
Facebook, Google, your reign may soon be over - cs702
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/facebook-google-your-reign-may-soon-be-over/2018/03/22/08fd2ee8-2e07-11e8-8688-e053ba58f1e4_story.html
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some_account
As someone who was on the internet before Google, I want them to disappear.

People these days believe they are a force of good since they are driving
innovation in technology. But they are so powerful now that other companies
are just using their platforms and browsers. Almost all real popular
innovation in tech comes from Google.

They have had ties with the American security agencies from the start and its
out in the open if you just spend a couple of minutes googling it.

Still, when Google says they delete information, people trust them. It's
really hard for me to understand why Google is trusted to this degree. Is it
something in our brains, unable to process information when it conflicts with
emotional beliefs?

~~~
jamespetercook
Google is the best place to find trustworthy sources of infomation about just
how untrustworthy google is.

~~~
goalieca
i've honestly been happier with ddg than google for a while. Google search was
a lot better during the page rank days. Maybe the SEO war is too awful or
maybe google is curating results far too much. Quite frankly, it scares me
that google personalizes every single damn search result.

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tradesmanhelix
"You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The
Villain." [1]

I don't think anyone ever sets out to build a dystopia. You just wake up one
day and find that all the little compromises you made along the way have
eroded your freedom and what was once cool and innovative is now stifling and
controlling.

The way out is making some hard choices and not letting convenience dictate
your every decision. Might be backing some losing causes by choosing to do
things like paying a little extra to buy books from a local bookstore, but at
least I'm making some choices while I still can.

[1]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/quotes/qt0484282](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/quotes/qt0484282)

~~~
ryandvm
This is largely due to shareholders ' inexorable demand for growth. Once
you've given up control of your company to people that demand an ever
increasing amount of revenue, you damn well better provide it or you're going
to be looking for a new job. And at the end of the day, nothing quite pays
like fucking people over...

~~~
supreme_sublime
Google's stock structure is actually pretty interesting. At least in terms of
voting.[0] The TL;DR is Larry Page and Sergey Brin still maintain an out sized
influence over the direction of the company despite not owning the majority in
an economic sense.

Obviously there is still regular stockholder desires, but in terms of overall
direction the pair still seem to be pretty firmly in control.

I did some research on this a while back as I was trying to figure out how
much stock someone would need to own to influence Google in a significant way.
Turns out it is basically impossible to unseat them.

[0] [https://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2015/08/12/googles-multi-class-
sto...](https://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2015/08/12/googles-multi-class-stock-
structure-made-alphabet-move-unique/)

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sharemywin
But now India has its own billion-person digital platform: the extraordinary
“Aadhaar” biometric ID system, which includes almost all of the nation’s 1.3
billion residents (and whose creation Nilekani oversaw). It is the only one of
these massive platforms that is publicly owned. That means it does not need to
make money off user data. It’s possible to imagine that in India, it will
become normal to think of data as personal property that individuals can keep
or rent or sell as they wish in a very open and democratic free market. India
might well become the global innovator for individuals’ data rights.

~~~
sharemywin
I would think it would be better to have multiple eco systems that share data
with users permission.

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neo4sure
As someone looking at global warming with the appropriate fear, it seems to
puzzling to me that we still don't talk about regulating the production of
CO2. Tech companies will be (and should be) regulated that's for sure. But
let's not take our eye off the ball.

