[HN Gopher] Apple's privacy changes hurt Snap and Facebook but b...
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Apple's privacy changes hurt Snap and Facebook but benefited Google
Author : prostoalex
Score : 141 points
Date : 2021-10-29 02:41 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| yaseer wrote:
| Google have their flaws (I never trust any new product of theirs
| will last), but on the whole, I am happy using their products and
| services. I have got enough value out of Google search, Gmail and
| Google docs over the years to make the privacy trade-off
| worthwhile, personally.
|
| Facebook and Instagram are products that make me more unhappy as
| I use them. According to Facebook's Internal research, I am not
| alone in that. The privacy trade-off is not worth the net
| negative value.
| csee wrote:
| > According to Facebook's Internal research, I am not alone in
| that.
|
| I think the core point is probably true, but I wouldn't be 100%
| confident about this statement. The research seems murky.
|
| https://archive.md/SPpNW
| 3grdlurker wrote:
| Have you actually weighed the value that you're getting out of
| Google services versus the privacy that you (and people) are
| trading off? Because I feel that people are blindly saying that
| and are overestimating the value. Let's see:
|
| * Google Maps - great navigation and place accuracy, in
| exchange for your real-time geolocation and social media posts
| tagging places
|
| * YouTube - free video hosting in exchange for your data being
| fed to ML algorithms, which make them billions; also now a
| great source of disinformation
|
| * Google Photos - free image hosting also in exchange of your
| enabling of their billion-dollar ML-based businesses
|
| I think I'm making the point in the above examples that they're
| making more money than what we're turning over, but please feel
| free to tell me--what other great value do we derive from
| Google products do we derive from our data?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| The users are evaluating benefit vs. harm to themselves. For
| them, they can either use a free product or pay for a product
| that is far less useful to them that still collects the same
| data.
| 3grdlurker wrote:
| Yeah so the problem with that response is that you can say
| the exact same thing about Facebook, so it now doesn't make
| sense that that's being made as a point in favor of Google.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| It explains why people use Google and Facebook. They're
| not stupid. Facebook can get away with much more abuse of
| its users and still provide net benefit because the users
| benefit from the network effect, which no competitor has
| tried to mitigate. Users of most Google products can
| migrate to competitors more easily.
| eli wrote:
| Did you see how they intentionally added artificial delays to
| non AMP ads? Or bid up their own ads to exactly what they
| calculated was the most a customer was willing to pay instead
| of running a fair auction?
| agustif wrote:
| Just use AdBlock, Ublock, SponsorBlock, or Any Ad Blocker.
|
| The web is just so much more usable and beautiful without
| ads...
|
| You can also use ddg with ! to search on google, never did it
| myself.
| yaseer wrote:
| Unfortunately yes, I think the objections to Google and
| Amazon are based on harms to the world, not to me as the
| consumer.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056196
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> to make the privacy trade-off worthwhile, personally.
|
| Maybe now. Maybe Today. But what about your privacy in the
| future? That data is now totally out of your control. Maybe you
| will feel differently in a few years. Maybe the laws will
| change and your past browsing history will be googleable by
| your ex wife. Data is forever. It should never be handed over
| solely on the basis of current promises.
| webmobdev wrote:
| It's easy to be Google free though with the following
| alternatives:
|
| 1. Gmail: Vivadi Mail (free), Fastmail, Protonmail, Tutanota
| etc. (Best look for an IMAP provider to make migration easy).
|
| 2. Google Docs: LibreOffice (if you don't care about
| collaboration) or MS Office or Pages.
|
| 3. Google Search: Create custom search engines on your browser
| for IMDB, Wikipedia, StackOverfow, Reddit etc etc. And use
| Yandex for the rest as it conveniently offers a link to resume
| search with Bing, Yahoo or Google if you are not satisfied with
| their search result. (Note though that Yandex is just as
| intrusive as Google, but its biggest plus is that it is a non-
| US company. A major annoyance with it though is that it often
| prioritizes Russian language sites).
|
| 4. Android: Saifish OS is currently the best, though apps are
| lacking for it. Otherwise, "Google Free" Android forks are the
| next best option.
|
| 5. Chrome: Firefox (even though it is becoming just as shitty)
| or its forks. Vivaldi browser is a distant second.
| mrkramer wrote:
| I think alternatives are not relevant since single apps do
| not matter but ecosystem is what matters. For example this is
| how Google's ecosystem works(my personal experience): Google
| Search > Gmail > YouTube. I first started using Google Search
| then I started using Gmail and finally in order to create
| YouTube account I needed a Gmail account.
| jsnell wrote:
| As far as I know, you've never needed to create a Gmail
| account for YouTube. You need a Google account, but those
| aren't necessarily Gmail ones. To create a non-Gmail Google
| account, just click on "use my current email address
| instead" in the account creation screen.
| mrkramer wrote:
| I didn't know that since I use Gmail since always but you
| get my point. More apps in family of apps more synergies.
| Here is what Google says about Google Account: "Sign in
| to your Google Account, and get the most out of all the
| Google services that you use. Your account helps you do
| more by personalising your Google experience and offering
| easy access to your most important information from
| anywhere."
|
| Getting back to YouTube yea tbh it would be kind of
| anticompetitive if Google required exclusively Gmail to
| use YouTube. My bad.
| [deleted]
| laserlight wrote:
| > I have got enough value out of Google search, Gmail and
| Google docs over the years to make the privacy trade-off
| worthwhile, personally.
|
| This statement assumes that Google services are of high quality
| because they exploit users' privacy. I don't think that trade-
| off is necessary. Google could offer its services with high
| quality and without violating users' privacy.
| chrischen wrote:
| This would be true if Google is able to extract more value
| from behind your back privacy intrusions than they can
| extract from convincing people to pay some amount. This is
| reasonable because Google's model detaches the consumer from
| the true cost they are paying, which will inevitably lead to
| higher costs paid.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Many of Google services allow users to take advantage of data
| collection. For example I once received a notification along
| the lines of "based on your location and traffic, you should
| leave at 3pm to catch your 5pm flight". I did nothing, I just
| received my flight ticket on my Gmail account, Google
| algorithms did the rest.
|
| This is just one example. I find personalized search and
| suggestions rather good, and I regularly use location history
| to remember where I was on a particular date. This is of
| course a byproduct of data collection for monetization
| purposes, but I like the fact that you can get something
| useful out of it.
|
| Also, Google does a rather good job of not leaking your
| personal data. I am not talking about state actors level
| threats, but unlike with Facebook, it doesn't have a tendency
| to show pictures of you getting drunk to your boss.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| https://theprint.in/politics/asked-google-for-emails-sent-
| be...
|
| the problem is when governments ask google access to data
| which otherwise they could not obtain. in this recent case,
| the idea was to access gmail or google drive because that
| contains "unencrypted" whatsapp backs. so all the e2e and a
| thir party managed to be the achilees heel.
| addicted wrote:
| None of that requires Google to collect your data.
|
| A simple one time parse with creating a calendar event and
| notification based on a Google Maps lookup should be
| sufficient.
|
| None of that even requires Google to retain any personal
| identifying information.
| moolcool wrote:
| Google's "plane ticket in the inbox" logic is extremely
| handy, but it's also not very clever. If a family member
| forwards me their itinerary so I can pick them up from the
| airport, for example, Google will still remind me that I
| have to depart soon, even though I'm just at home.
| fishywang wrote:
| I agree with you.
|
| To add to it, Google also have top notch security capabilities.
| Yes they have my data (privacy), but I know that my data is
| safe with them and will very very unlikely be hacked by/leaked
| to 3rd parties (security).
| freebuju wrote:
| Google cannot secure your data against the real criminals.
| The 3 letter agencies.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| If we extend that logic, no one can. Not collecting may not
| be an option either.
| [deleted]
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Instead of pushing back on all Big Tech, I am seeing endless
| bickering about what dystopian company to follow.
|
| Current state: Apple and Google are the 'good' guys. Facebook
| and Microsoft are the 'bad' guys. Twitter is in the background
| at the moment. Tiktok is HN's absolute lovely darling. No one
| cares that its Chinese.
|
| This keeps changing like a drunk game of russian roulette,
| mixed with some partisan politics, anti-billionairism, etc.
|
| If it were year 2005, we would all be singing in unison to take
| down Oracle, IBM and Microsoft - have a startup spirit of
| optimism. I haven't seen that lately on HN.
| mrkramer wrote:
| They are all bad if people trade their personal/private
| information for "free" use of those services. The key part is
| let people know they are trading their personal data in
| exchange for "free" access to whatever free of charge service
| these companies offer.
| duud wrote:
| I am fairly confident that the average user understands
| that their YouTube, FB, Insta etc usage is funded by
| targeted ads and doesn't really care. Sure they might not
| understand the full extent of the targeting but let them
| learn about factory farming, forced labour, the
| prison/military industrial complex and many other evils
| first. Maybe with information campaigns run via targeted
| ads :)
| tqi wrote:
| That's because for many there is no consistent principle
| underlying their criticisms, they start with a list of
| companies they like/dislike or view as with/against them and
| work backwards.
| sharikous wrote:
| Good for you I guess.
|
| I replaced Google search with Brave and DDG, Google Docs is not
| so useful for me (bad support for math formulas) and Gmail is
| just a default service I use from a client
|
| I don't happen to see much value in the product you mention.
| The main reason I use them is because of inertia and the need
| to jump through hoops with my Android phone to use
| alternatives.
|
| And interestingly I see Facebook and Whatsapp as very valuable
| for keeping in contact with people I am physically far from.
|
| So I guess my experience is sort of the opposite
| agustif wrote:
| I wanted to build a science paper research platform, and math
| support was big on the list, the outlineapp team had an open
| issue to support LaTeX. You might be interested in that as a
| docs replacement maybe
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Doesn't Brave just take its results from google? They are
| pretty hard to avoid, being an effective monopoly.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > They are pretty hard to avoid, being an effective
| monopoly.
|
| Im confused by this claim. Is it really that difficult to
| avoid Google search? It seems to me that it just requires
| going to bing.com, or changing the default search in your
| browser.
|
| Also, Brave Search uses its own index, not google results.
| simonh wrote:
| Agreed, they are not a monopoly in any sense of the word.
| They're just considerably better than their competition,
| and it's absurdly easy to choose whichever search service
| you like, so almost everyone chooses Google.
|
| It's the same with facebook, nearly everyone else is
| already there, so if you want to connect to people that's
| where you go. They just hit critical mass first.
|
| The word monopoly gets thrown around as though it just
| means 'big and bad'. It's wooly thinking that's polluting
| the debate by obscuring what's actually going on. Missing
| the mark like that just detracts focus from actual
| pertinent criticisms of the harm these companies actually
| do, or what needs to happen to resolve those issues.
| salawat wrote:
| https://www.competitionpolicyinternational.com/why-is-it-
| cal...
|
| Y'all needy to either be way more pedantic, or back off a
| bit, but staying at the level you're at is completely
| missing the point most people have taken to referring to
| with the word 'monopoly'.
| simonh wrote:
| There's certainly some cartel-like behaviour going on,
| such as the recently uncovered collusion between Facebook
| and Google in the ad markets. That has to be stamped on.
|
| I'm a little uneasy about Facebook owning WhatsApp, but I
| can't see any concrete way they are able to use that to
| significantly exclude competition.
|
| I just don't see how Google is leveraging its other
| properties in significant ways to exclude say Bing or
| DDG. I use Google docs and gmail, but what has that got
| to do with whether I use Google search or Bing?
|
| What anti-trust action do you think is needed, and what
| is it's desired outcome? I don't know what 'breaking up
| Facebook ' really means, except maybe making them sell
| WhatsApp. What would that achieve?
| salawat wrote:
| The essence of anti-trust is killing vertical
| integration, or at least keeping that integration from
| getting so deep it's harmful to the ability to maintain a
| healthy marketplace.
|
| When you start to see all eggs start to get destined for
| one basket (Facebook, Amazon, Google, or Microsoft), and
| especially in Google's or Apple's case of buyout and
| extinguish, you have a problem.
|
| Amazon is also right on top of that precarious position
| as well; sitting on top of and utilizing third-party
| sales data to front-run. It's not just about harm to the
| consumer, it's harm to the market as a whole.
|
| The case of Tech in particular is fascinating, because
| what their service offerings enable is apparently highly
| destabilizing to the very authorities that would regulate
| them.
|
| And no, Tech isn't the only sector on my sh*tlist. Media
| consolidation has gotten rather out of hand as well in my
| opinion. Walmart has also started to devastate the dairy
| industry for everyone but the industrial ops as well
| after buying out one of the big packaging outfits.
| simonh wrote:
| OK, I'll ask again. What action do you think needs to be
| taken, and how would it improve the market for users? How
| should be prevent these companies from being monopolies,
| accepting for a moment that they are.
|
| I still don't know what "break up Google" or "Break up
| Facebook" actually means and how that would help. There
| are bits of them you could forcefully spin off, but so
| what?
| salawat wrote:
| Simple. You (a company) do one thing. You do not absorb
| other companies and extinguish them. Somebody else does
| the same thing you do, but a bit different? Want to
| merge? Bend over, cuz here comes the part where you have
| to painstakingly prove why you merging with them is good,
| and won't subject the market to crippling
| hyperoptimization forces.
|
| Walmart took control of pricing in the dairy sector
| causing small operations to no longer be able to compete,
| propped up by income from other revenue streams. Google
| has basically set up a value desert around itself as far
| as advertising goes. As a knock on, it's extinguished
| potential competitor/disruptor after disruptor. Facebook
| has absorbed and integrated personal info on a gargantuan
| scale with the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions.
|
| Action items off the top of my head: Alphabet gets
| dissolved. Facebook calves off Instagram/WhatsApp. Bare
| minimum.
|
| Start an investigation into how vertical integration of
| brick and mortar grocers and packaging Industries effects
| actors in that space.
|
| Murdoch I'd have to do more research on, as he's a
| relatively recent arrival on my list.
|
| Amazon gets to decide if it's going to be a logistics
| company, or a platform for the sellers, or it's own
| "brick and mortar"-like. If marketplace, no using third-
| party seller for order flow analysis and front running.
| AWS gets calved, period.
|
| The bigger you get, the more regulators take a stake in
| shaping your growth, to the breaking point. Thems the
| breaks. Stay small if you want to do it your way. Risk
| becoming national infrastructure/utility as the numbers
| of M&A's increase.
|
| It's not all stick though. A company can do a strategic
| "merge-and-release" whereby for a short period of time, a
| company can acquire another, help it scale, then calve
| off after a period. After a certain size point, this is
| the only arrangement by which consolidation can happen.
| Calving off of industrial verticals is required for
| further permanent merger activity to continue.
|
| The end goal of this doctrine is to keep network effects
| at bay. Once you start getting snowball effect, your
| shareholder's needs take second place to stakeholder's
| needs. Period. It is insane how effective a one way
| wealth funnel our system can become once we stop
| trustbusting.
|
| Oh, every telecom merger in the past 10 years gets
| audited, and gets subjected to a public review. Any found
| to have not significantly increased in the benefit
| delivered to the end user gets an asset auction, loses
| eligibility for bidding on municipal projects, all last
| mile municipal ISP bans are nulled.
|
| I'd throw in a day in the stocks as a target of rotten
| vegetation in the town square for lobbyists that have
| been intentionally obtuse, but I really don't think
| that's within the realm of possibility.
|
| All of this is liable to change if someone would be
| interested in hiring me for a reasonable sum to map it
| all out full-time complete with authority to engage in
| legal discovery to get what info I don't have access to
| that'd actually make anything in this post more than
| frustrated pontificating.
| simonh wrote:
| I get you on Amazon, they are abusing their function as a
| market platform for others and that needs cracking down
| on. That's not really anything to do with being a
| monopoly, it's just abuse, I suppose being dominant makes
| it easier to do it. That's not going to stop them
| dominating the market though, just stop them abusing that
| dominance.
|
| How does spinning off google's non-search businesses
| address the dominance of Google search? I don't see how
| gmail or docs makes any difference to that. I don't see
| how making Youtube a separate company benefits youtube
| users.
|
| How does spinning off Instagram and whatsApp from the
| facebook social network make any difference to anything?
| The facebook social network would still be dominant. It
| would make no difference to their ability to collude with
| google on ads, those are completely orthogonal issues.
|
| I'm not saying these companies aren't dominant in their
| market segment. They should not be allowed to abuse that
| dominance through e.g. coluding on ad placement.
| Regulation and enforcement is needed. However nothing you
| have suggested would make any difference to the dominance
| of google search or of the facebook social network. I
| also don't see how it would benefit users.
|
| Can anyone who buys the idea that google search is a
| monopoly, or that facebook social network is a monopoly,
| tell me how they would end those monopolies, why they
| would do it, and what the benefits would be?
| faeriechangling wrote:
| They're a monopoly in the ad business, Google and
| Facebook are reminiscent of Microsoft and Apple circa the
| 90's.
| donarb wrote:
| Brave announced only 2 weeks ago that they would no
| longer default to Google search in their browser.
|
| "Privacy-preserving Brave Search Replaces Google as the
| Default Search Engine in the Brave Browser"
|
| https://brave.com/search-and-web-discovery/
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I don't think this is relevant to my comment at all.
|
| The first part of my comment ignores the existence of
| Brave Search, saying that it's not "hard to avoid" Google
| Search when all it takes to do so is changing your
| browser to point to Bing.
|
| The second part of my comment that references Brave
| search was a response to the question of whether brave
| search uses Google under the hood.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| Wish that HN would ban comments that start with "I". So tired
| of hearing random nerd's anecdotes of why their particular
| use case is so much more important.
|
| Seriously. If you're about to tell us your individual "I"
| story just stop. No one cares.
| [deleted]
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| You mean "I wish" don't you?
| sircastor wrote:
| On the contrary, the anecdotes are what I find to be the
| most meaningful. The odd cases, edge cases, and the
| opinions of how people use a tool is what I find the most
| important. That's where the value is of "why not?" It's
| easy to generalize and assume that everyone is just like
| you. I'm glad we have folks sharing the differences.
| 6a74 wrote:
| As if you don't do it yourself. Just a few of your recent
| comments:
|
| > I just bought a 1600 sq ft home and it's honestly too
| small cause... [0]
|
| > I got expelled from high school because of this program.
| I'm a millionaire now though so shrug. [1]
|
| > I recently switched from rolling my own table to SQS. [2]
|
| > I love how this article blatantly lies in the title
| when... [3]
|
| > I used to do dishes, drive thru, kitchen, and floors at a
| Chic-Fil-A [4]
|
| > I noticed after having both for years that FiOS doesn't
| care at all... [5]
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28939110
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28901775
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27482459
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27475020
|
| [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27418894
|
| [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27408216
| yaseer wrote:
| I agree, WhatsApp is (or was historically) a great product I
| got value from.
|
| Unfortunately I think Facebook's incentives will compromise
| the product's quality. It's why many move to signal and
| telegram.
| lumost wrote:
| curious, I'm not a fan of organizing my own docs collection
| or being unable to collaborate on docs/share them via urls -
| I also dislike bespoke native apps for most tasks that are
| comfortable in the browser.
|
| Have you found equivalent services to gmail and docs without
| the privacy risks? it wouldn't be too bad to spend a dollar
| or two a month for something with less privacy tradeoffs.
| indymike wrote:
| > I replaced Google search with Brave and DDG,
|
| I've been using Brave's new search engine for the last three
| weeks and it is extremely good. This is the first time a non-
| Google search engine has made it a week in my daily workflow
| (software development + own multiple businesses).
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Zuckerberg doesn't need to benefit peoples lives, he just needs
| to make not using his service socially destructive enough that
| you will use his service anyways.
| sneedler wrote:
| >Gmail
|
| I set up an email server on my VPS but I went back to using
| Gmail after a while because it's so damn convenient. It's one
| of the few things that I don't see myself ever giving up.
|
| Nowadays I pretty much only use my email server to spam my
| friends with funny emails that appear to come from
| mcafee@belize.mansion
| arcatech wrote:
| How is Gmail more convenient in this case?
| adminscoffee wrote:
| news.google.com makes me fairly said but i have to go out of my
| way to see that. although sometimes google forces to to see
| trending stories as to which i cringe especially when i really
| don't want to care about what bad things are happening on a
| particular days. it sounds selfish but if i could block all
| news sites i would
| mft_ wrote:
| I'm with you. I understand the theoretical problems of Google's
| business model, but I get great value from their products, and
| until such a point as I experience or perceive direct harm, I'm
| okay to roll with them.
|
| (I deleted Instagram within of two weeks of joining, and
| Facebook many years ago.)
| yaseer wrote:
| I think most people's objections to Google and Amazon are
| macro objections to harm their business does to the world,
| not the individual consumer.
|
| I shop on Amazon like I eat steaks. I get individual value
| out of Amazon and the steak, but at macro scale, Amazon is
| harming other businesses, and my steaks increase carbon
| emissions (amongst other things).
| blitzar wrote:
| Yeah, but have you tried the alternatives to amazon? Got to
| say the competition is really not doing itself any favours.
|
| Same price / more + $6.50 in postage arriving in 4 days
| time. And you are going to harass me with emails because
| now you have it...
| krono wrote:
| Chicken and the egg.
|
| It's the exact opposite here in the Netherlands, where
| Amazon has only recently started to gain some ground.
| chrischen wrote:
| Maybe the harm increases prices overall, so you never
| know.
|
| Take hassle free returns and credit card points. Both
| features look like pro-consumer policies but end up
| forcing all online retailers to bake the cost into their
| prices. At the end of the day consumers just get no
| choice on this cost.
| asddubs wrote:
| I did buy a power supply for my laptop on lenovo.com
| recently, just because I had 0 confidence that if i
| bought it on amazon it wouldn't be a fake. I checked out
| the site for a local electronics retailer first, but
| apparently they also started allowing third party sellers
| on their platform. In any case, it ended up being half
| the amazon price anyway
| tialaramex wrote:
| Making my life difficult certainly isn't how to get me to
| use your direct retail site rather than Amazon.
|
| My preferred boots have a catalogue number. It's printed
| inside the boots, it's printed on the box they come in,
| it has remained the same for many years and it clearly
| identifies the exact model of boots and foot size.
|
| If you type that number in to the manufacturer's own
| retail web site they're confused, what can this possibly
| be? It's unclear to them apparently, maybe I want er...
| women's boots? [What even are women's boots? Answer: The
| same boots, but limited to small foot sizes. I actually
| have size 10 feet.]
|
| When I type the same code into Amazon, unsurprisingly it
| matches a product advertised by a seller, because the
| sellers have a strong incentive to advertise codes that
| result in sales. I get the exact product I want,
| admittedly it still doesn't auto-select the correct size
| but at least I'm on a page showing the product I want,
| one drop-down away from buying my boots.
|
| So, Amazon gets the sale and the manufacturer misses out
| on what's presumably a considerable gap between their
| wholesale price and the retail price I'd have paid on
| their own store.
| ramphastidae wrote:
| > So, Amazon gets the sale and the manufacturer misses
| out on what's presumably a considerable gap between their
| wholesale price and the retail price I'd have paid on
| their own store.
|
| So you are knowingly paying more than MSRP because you
| can't be bothered with using keywords to search the
| manufacturer's website instead? Weird. How often and how
| many boots are you buying that this would be worth the
| trade off?
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| They're not saying that. They're assuming that Amazon (or
| the seller on their platform) buys at a wholesale price
| below what the manufacturer charges as retail on their
| own website. So the manufacturer loses out on the
| difference if you buy from Amazon instead of direct.
| That's broadly going to be true whether the Amazon retail
| price ends up being higher or lower than the
| manufacturer's retail price.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Thankyou, yes, that's exactly what I was getting at.
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The alternatives are much better. I try to cut out all
| middlemen and buy from the brand directly if possible,
| assuming that I will get the highest quality product /
| least chance of counterfeit that way.
|
| Then I go to the big box stores' websites that do not
| have 3rd party sellers or offer the ability to filter
| them out.
|
| And then I might go to Amazon. Amazon prices are
| notoriously high for any liquid or household product
| bought regularly, Costco and Target and Walmart are way
| cheaper for those.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Amazon.com really is shockingly, atrociously poor. They
| barely even bother searching your keywords, for example.
| Even Google does a better job of searching then the
| native search engine. It beggars belief that they leave
| such basic features like filters so broken. But yeah,
| they have unreal fulfilment times plus guaranteed money
| back if something goes wrong. They accomplish this by
| treating everybody else like dirt.
| deergomoo wrote:
| > Same price / more + $6.50 in postage arriving in 4 days
| time
|
| It's unfortunate, because free postage is a complete myth
| that everyone now expects. A company the size of Amazon
| can afford to burn money for years and years until
| they're at the point where they have their own logistics
| network and make the numbers work.
|
| There are very few companies that can do that--or that
| should, really.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I had read an article that said Amazon requires sellers
| to offer them the lowest price and provide free shipping
| to get top position in search results. The consequence of
| this is that prices have now risen by the cost of free
| shipping.
| therealmarv wrote:
| The problem is not Google or advertising (for me). There is a
| trend among governments world wide to get your Google data when
| you are at the wrong time at the wrong place or searching the
| wrong thing at the wrong time.
|
| That's the real danger. Not what kind of advertisement you
| prefer.
| onetimemanytime wrote:
| >> _I have got enough value out of Google search, Gmail and
| Google docs over the years to make the privacy trade-off
| worthwhile, personally._
|
| You are assuming that no one else would have provided the same
| stuff with less intrusion, killing competitors (will come home
| later to roost) etc.
| shoto_io wrote:
| We decided to go for Office365 for our 3 person startup, and
| against G docs or whatever they call it nowadays.
|
| I gotta say it sucks! OneDrive isn't syncing properly. Working
| with people outside your org is hell.
|
| We're going to switch to Google soon enough.
| Closi wrote:
| Eh, I've got to say again that my experience is the opposite,
| so I guess everyone has different views on this!
|
| I'll agree the Sync isn't as good as Google, but I find the
| Microsoft Office 365 apps so much better if you need to spend
| lots of time in them every day. I've used the google
| alternatives and there are always limitations you end up
| hitting (As an example, I was working in google docs the
| other day and was pretty surprised that I couldn't even
| choose a custom page size and in order to set a custom page
| size I had to download an add-in - this sort of thing means
| the products just don't feel as built-out as the Microsoft
| ones).
|
| Never found an issue sharing things with clients - you just
| drop the files into a folder and send them a sharing link
| (and decide to allow them to edit or not).
| sagarm wrote:
| If your core use case is collaboration, GSuite is the best
| option IMO.
|
| If you have more of a desktop publishing mindset, the
| Microsoft suite has way more options.
|
| Personally I have zero need for WordArt or custom page
| sizes, but rely on the collaboration features in docs to
| hammer out designs, share analyses, and put together
| presentations. Nothing I produce is meant to be printed
| out.
| shoto_io wrote:
| What's your view on the "new kids on the block" like
| notion?
| shoto_io wrote:
| Yeah, maybe I'm just dumb and can't figure it out properly.
|
| I dump files on my computer and they don't end up on my
| colleagues laptop. So we end up resetting OneDrive on his
| Mac, which sometimes solves the issue.
|
| I have shared links with clients but then they suddenly
| can't access the folder any longer. So I share it again.
|
| I agree that the apps are good, but only in the desktop
| version. The web apps have still a long way to go.
| easton wrote:
| Yeah, OneDrive for Mac is where OneDrive for Windows was
| up until two or so years ago when they finally made it
| stable. They are apparently working on it, but when they
| haven't even been able to recompile for M1 I don't know
| when that work will appear.
| darepublic wrote:
| Nah they are overrated. Google docs is thoroughly mediocre the
| only plus is that it's free. And finally fed up enough with
| Google workspace that I'm moving off it. Their documentation is
| terrible. Gmail is good but will pay for a comparable
| replacement and then can finally wash my hands of this
| parasitic company
| criddell wrote:
| > Google docs is thoroughly mediocre the only plus is that
| it's free.
|
| Are there any collaborative office suites that are excellent?
| chrischen wrote:
| The problem I have with Google isn't that their products
| deliver value or not, it's that their products are obviously
| not free, and the cost is opaque to the consumer. But I do know
| the cost must be extremely high because they are extremely
| profitable and that profit must be coming from some place.
|
| The business model of most Google products rely on their costs
| to be completely detached from the consumer. And this is
| extremely insidious and anti-competitive because a consumer has
| no idea what businesses are paying Google, the business has no
| idea what the consumer is getting in exchange, and the
| information balance is totally lop-sided (Google has it all).
|
| The cost I'm talking about isn't just privacy (which is not the
| focal point here at all). The cost is that they exploit our
| data to create a one-sided marketplace where they can extract
| the highest value from merchants and consumers. This creates
| maximum value for Google and screws over competitors,
| consumers, and businesses. Even if _you_ don 't click on any
| Google ads, you are still paying for them because many business
| are forced to use them to survive given that Google has a
| massive share of the advertising business. The businesses you
| interact with simply mark up all costs, and you ultimately end
| up paying for them. It's anti-competitive because this
| detachment of the cost-benefit feedback loop means consumers
| are no longer making any conscious choice of Google product vs
| competitor product, because they think the Google product is
| free!
|
| FB business model happens to be much the same way, except
| rather than free product to get your attention they just
| outright manipulate you for your attention which is more
| obviously anti-consumer.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Facebook should forget about the virtual crap and work on a
| search engine. move the search box to the center of the page and
| bam, you have hundreds of millions of web searches to milk.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20211028052207/https://www.wsj.c...
| [deleted]
| ratww wrote:
| I'm not a Google fan, but good for them. If they're able to
| produce value without invasive tracking, then it's a good thing
| for everyone who is interested in privacy. Apple's (official)
| intent was never to cripple companies, but rather to give users
| choice.
|
| _> "As a result of the data drought, many brands have shifted
| their ad spending to Google because its flagship search-ad
| business relies on customer intent"_
|
| This also goes directly against all the doomsayers who said there
| was no money in context-based advertisement.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| The difference here is that Google makes their money on iOS
| mostly from searches in the browser (Google pays Apple >12B per
| year for this functionality to be promoted in the OS). When a
| user taps on an ad on a Google search in Safari, then makes a
| purchase on the advertiser's website, that conversion is not
| defined as "cross-app tracking" so Google can record it and
| charge for it. When a user taps on an ad in Facebook and then
| is directed to the advertiser's app to make a purchase, that is
| "cross-app tracking", and Apple won't allow that conversion to
| be recorded until after the user says yes to the prompt.
|
| Also, if the user clicks an ad in the Apple store, then makes a
| purchase in an app, Apple will happily charge the advertiser
| for that conversion without ever showing the user a cross-app
| tracking permission prompt.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Google is still doing plenty of invasive tracking. It's just
| less affected by this specific change.
| srcreigh wrote:
| > If they're able to produce value without invasive tracking
|
| This is completely backwards, no? Businesses want invasive
| tracking aka attributed ad spend. Apple's new rules prevent
| Instagram/FB and Snap ads from tracking / attributing properly.
| So those businesses just go to Google (Web, Android) to buy
| invasive tracking.
|
| The interesting followup question is whether businesses will
| need to start making budgets for non-invasive iOS FB/snap ads
| to be able to reach people, or whether Search/Chrome history
| tracking on iOS is good enough.
| hienyimba wrote:
| Non-paywall
|
| https://archive.ph/zAIaT
| vbg wrote:
| Facebook hasn't worked out yet they need to be paying a lot more
| money to Apple. Much more.
|
| Tim's going to keep thrashing Facebook till it learns to start
| paying up.
|
| It's more important than the metaverse.
| sharken wrote:
| The whole Meta thing is a distraction, nothing more. For better
| and worse there is nothing to be gained by the name change.
|
| The ad business is what matters to Facebook, so i think you're
| right.
| tyrfing wrote:
| The ad business is what matters _right now_. Meta is a
| startup pitch, a trillion dollar company pivoting from 2d
| screens to 3d, and the social network ad business is the
| runway to get there. It 's absolutely nuts, but I wouldn't
| call it a distraction. I'm a bit shocked at how many people
| are handwaving it away as a distraction, really.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > The ad business is what matters to Facebook
|
| Their ad business is ran on other people's platforms, and
| they're beholden to their rules, like Apples.
|
| "Metaverse" - whatever that's supposed to mean - is an
| attempt at creating a new platform that they control, where
| they don't have to follow Apple's rules.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| The problem with it is that MS missed the mobile revolution
| that made people more free, but AR glasses need much more
| technical advancements for people to get rid of the mobile
| phone.
| binkHN wrote:
| "The whole Meta thing is..." the beginning of the end of
| Facebook. While it won't go down the same way, I see this as
| MySpace 2021.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Yes. Apple gets paid billions by Google - obviously Apple is
| not going to hurt Google - instead they are going on a privacy
| crusade against companies whose business they can hurt without
| any financial blowback.
| jakejarvis wrote:
| I believe a big chunk (the majority?) of this comes from a
| fairly simple deal to set Google as the default search engine
| in Safari. Facebook doesn't have something similar to
| leverage, that I can think of at least.
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-
| apple-...
| franczesko wrote:
| What does it even mean that the data was 'superior'? Google has
| no proven workaround. It was affected as everywhere else.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| FTA:
|
| > As a result of the data drought, many brands have shifted
| their ad spending to Google because its flagship search-ad
| business relies on customer intent--users' search terms
| immediately reveal what they are interested in--rather than
| data collected from app and web tracking.
|
| It's too bad that the well of sneaky, user-stolen data had to
| dry up for the brands to move their dollars away from it.
| summerlight wrote:
| > Google has no proven workaround. It was affected as
| everywhere else.
|
| If everyone is forced to drop behavioral targeting in favor of
| contextual one, search ads is the king because users give ad
| networks with the most valuable context, search intent.
|
| Also, Google owns the widest range of ads inventory including
| many O&O properties. If you no more depend on fancy
| technologies, it becomes a fight of pure ad network
| infrastructure. No one can compete with Google there.
| blitzar wrote:
| It is not enough to just take the corporate earnings of companies
| in the quater after the _apple change_ and claim that every cent
| facebook / google made or did not make is due to this change.
| nojito wrote:
| You can when Facebook + Snap call out Apple's change in their
| investor docs
| lrem wrote:
| Are you implying Google has a revenue stream that doesn't
| depend on the iPhone? ;)
| hownottowrite wrote:
| Google is great if people know what they want, but for discovery?
| Not so much.
|
| Can't wait to see the articles about the crippling downstream
| effect of this change on small companies.
| blinding-streak wrote:
| Totally disagree. I start learning journeys all the time on
| Google (and Youtube).
| bogwog wrote:
| Same! The other day I learned that the earth is flat, the
| frogs are gay, and that the covid vaccines are just Bill
| Gates' latest plan to microchip us.
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