
Apple Avoids Amazon’s Beauty Contest, Searches Secretly for New Campus - cookscar
https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-avoids-amazons-beauty-contest-searches-secretly-for-new-campus-1527067800
======
kodablah
I'm not sure comparing a second headquarters and a tech support site is apt.
I'm not sure how loud the search is matters.

WSJ is a joke. Look, I can twist words too: "While Amazon is clearer and open
about employee counts and candidate locations for HQ2, Apple remains secret
and opaque about any details even for small site". Abatements abound
regardless, lets not treat the differences in culture between Amazon and
Apple, which translate to their way of searching for places to do business, as
if one is clearly superior. (I personally don't mind what Amazon is doing in
the least)

~~~
Karishma1234
Amazon's beauty contest did seem completely counterintuitive to me. People
with skin in the game are always in the know of things. Even if Amazon had not
massively advertised its move cities and states would have worked hard to
bring them to their shores. I did not understand why ordinary public had to be
drawn into it.

Your average joe is always going to oppose a disruption in his otherwise
mundane and lazy life.

Apple's strategy is much smarter let the cities secretly do a peacock dance,
cut some real under the table secret tax deals and move somewhere else.

~~~
eldavido
I really don't understand why there's this huge presumption of ill will toward
Amazon.

HQ2 is a project that will involve hundreds of thousands/millions of people
when you add up the employees, contractors who will build it, local
politicians/electorate, and everyone else. There's just no way to keep
something that big secret. It seems easier to just come clean, announce to the
world what you're doing, and be open about it.

Plus something of this magnitude is going to require political support so the
proposal is as much an appeal to the local electorate as anything else.

I, for one, think it would be great if tech jobs spread out across the US.

~~~
advisedwang
The complaint isn't that Amazon is expanding into other locations. The
complaint is that Amazon is using this to play cities off against each other.
It's a race for the bottom designed to maximize gain for Amazon at the cost of
the commons.

~~~
briandear
Cities can choose not to participate. Don’t like it, elect new officials.

~~~
yardie
And when the secret contract is signed? Can voters reneg on the deal
considering they weren't consulted nor notified.

------
IkmoIkmo
It's pretty clear it hasn't done Amazon's reputation any favours. And there's
no reason to think government officials won't go above and beyond in offering
incentives behind closed doors.

~~~
plandis
Why do you think that? I think Amazon will get what they want - mainly a city
to capitulate to their demands. I’ve talked to people in Pittsburgh and
Atlanta and the majority wanted Amazon. I don’t think most people realize
outside of tech circles that Amazon will mostly bring people in rather than
hiring locally and how much they have strained the infrastructure in Seattle.

~~~
Steltek
> how much they have strained the infrastructure in Seattle

You could rephrase this as "How much Seattle's entrenched interests have
crippled the city's growth". How many towns and cities would love to have the
problem of too many jobs?

~~~
gowld
It's not "too many jobs"; it's _Washington state voters_ voting down income
tax and transit initiatives that _Seattle_ sorely needs.

~~~
blang
It's not so much that voters are voting down income tax as progressive income
taxes are illegal in the state of washington[1]. Though Seattle has tried[2].
You are right though that in some cases the voters have voted down income tax
initiatives [3].

[1]
[https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/local-i...](https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/local-
income-taxes-are-illegal-in-washington-state)

[2]
[https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/11/22/25581262/superio...](https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/11/22/25581262/superior-
court-judge-rules-against-seattle-income-tax-appeal-on-the-way)

[3] [http://www.theolympian.com/news/politics-
government/election...](http://www.theolympian.com/news/politics-
government/election/article113515583.html)

------
bluedino
A commenter on the article made a snarky reply about Apple choosing China as
that's where a lot of the manufacturing is - I wonder why Apple/Amazon don't
look internationally for HQ2?

Are their international offices 'big enough' for what they need?

~~~
jrs95
You'd have to be insane to keep any of your sensitive IP in China, honestly.
But mostly I assume they stick to the U.S. because that's where the talent is
(and that's the government they need to have the closest relationship with,
too)

~~~
projectramo
Isn't all Apple's hardware IP "in" China?

~~~
sigstoat
as a simple example, not necessarily realistic, consider the circuit boards of
the iphone.

yes, they've got to ship the gerber files to china so the boardhouses can fab
the boards. but those are just images of the copper and mask layers. apple
doesn't have to ship the electrical schematics, with tolerances and notes and
explanations of why things are done the way they're done, outside of their
office building in california.

same with their ASICs; the masks and such have got to go to the fabs, but not
the HDL describing the logic.

so, certainly some of their IP ends up over there, but not necessarily the
juiciest bits.

~~~
gowld
So, their outsource partners can't invent new things, but can clone every
existing thing for a small fraction of the price? That's a good deal for them.

~~~
mkhalil
It doesn't really work like that either.

You can buy iPhones and take them apart, so you have the logic board. Do you
know how to install Ubuntu on it?

Without the logic behind why the board was designed that way, it's going to be
non-trivial to reverse engineer what's going on.

Think of it as a .exe file. Cracking software isn't a trivial task. Cracking
hardware is harder.

------
seibelj
Not much of a secret when it’s on the front page of the WSJ. But at least they
aren’t doing a huge public bake off

~~~
woobar
Not just WSJ. It was in the news last week: [https://www.wral.com/north-
carolina-apple-negotiating-deal-o...](https://www.wral.com/north-carolina-
apple-negotiating-deal-on-triangle-campus-second-site-in-cary/17558985/)

~~~
Reason077
Wow:

"We are a local media company based in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. We have
detected that you are in one of the member countries of the European Union,
which is now subject to the General Data Protection Regulation.

... Until we are able to ensure our full compliance with the rigorous GDPR
requirements, _we are blocking access from EU countries to our websites_ ,
which include wral.com, wralsportsfan.com, highschoolot.com and
wraltechwire.com. We take the GDPR seriously."

~~~
m_fayer
On the one hand I think this is a great sign that the GDPR is being taken
seriously. On the other, I see this as corporate speak for "We're not sure if
ensuring compliance makes business sense for us and this notice may actually
be permanent. You're from a region where anyone interested in our content is
probably a long-tail outlier that won't make us much money, so ensuring access
for you is not a priority."

I really hope that data privacy regulations don't have the unintended side-
effect of significantly increasing the geographic balkanization of the web.

~~~
reaperducer
I don't blame them. I'm thinking about doing the same thing for a few of my
web sites that have very local content.

The company that sells the advertising on those sites says non-US traffic
dilutes the value of the ads, and I'd get 3-5% higher CPM if I filtered non-US
traffic.

I've kept them open until now because I like to check on the sites when I
travel, but GDPR might be the incentive I need to pull the plug.

~~~
cbr
> I'd get 3-5% higher CPM if I filtered non-US traffic.

3-5% higher CPM on how many fewer pageviews? In general, filtering out traffic
should always make you less money, even as filtering to the most profitable
traffic increases how much you make per page view.

If non-US traffic really were losing you money your advertising company could
always drop ad requests from non-US traffic.

~~~
reaperducer
Non-US traffic is essentially non-revenue for many American web sites (unless
you're running AdSense). Serving pages still costs money, though. So it makes
more sense to block non-US traffic than to serve it ad-free.

------
noarchy
After hearing about Cupertino's possible plan to shakedown companies like
Apple for tax money, should we be surprised at their approach to a new campus?
Of course even a public search, there would be cities promising tax breaks to
Apple, but their approach seems consistent with their usual levels of
operational secrecy.

------
duxup
I suspect Apple will get the same results when they finally talk to the locals
about a HQ had they made a big public deal about it vs. somewhat quieter
search (relative to Amazon).

------
ellisv
Just because Apple has a reputation for being secretive doesn't mean they are
in this case. Most companies don't go around advertising plans to open a new
office or their CEO's meeting schedule.

------
coss
Sounds like one is trying to make headlines with a smaller support site by
punching up at the bigger HQ. Not interested.

------
cafard
The secrecy is subpar--this was in The Washington Post a couple of days ago.

------
s2g
But then how will apple extort cities for massive tax breaks?

------
kizer
Can someone copy and paste the whole article into a comment?

~~~
ericabiz
If you're on a desktop/laptop computer and have a FB account, use the
"fullwsj" hack: Edit the URL to say "fullwsj.com" instead of "wsj.com", and
click on the link from Facebook.

If on a mobile device, you can do it, but have to copy the URL and then paste
into a private browsing window (at least on Safari/iOS.)

~~~
logicallee
Can confirm on Chrome.

There is something interesting though. I tested it after logging out of
Facebook (wanted to see what would happen). Basically I wanted to see if you
needed to be logged into Facebook or not to use this redirect (would it work
from the logged-out Facebook page?), but got something surprising.

I performed these steps (Chrome on Desktop, from Windows):

1\. I was logged into Facebook in an incognito window. I decided to log out of
it. I then removed my fast login button by clicking the X.

(Note: I didn't close that incognito window. This does mean any cookies could
have been retained, I wasn't being so thorough)

2\. After logging out I returned to the main Facebook.com page (to sign in) in
the same window.

3\. On the blank Facebook login screen , I then manually pasted
[https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/apple-avoids-amazons-
beauty...](https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/apple-avoids-amazons-beauty-
contest-searches-secretly-for-new-campus-1527067800) into the URL bar in
Chrome.

4\. After I pressed Enter Facebook actually put up a page "Confirm leaving
Facebook" with the URL. This was under the Facebook.com URL. And then I
clicked the URL on that page. I got the full article.

This is what that window looked like (I reloaded it by clicking the back
button in that window, while writing this comment):

[https://imgur.com/a/X8bIGyX](https://imgur.com/a/X8bIGyX)

It doesn't do this when I put in just any other URL into the URL field.

So how did this happen technically? How did Facebook.com get the new URL I put
in, and halt my navigating away manually, and instead ask if I really want to
go there (but remove the "full" from where 'there' is)? I don't think Chrome
gives Facebook access to URL's put into the URL bar by the user...so...?

There's no chance I'm misreporting what happened because there's nowhere else
I could have pasted the URL other than the URL bar, since I was logged out of
Facebook at the time. I'm puzzled how this happens on a technical level.

~~~
tkxxx7
I _think_ any JS can listen for the navigate-away event or changes to the URL
without doing anything special - then just grab ‘window.href/window.location’
or something like that

~~~
logicallee
Wow, that would be super surprising. I wouldn't think I'm giving Facebook my
next destination when I type it manually into the URL bar! Can someone
confirm?

~~~
logicallee
Update: this (what tkxxx7 suggests) is not what's happening. It's just a
redirect.

------
tooltalk
Is Apple's spaceship campus considered in this article? I can't read anything
behind the paywall, but the headline seems to suggest either Apple is frugal
or Amazon is out of control.

------
tambourine_man
Paywall. Alternative link?

~~~
assblaster
Just add "full" before wsj.com in the URL, and you'll go directly to the free
article via Facebook affiliate link.

------
aclsid
Can we all agree is bad form to share paywall links here? No, I don't want to
resort to any hacks since it is stealing but this is literally advertising for
the WSJ at this point.

~~~
gowld
Sometimes the discussion is only about the headline, as there is nothing else
in the content.

~~~
anothergoogler
"Sometimes"... the majority of HN comments are replies to a headline.

------
mozumder
I think the reason Amazon had to announce their search publicly is because
their HQ2 project is so much bigger than Apple's or any other company's.

60,000 jobs is not something you take up lightly, especially as it relates to
transit and housing. It's the equivalent of a small city, and you're going to
need to be prepared for it.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Plus it's a way for cities to start a bidding war, offering the lowest tax
rates and property prices. Effectively Amazon will get their new HQ for free,
if not have the cities actively pay for it. Because jobs. Free market,
competition, etc, yay.

