamed
| content, but other SEO teams. If everyone can game it, then
| it's a race to the bottom to see who can game it most/best
| and that's not a good place for anyone else.
| handoflixue wrote:
| Worth noting that many times, the complaint is that the query
| is answered by an infobox... and the info in that box is
| provided by a website... and that website is the one
| complaining about a lack of clicks, because now people just
| use Google's scraped answers instead of actually visiting the
| site.
|
| It seems valid to complain that Google is profiting off of a
| site while simultaneously harming that site's visibility.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| > It seems valid to complain that Google is profiting off
| of a site while simultaneously harming that site's
| visibility.
|
| I don't understand how Google is "harming the site's
| visibility" - it still gets some traffic free of charge
| from Google, right? If Google didn't list the site in the
| first place, it would be less visible and get less traffic.
| So I don't understand how Google is harming the site's
| visibility? Why does Google have an implied responsibility
| to send _all possible traffic_ to a site it lists?
| terafo wrote:
| _It 's accurate to say that Google is in competition with every
| site that provides information to users. Anyone in the business
| of providing information to users needs to treat Google as
| their competitor._
|
| I think the problem that author tries to address is that Google
| uses their competitor's data in order to serve that
| information, which isn't that great since IIRC they do no
| profit sharing which undermines long term viability of
| collecting, systemising and maintaining that data.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > Google uses their competitor's data
|
| Their competitor's _publicly available and explicitly
| indexable_ data. Their competitors are free to ban Google
| from crawling their site.
| leepowers wrote:
| I've always been fascinated by people who spend huge chunks of
| time creating and maintaining Wikipedia articles. Are they
| driven by a simple love research and curating information? Or
| maybe knowing their articles could potentially inform and
| educate millions of people.
|
| I wonder how driven content creators would be if they believed
| no one would read their articles; if the information they
| carefully curated was mere bot food, digested and summarized on
| a Google search results page. The summaries may have greater
| utility for search engine users. Yet at the same time the
| ecosystem as a whole would be degraded if the incentives for
| creating rich detailed content are degraded.
|
| Google relies on free and open access to a vast sea of
| information. Most of this information exists due to the labor
| of other people. If any company wants to use this information
| to create a free and open source search engine, voice
| assistant, etc., I say more power to that company. But when a
| company uses free and open data to power proprietary walled
| gardens, we should consider the regulatory implications and the
| effect on the ecosystem as a whole. And Google is large enough
| that when it creates a walled garden (keeping visitors tied
| Google properties and products) that it could have a
| significant negative impact.
| creddit wrote:
| It's hilarious to me that someone thinks this is about
| controlling thought and not a defensive legal maneuver.
| ehsankia wrote:
| It's also absurd to me how the answer to "how can folks with
| whom I generally respect have reached such a significant gap in
| thinking?" is basically "they must be brainwashed by their
| Communicating Safely training"... That's such terrible way of
| dismissing someone who has a different opinion than you.
| ggm wrote:
| You just dismissed them yourself didn't you? "thats a
| terrible way" is an emotional cast to disregard the logic in
| the argument. Its lawyer speak. HOW DARE YOU style rebuttal.
|
| Or.. maybe you're just using english with its rhetorical
| richness? the quality of emphasis is not meant to imply
| actual dislike or distain? In which case.. why can't you
| ascribe the same motive of language style to the original
| author?
| creddit wrote:
| Totally. This whole thing is just wild to me.
| minism wrote:
| Right. This seems to be needlessly overcomplicating/obfuscating
| whats going on.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| I mean it can easily be both at the same time.
| skybrian wrote:
| This is about being careful what you put in writing, because the
| discovery process for lawsuits will find your carelessly written
| email and opposing lawyers will take it out of context, and do
| you want to end up in court years later explaining what you
| meant?
|
| Google has so many employees that they need training to limit the
| damage from random chatter and speculation.
|
| It's more cumbersome to have to talk about some things via video
| chat, but it's not about limiting thought.
| ohazi wrote:
| No, that's just a convenient excuse.
|
| The other side of "Be careful what you put in writing because
| lawyers, lol" that is always ignored is:
|
| "If you think we need to dress up the way we talk about this
| one particular thing we're doing, then maybe we should
| reevaluate whether we should be doing this thing. If you think
| we need to dress up the way we talk about _literally everything
| that this company does_ , then maybe it's time to step back and
| reevaluate the ethics of what this company stands for."
|
| A company is a machine that is going to do whatever it can to
| print money, including brainwashing its employees. You and your
| colleagues are the only entities capable of ethical reasoning.
| The company and its executive functionaries are not going to do
| this for you. In fact, they're more likely going to try and
| stop you.
|
| It's your responsibility to do it anyway.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Who is "we" and "you" in this context?
|
| At Google, the team responsible for deciding whether a given
| project is legal is the legal team. Googlers are encouraged
| to get a member of legal on board as soon as a project gels
| far enough to have a concrete description that could have
| legal consequences. At that point, a set of attorney client
| privileged communications could begin where any of the words
| listed here can be on the table (because that communication
| is not in discoverable media).
|
| But in general, Google doesn't encourage its software
| engineers to think they're experts in law any more that it
| encourages its lawyers to think their experts in BigTable
| performance tuning.
| ohazi wrote:
| I'm not talking about what is legal, I'm talking about what
| is ethical. They are not the same.
|
| I'll grant you that not every corporate policy will agree
| with me, but I would argue that every human with a brain
| has a responsibility to think about whether what their boss
| asks them to do is ethical, and a responsibility to raise
| hell if they think it isn't.
|
| I don't believe it's ethical to abdicate this _human_
| responsibility to a corporate legal team.
|
| Part of what these corporate policies are deliberately
| designed to do is condition employees into believing that
| "deferring to the legal team" is where their responsibility
| ends. They want to convince you that this checks the box
| for both "legal" and "ethical" so that you feel like you've
| done your duty, and now you don't need to think about the
| ethics of your work anymore. This is what I meant by
| corporations "brainwashing" their employees. But you're
| always on the hook for the ethics of your work.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I agree with you. But one can raise hell by advocating to
| get the legal team on board as quickly as possible and
| making it clear that there's a significant issue that
| needs to be considered without using the words that will
| get the company half a million dollars of billed in-court
| attorney time _whether or not there was actually any
| ethical issue._
|
| That's the key difference and the purpose for
| constraining what ends up in discoverable media.
|
| There is, perhaps, a meta-ethical question of whether
| companies should, in general, be factoring into their
| calculus ways to minimize the government's capacity to
| hinder their activities. It's a good question. I don't
| have an answer that's universally true. I suspect if we
| sit down and consider it, we find lots of circumstances
| where it's not in the best interests of anyone to just
| hand the government a company's throat to be slashed.
| After all, especially if we're talking about the United
| States, it's not like the government itself has proven a
| bastion of ethical reasoning either.
| CPLX wrote:
| > the team responsible for deciding whether a given project
| is legal is the legal team
|
| Since legality in a corporate context is not typically a
| binary evaluation, it would be far more accurate to say
| that their job is to ascertain the relative financial and
| business costs of potentially illegal behavior so it can be
| effectively compared to that behavior's potential profits
| _nalply wrote:
| A hard-of-hearing friend of mine got tired listening to videos.
| He told me that he sneakily ran speech-to-text software and
| read the text in a separate window.
|
| In a different vein, when I was younger I didn't understand why
| people preferred phoning.
|
| I as a Deaf engineer rely on written communication. This
| exposes myself and people communicating with me to <<showing
| what has been said>>. I am sure that in my career I missed some
| important information just because people weren't willing to
| create a persistent record of communication.
|
| My friend <<solved>> this problem, but I am sure his
| interlocutors would be miffed if they knew that.
| sa1 wrote:
| It might not be intended to limit thought, just to avoid
| liability, but does it limit thought anyway?
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Well, I'd say it does. My understanding is that if you're not
| limited in what you're thinking, but severely limited in
| _how_ you are allowed to think about it, your freedom of
| thought is limited nonetheless.
|
| And it's limited, by necessity, even outside working hours,
| lest your tongue/fingers slip and you utter a bad word in
| your Googler capacity so that a liable deed gets a liable
| name and there won't be any lawyering around this.
|
| Heck, it's almost, though not entirely, like a brainwashing
| cult!
|
| I guess in China they also force their Uighur camp operators
| to not even think about what they do as "torture", but
| "reeducation". It makes them happier in their workplace.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| How people think about things and what people put in
| legally discoverable media like email are worlds apart. As
| a basic aspect of corporate survival, it's important to
| keep that in mind.
|
| The overarching concept is "don't make it hard for the
| company to do business." The point of those trainings is
| that the words to avoid have legally-defined meanings that
| may or may not be what the Googler intended, but are likely
| to be interpreted in an antitrust sense in a court of law.
| The underlying concept is "don't talk like a lawyer if
| you're not one of our lawyers."
|
| Watching what you put in email (as described in this
| article) is in the same training where Googlers are given
| the overarching advice "always communicate via email as if
| those emails are going to show up on the front page of the
| New York Times tomorrow."
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Doesn't negate my point in the least.
|
| The fact alone that there exists such an extensive
| training specifically about monopoly-related stuff hints
| that there is extensive monopolistic behavior liability
| for which only hinges on whether it's acknowledged as
| such in the internal communication.
|
| Also, it adds a whole new (new?) meaning to any press
| release or a blog post from Google using any of the terms
| from the right column if you substitute them with the
| terms from the left column. They say "dedicated to
| providing the best services to our users", you see
| "dedicated to eliminating our competitors".
| rossjudson wrote:
| Someday you will participate in a legal proceeding, and
| you will feel silly about writing this. I wish I could
| have those days back, when I believed that lawyers
| wouldn't twist words out of context, or construct entire
| alternate realities from a few found seed words.
|
| But they do, and the good ones are really good at it.
|
| Any competent company is going to train its people with
| some sort of variation on a course named "The Ten Dumbest
| Things You Can Write In An Email So Don't".
| oefrha wrote:
| This is sound advice not only for corporate survival; you
| should also keep this in mind in personal communications.
| Even your private communications with your closest
| friends could be leaked years later if you somehow manage
| to cross the wrong people, and Internet mobs are every
| bit as capable as the smartest lawyers at constructing
| alternate realities from a few found seed words; or maybe
| they're not as capable, but the bar of acceptance is also
| far lower.
| refenestrator wrote:
| Working there in the first place limits thought. Nobody wants
| to think of themselves as part of the problem.
|
| The language, at best, just makes the cognitive dissonance a
| little easier.
| kyrra wrote:
| Googler, opinion is my own.
|
| When I started at Google in 2015, in my first week here
| chatting with some peers, some of them were complaining
| about some of our policies around Android and that they
| much preferred Apple (the person didn't work anywhere near
| Android, but was complaining about it more as a user).
|
| There are many people at Google that have issues with
| various parts of Google's businesses. Some are more vocal
| about it than others. One great example was Brad
| Fitzpatrick complaining about the first-gen Nest smoke
| alarms (2015):
| https://twitter.com/bradfitz/status/566072337020112896
| [deleted]
| refenestrator wrote:
| Those are minor product quibbles.
|
| I'm not saying Google is the great Satan or anything, I'm
| just saying it's impossible for most people, especially
| the typical Googler, to simultaneously work at a place
| for a nice paycheck and think it's bad for society.
| Everyone justifies, whether it's Phillip Morris or
| Google.
| [deleted]
| skybrian wrote:
| It might have some effect, but Googlers can read all the same
| stuff on the Internet as everyone else.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Have you ever been a devout practitioner of a religion
| whose views on the world differ in key parts from the
| established scientific consensus?
|
| Have you ever been affiliated with a political party that
| was highly popular (or a _monoparty_ even) in your country
| but was held in contempt by the rest of the world because
| of how totalitarian /inhumane it was?
|
| In both cases, you could read whatever, even critical
| information about your values. But you would have an
| explanation ready -- enemies envy and slander us, they
| either know they lie or they are repulsed by the God's
| light because of how corrupted they are, they are not aware
| of the _whole truth_... You would have a whole arsenal to
| explain things away, because you are _committed,_ and your
| commitment makes it hurt to realize that the purpose your
| values serve is not very noble, or that you 're a part of
| something atrocious. It's the human nature.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Google's internal memegen website does not confirm that.
| I've never seen anything so critical of Google.
| skybrian wrote:
| I understand what you're getting at and there is
| certainly a lot of closed-mindedness going around. I
| don't think any organization is immune to this.
|
| But there are also a lot of employees who have strongly
| opposed various Google policies and engaged in various
| political activity based on that, so the groupthink
| doesn't seem to be working very well? Also, the company
| leaks like a sieve these days.
|
| Even before that, there were a lot of internal debates.
| (They just didn't leak as much.) It's in part because of
| these debates that you need policies; people sometimes
| say careless things in heated discussions.
|
| (Former Googler, but it's been a while.)
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Isn't continuing to work for a company that has policies
| you strongly oppose an example of successful groupthink?
|
| I suppose you could make a case for continuing if the
| policies are/have been/could realistically be changed.
|
| But if that's unlikely?
| nitrogen wrote:
| When a company is large enough[0], it's probably not
| unreasonable to start thinking of it as a municipality,
| or even a small country. There are probably people who
| live in my city who I wouldn't like, there are probably
| policies of my city I don't like, but I still live where
| I live.
|
| Similarly, at a large enough company, if your work is
| good, but some other division of the company is bad,
| should you leave the company(city/country)? Or just avoid
| the bad division?
|
| [0] Leaving aside the question of whether it's a good
| thing for companies to get that large.
| aix1 wrote:
| Thank you for this, the analogy really resonates.
| Johnie wrote:
| Many large companies have the same policies/training for this
| very reason. You do not want to put something in writing that
| could potentially appear on the front page of the Wall Street
| Journal.
|
| The training/policies just codify that.
| CPLX wrote:
| This is what's known as a Stringer Bell warning[0] and it
| doesn't reflect well on the organization who has to make it
| this aggressively.
|
| Yes, it stands to reason that if you're engaged in a
| potentially unlawful conspiracy you need to be careful what you
| put in writing.
|
| However if this is coming up constantly and prevents you from
| using common sense words for your regular business operations
| then it's a pretty clear red flag that your _actions_ may be
| subjecting you to legal liability.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/pBdGOrcUEg8
| eawoifjaiowepfj wrote:
| > discovery process for lawsuits will find your carelessly
| written email and opposing lawyers will take it out of context
|
| I don't work for Google or have much of an opinion on
| "Googlespeak".
|
| However, that the practice of law is allowed to exist in its
| current state is an indictment on our society. The legal
| profession is one that polices itself, has no proper oversight
| (judges are just lawyers with a more refined superiority
| complex), raises barriers to entry with a level of zeal only
| matched by medicine (to which it is not actually comparable),
| and is also allowed to maliciously and limitlessly wield this
| power over the people who do real work is a foundational
| problem with governmental design.
| pyrale wrote:
| From don't be evil to don't leave a paper trail...
| titzer wrote:
| They also have a corporate email policy where mails get auto-
| deleted after 18 months, unless you apply labels or are on a
| litigation hold (which would make such policy completely
| illegal). The email policy has _no other purpose_ than to limit
| legal exposure. There is no legitimate business reason for that
| policy. In fact, it actively harms institutional memory and is
| frankly Orwellian, IMHO.
| minsc__and__boo wrote:
| That's not just Google though. Most companies have an email
| deletion policy that auto-deletes emails after a certain
| about of time, on the premise that they eventually lose all
| value and only pose a potential liability and litigation
| risk.
|
| Even U.S. government officials have used private email
| servers to avoid having to serve them up via requests.
| vxNsr wrote:
| > _Even U.S. government officials have used private email
| servers to avoid having to serve them up via requests._
|
| And when that failed they destroyed the hard drive that
| contained the exchange server db. (See IRS scandal)
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >There is no legitimate business reason for that policy.
|
| You already completely answered the perfectly standard and
| reasonable business reason: "to limit legal exposure. "
|
| In fact, this legitimate business reason is 100% the reason
| for the policy. Increasing legal exposure for no reason is a
| bad idea, for companies and for individuals.
| slownews45 wrote:
| The analysis here is so absolutist and extremist it is
| ridiculous.
|
| Many business have auto-delete for the simple business
| purpose - when someone hacks your email (which will happen
| somewhere in a large business) - why do you need to keep all
| that crap around forever? And yes, people email payroll
| details, passwords, logins and the list goes on - stop with
| the preaching about how to email securely.
|
| So you auto-delete, which reduces the blast radius. In most
| cases folks are not looking at emails past 3 years old.
| daxelrod wrote:
| This is a pretty standard policy at larger companies. Part of
| the reason is that even if everything in the emails is 100%
| legally fine, discovery is _expensive_ and gets more
| expensive the more emails exist.
|
| This explanation was given to me by a corporate lawyer who
| was trying to figure out whether the same kind of expiration
| could be put on tickets in bug and project trackers, which
| would have been even more harmful to institutional memory
| than an email expiration policy.
| cornel_io wrote:
| Almost every US corporation with a competent legal department
| has such a policy, and at a lot of them the period is way
| shorter than 18 months. I've suffered through 30 day policies
| before, and it's dumb and not fun at all, but Google is
| hardly being creative on this point.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I disagree. If its part of the institutional memory it should
| be documented on an internal site and kept. Not stuck in an
| email format to disappear.
| titzer wrote:
| Personally, I often refer back to emails of what people
| sent me in order to have proper context, both technical,
| logistical, etc. Instructions on how to do things, how we
| debugged something or other, etc. That makes _me_ more
| productive and useful as well as other people. If we gotta
| write every email over again and put it up on a wiki, that
| just won 't happen.
| owisd wrote:
| Write it on the wiki first then just email the link to
| the wiki. No additional effort and then the guy who joins
| two years after everyone on the email chain has left and
| now has to maintain it also has that info.
| titzer wrote:
| I meant specifically, things like "Wait, who is this
| person? What did they want again? What did I tell them
| last time?" That's not stuff you put on a wiki.
| aix1 wrote:
| This may or may not work for you, but I keep notes in a
| collection of Google docs.
|
| Depending on context, these are either shared with the
| other person (and usually editable by them) or is
| accessible only by me.
| titzer wrote:
| At the volume of mail I was receiving at Google
| (100+/day), there's just no time to manually index things
| like that. Why can't we let email archives just
| _function_?
| gumby wrote:
| > They also have a corporate email policy where mails get
| auto-deleted after 18 months
|
| Eric Schmidt's retention policy was 72 _hours_.
| alphabetting wrote:
| Source? Curious what the reasoning would be there. Seems
| insanely impractical
| jollybean wrote:
| It's obviously false, there are a number of regulations
| which would require G. to keep his communications on
| record for years, which is really established and well
| understood despite the commons here seeming to disagree
| with me.
|
| More than likely Schmidt may have said something along
| the lines of deleting anything more than 3 days old
| because at the pace of his business, it's 'time out' and
| not relevant. But that's just a matter of his peculiar
| communications style. That the label has changed to
| 'archive' doesn't mean anything really from a corporate
| perceptive.
|
| So yes, illegal to actually delete, and seemingly
| impractical to bump from one's inbox, but perhaps at
| 'Google Speed' there's some reason for it (and maybe
| there's a big caveat i.e. anything that's 'starred' or
| whatever doesn't get deleted, or, maybe anything older
| than 3 days that's opened or unopened gets deleted).
| gowld wrote:
| Before or after the High-Tech Employee Antitrust
| Settlement?
| jollybean wrote:
| I doubt that because it's probably illegal. Execs have to
| keep copies of things they write around.
|
| EDIT: For those who are wondering, here is a quick summary
| [1].
|
| Eric Schmidt's emails are definitely kept around a very
| long time, for very legal reasons, and whatever he happens
| to do with his own personal 'inbox' is not relevant to the
| subject at hand, and amounts to a kind of personal
| email/habit choice.
|
| To suggest '72 hours' in response to a discussion about
| legal discovery etc. is basically misleading in that
| regard.
|
| [1] https://www.spamtitan.com/web-filtering/email-
| retention-laws...
| easton wrote:
| Execs themselves don't, they just have to be kept around.
| The policies are most likely enforced through Gmail's
| retention settings which are set by IT, who can view all
| of the mail (regardless of whether it was deleted from
| the user's mailbox) in Vault.
| jollybean wrote:
| Yes, of course, 'execs' don't manage anything on their
| own, but the OP is talking about 'email retention' in the
| context of litigation and discovery i.e. 'a copy'
| irrespective of label, which is a legal requirement.
|
| Eric Schmidt is not deleting his emails after 72 hours
| for the reason you mentioned and certainly the company is
| not, which is the salient issue.
|
| One could say 'oh that's just from his inbox' but that's
| pointless in the context of this conversation because
| we're talking about 'If the corporation has a copy or
| not' i.e. 'IT' etc..
|
| Scmidt deleting maybe a local copy after 72 hours doesn't
| really have anything to do with anything other than his
| personal email habits.
|
| [1] https://www.spamtitan.com/web-filtering/email-
| retention-laws...
| laurent92 wrote:
| How does he keep track of relationship history with
| someone? Commitments? Goals?
| dillondoyle wrote:
| If true, my guess is that with such a huge power
| imbalance Schmidt isn't often waiting 72 hours for
| replies.
| delaynomore wrote:
| This policy makes very little sense. Does Google IT also
| purge every message he responded to from all corporate
| managed mailboxes?
| rossjudson wrote:
| I work at Google and my messages are purged before I even
| send them. This avoids so many problems!
| gumby wrote:
| Truly Google lives in the future the rest of us will
| catch up with.
| yongjik wrote:
| > The email policy has no other purpose than to limit legal
| exposure.
|
| > There is no legitimate business reason for that policy.
|
| So the policy is about limiting the chance of potentially
| _very expensive_ lawsuits, and has no legitimate business
| reason? Choose one.
|
| I wish people stopped overusing "Orwellian": the term is so
| overused that you could use it next to "agile" and I wouldn't
| notice.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| "Orwellian" seems like a good fit for memory-holing
| people's communications.
| novaRom wrote:
| At the same time the only apps I cannot select & copy any
| text from are YouTube and GoogleMaps. The comments people
| leave there are so valuable for Google?
| ma2rten wrote:
| I just tried it, I seem to be able to copy text just fine
| from both apps.
| novaRom wrote:
| Maybe it's because you tried iOS apps? It doesn't work in
| Android apps.
| titzer wrote:
| > I wish people stopped overusing "Orwellian"
|
| "Orwellian" is an adjective describing a situation, idea,
| or societal condition that George Orwell identified as
| being destructive to the welfare of a free and open
| society. It denotes an attitude and a brutal policy of
| draconian control by propaganda, surveillance,
| disinformation, denial of truth (doublethink), and
| manipulation of the past, including the "unperson"--a
| person whose past existence is expunged from the public
| record and memory, practiced by modern repressive
| governments. Often, this includes the circumstances
| depicted in his novels, particularly Nineteen Eighty-
| Four[2] but political doublespeak is criticized throughout
| his work, such as in Politics and the English Language.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian
|
| I defend my use of the term. Disappearing the past
| absolutely is Orwellian. Down the memory hole!
| draw_down wrote:
| Sure, it has no other purpose, but I think that says more
| about our legal system than anything. People operating
| completely above board can be dragged through the mud. What's
| that quote about, give me six words from an honest man and
| I'll have him hanged?
| laurent92 wrote:
| > The email policy has _no other purpose_
|
| Yes, it has: GDPR requires that you delete PII in reasonable
| time. I have a lot of customers contacting me by email for
| example, but also the JIRA notifications which all end up in
| emails with extensive PII. It must be deleted in a controlled
| way according to GDPR.
|
| But you are correct that this excuse goes away with Google,
| since they don't do support ;)
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| You get more of the behaviors you encourage and less of the
| ones you discourage. The US legal system strongly discourages
| retaining email, since it rarely works in favor of the entity
| making the retention decision. And there is no particular
| reason to keep emails that old, so naturally companies want
| to get rid of them.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| How is it Orwellian?
|
| >"Orwellian" is an adjective describing a situation, idea, or
| societal condition that George Orwell identified as being
| destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. It
| denotes an attitude and a brutal policy of draconian control
| by propaganda, surveillance, disinformation, denial of truth
| (doublethink), and manipulation of the past, including the
| "unperson"--a person whose past existence is expunged from
| the public record and memory, practiced by modern repressive
| governments.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian
|
| Stop overusing terms you don't understand
| m0zg wrote:
| So that's what they settled on? Kent tried to introduce it
| while I was still there and the pushback was so severe they
| decided not to do it at the time. I think the initially
| proposed retention period was shorter than that though. I
| could live with 18 months, but shorter than that cuts into
| all sorts of business processes including the all-important
| performance review cycle (AKA "perf"). I do think it's
| detrimental to the business of writing software though. I
| quite often search for emails from years and years ago, as
| well as mail "notes to self" to be able to find them later.
| zepto wrote:
| Why not both?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I was in Google Ads from 2008-2010. At that time, there was a
| limit of 3 top ads and 8 right-hand-side ads. The top ads
| generated the vast bulk of the revenue.
|
| They were also in blue or yellow (I forget which, but one was WAY
| more lucrative than the other!) so it was very easy for the user
| to distinguish an ad from a search result.
|
| I just did the canonical $$$ search "flowers" on my Macbook. The
| entire first page was ads and they are not colored anymore
| (although they do say "Ad"). There is also a Maps snippet which
| shows where I can buy flowers.
|
| What happened? Well, I can guess: they did experiments, and not
| coloring the ads produced more revenue. I know from talking to
| ordinary users that they often say proudly "I never click on
| ads!" Now they do.
| azalemeth wrote:
| And, simultaneously, I've switched search engines to DDG
| (something I last did in the mid 1990s -- to Google!), and have
| multilayered network, browser, and hosts-file level adblocking.
| Such is the price of progress...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| DDG is _pretty_ good and it 's my first try for searching.
|
| Occasionally Google is still better. Just today, I was
| looking for old financial data on Synoptics (late 80s).
| Google has books & journals from back then; DDG does not.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| For the other canonical query, try "mesothelioma." An info box
| on the right, and four ads on the left.
|
| At one time, this was the highest-priced ad in Google (idk if
| it still is), because personal injury lawyers were desperate to
| get clients.
| caust1c wrote:
| Holy shit. No wonder google doesn't give a shit about
| adblockers. Those people would be the ones who care about
| litigation and stopping this shit. Easy to let such a small %
| of users slide when the other 99% will willingly fall into the
| ad trap.
|
| This is insane:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/bdtvyXF.png
| helen___keller wrote:
| Wow, I had no idea because it's been so long since I've been
| without ad blockers.
|
| Interestingly, I tried the same on DuckDuckGo and it seemed
| almost identical: some inlined ads, shopping results, have to
| scroll down to find actual search results. (main difference:
| embedded non-ad results like wikipedia and news).
| ExtraE wrote:
| I just tried this (firefox on iOS, new england). Google asked
| for my location and I said "no".
|
| TLDR: 2 ads, the rest organic.
|
| Top-2 were ads, a maps widget, organic result, people also ask,
| 4 organic results, people also search for, images, 4 organic, 1
| ad.
| asdff wrote:
| Really? I just did this on desktop and the first two pages
| were all advertisements for florists. These sorts of links
| used to be demarked as ads on google search in the before
| times. Wikipedia didn't even appear until page three. That
| used to be the first result for a typical noun search.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I very rarely click on Google Web Search ads.
|
| I very rarely use Google Web Search.
|
| Poor relevance and ubiquitous tracking is a key condern. But
| the ad-spamming is also tremendously out of hand.
|
| I'd switched to Google from AltaVista in 1999. I ditched GWS
| effectively by 2013.
|
| Yes, I'll still occasionally run a "!g" bang search. And there
| are Google services I find genuinely useful --- Google Books
| and Ngram Viewer most especially.
|
| But the bloom hasn't been anywhere near that rose for a long,
| long, long, long time.
| hlau wrote:
| Really surprised to hear that you're not getting the
| relevance out of Google. Are most of your searches in a
| specific domain that's somehow not covered properly by
| Google? And is there a search engine that does a better job
| for you? I've tried using services like DDG and find myself
| falling back to Google more often than not.
| rnhmjoj wrote:
| I almost never get useful results out of a web search,
| nowadays, unless the query is very specific (like looking
| up a website I forgot the domain of). This is not
| particular to google search, which in fact I don't use
| anymore.
|
| Trying to find information given only fuzzy details almost
| never produce relevant links; anything remotely commercial,
| like trying to find a product reviews, film to watch, a
| store nearby, etc. produces tons of synthetic websites full
| of ads that magically match my query; specific technical
| information can result in low-effort blogspam or total rip-
| offs from other websites (stackexchange answers, other
| blogs, etc.); and the list goes on.
|
| It seems to me the only actually interesting material is
| now found in forums, message boards, wikis and other kind
| of websites where users generate the content. Unfortunately
| searching these is far from handy because they aren't
| always indexed or have archaic interfaces or require a
| login. I think search engines in general, either by
| prioritising revenue or being tricked by spammers and CEO,
| are now blind to the real information contained in the web.
| I wish for a search engine that would only index a curated
| list of genuine websites based on a topic, but I don't
| think we'll ever have one because it's not profitable.
| mda wrote:
| "I almost never get useful results out of a web search"
|
| This I find impossible to believe. So you basically don't
| get any useful results for 80-90% of your searches? I
| wish you could give some examples.
| rnhmjoj wrote:
| Ok, here's a few real example where I had only partial
| (but 100% correct) information had a hard time finding
| the right answer:
|
| 1. There's a shell (program) which feature a built-in
| file manager inspider by ranger, I forgot its name: try
| to find it. Answer: [1]
|
| 2. There's a particular gas that can (temporarily) kill a
| smartphone, but you forgot which. Find the article about
| this. Answer: [2]
|
| 3. There's a blog post (well-known if you're into
| networking) that argues IPv6 was meant to replace MAC
| addresses. Answer: [3]
|
| [1]: https://elv.sh/
|
| [2]: https://www.ifixit.com/News/11986/iphones-are-
| allergic-to-he...
|
| [3]: https://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201708#10
| mda wrote:
| 1. Only finds it if something in the line of "programming
| language and interactive shell with built-in file
| manager" for less, it indeed misses.
|
| 2. "(this) gas causes smartphones to temporarily
| deactivate" second result
|
| 3 "blog post ipv6 was supposed to replace MAC adresses"
| 3rd result
|
| In some cases some slight change in the wording changes
| the ranking drastically. However, I am not sure "The old
| good google" would find these at all honestly.
| alliao wrote:
| YES! I still remember the earlier days of Google, when it
| was not only returning results, the results were a
| delight to click through. I genuinely felt happy using
| it. Infoseek was good in a way that it let you search
| within searched results, so you could filter down. Alta
| Vista was definitely larger, but Google was pure magic.
| Not only relevant but digs up interesting and rewarding
| well researched information sitting around in a little
| corner of a web.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The problem is generally typical of online content as a
| whole given SEO gaming and commercialisation. DDG's bang
| searches and the ability to fluidly target searches to
| specific sites with less typing and fewer hops is a key
| differentiator.
|
| The most relevant quality content tends to come from
| published rather than online sources, or by going direct to
| source.
|
| The Web has been a mistake.
|
| That said, Google's SERP page content, layout, tracking,
| and advertising all effectively drop relevance by a
| tremendous amount --- I've got to consciously filter out
| Google's own crap on top of the irrelevant web results
| returned.
|
| DDG's cleaner presentation increases effective quality by a
| subjectively-assessed factor of 2--10.
|
| Date-bounded search remains one of the very few reasons to
| favour GWS for a specific search, though even that is
| highly unreliable. Often what I want is a searchable
| archive from a given period, not a guestimate of a date-
| ranged search over the live Web.
|
| Even in Google Books, date-ranged search results very often
| fail to return content from the requested period.
| _nalply wrote:
| > The Web has been a mistake.
|
| In hindsight, what would have been better?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| That's a good question. I'm not sure I have a good
| answer.
|
| I'm also not sure that djin can be rebottled. The history
| of media advances has been that they tend to progress and
| proceed, and human culture changes around them, they do
| rather less adapting to human culture.
|
| (I've become aware in the past five years or so of the
| study of media and its impacts on society as a whole.
| Elizabeth Eisenstein's _The Printing Press as an Agent of
| Change_ only hints at the full breadth, but is one of the
| major works on the topic. She draws heavily on Marshall
| McLuhan 's _The Gutenberg Galaxy_ (literally: we live in
| the universe Johannes Gutenberg created), and there are
| numerous others who explore this, notably Adam Curtis and
| Neil Postman. Again, the Web, algorithmic social media,
| and mobile computing each bring their own twist. Again,
| this isn 't the first time media's transformed society.
| I'd argue that _every_ advance, from speech on up, has.
| The changes can be tremendous and catastrophic --- to the
| previously existing order --- as with the printing press
| and the Reformation and Hundred Years War.)
|
| One useful approach is to look at each of what were
| touted as the Web's strengths, and consider them from the
| perspective of "what could possibly go wrong". Several
| principles of the sociologist Robert K. Merton are
| helpful here: overt vs. covert functions and phenomena,
| unintended consequences, and possibly self-fullfilling
| prophecies.
|
| It's not clear to me what boundaries can be established
| for the Web, or what the consequences of a failure to
| establish those might be. Either case the future appears
| bleak.
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