
The death of Google - ChuckMcM
https://lauren.vortex.com/2018/10/08/the-death-of-google
======
kenhwang
Google's hubris is believing engineering brilliance alone can solve
everything. They are consistently bogglingly bad at human interaction --
communications, PR, management, UX, customer service.

There always seems to be a lack of well-roundedness at Google. It didn't
really matter back when they just did search, but now that they're expanding
into other fields, they're looking more and more like an expert hammerer than
an master of many tools.

~~~
nostrademons
"They are consistently bogglingly bad at human interaction -- communications,
PR, management, UX, customer service."

I don't think that's actually true. In particular, I think that Google for
most of its history was masterful at PR and communications - they managed to
maintain a very positive public image all the way through 2011, despite being
both far more powerful, more naughty, and more ruthless than the general
public saw them as. I think management and UX are also quite strong at Google
- they're known for sparse design and UX fails, but there's often a lot of
subtlety to how Google products are designed that makes them very effective
for their purposes. They did always suck at customer service, though.

Rather, I think Google's hubris is...hubris. They feel the need to have their
fingers in everything. It's not enough to be the world's best Search company
or even organize the world's information and make it universally accessible
and useful, they also need to be the best social network, and best cloud
provider, and best AI company, and best mobile-phone OS, and best web browser,
and best daily deals site (remember their aborted Groupon purchase, soon
followed by a competitor?), and do government contracts for the military, and
get into China, and build self-driving cars and robotics, and be a major
payment provider and operate half a dozen different chat services.

Most of the PR, communication, management, and UX fails are forced errors.
They happen because there's an inherent contradiction in Google's business
model. You can't simultaneously market yourself to engineers with "Don't be
evil" while devising ways to help the military kill people more accurately or
censoring Chinese search results; hell, at some point the military is likely
going to have an issue with China potentially hacking into Google's cloud
infrastructure through their partnerships. A surprising number of the UX fails
also come about because some executive is protecting their turf and won't let
the obvious integration & UI simplification happen even though both engineers
and customers want it.

~~~
ddebernardy
Getting bad commentary on geeky/nerdy HN is, almost by definition, bad
communications/PR for a tech company.

Getting into too many fields and ending up all over the place is bad
management.

Executives protecting their turfs may indeed be a recipe to getting bad UX,
but that doesn't excuse the fact that it's bad UX or that bad UX is all over
Google. If anything the latter points towards more bad management.

And as you wrote, customer service has always been bad.

~~~
TuringNYC
>> Getting into too many fields and ending up all over the place is bad
management.

I'm glad Google (and Apple and Amazon) got into the phone business, the camera
business, the phone service business (Google Voice), the car business (Waymo)
and the entertainment business (Youtube, Music, etc.)

The status quo was so awful (remember cable TV contracts with 200 channels you
didnt want to watch?) and has finally improved with the tech giants putting
pressure in cushy lazy incumbents.

Same for self-driving cars. Where were the efforts before Google and other
tech giants go into the game? I seem to recall only incremental innovation for
decades.

What I really wish is that they didnt botch some of these things (Google Voice
is a great example of an amazing product with massive underinvestment
(abandonment?) from Google.)

~~~
voltagex_
I think you're still seeing these companies as startups. They're in
incremental innovation mode now. I'm biased, because I was hoping Amazon would
come in and wipe the floor with Australian retail, but it's been kinda
lukewarm.

We also missed out on Google Voice, will miss out on whatever TV play they're
making with YouTube.

~~~
FractalParadigm
> We also missed out on Google Voice, will miss out on whatever TV play
> they're making with YouTube.

To be fair, us Canadians are in the same boat. You can be literally a stone's
throw from the U.S. and still not get a lot of features available. Voice was
never available, Wallet took several years before it was rolled out here,
YouTube Red isn't available here either. Hell, most new Home/Assistant
features take months to arrive here too.

------
ChuckMcM
I thought Lauren does a good job here of distinguishing between the people who
work at a company, and the emergent behavior of a company based on profit
motive or other incentives.

Larry Bossidy wrote a book on confronting reality[1] which I found interesting
because it tackles some of the issues facing Google today. Basically when you
compare your new businesses (Google X, Other bets) to your monster business
(Search Advertising) they look puny and weak. But sometimes if you considered
them on their own they would look like good things.

One of the PMs I knew at Google told me (as he was leaving) that Google was
the only place he knew where you could get fired after creating a $100M/year
ARR business. That is only $25M/quarter which was only a .3% increase in
revenue, so a loser right? But how many people would love to be in charge of a
business generating $100M/yr in revenue? Lots!

The reality Google is missing is that there isn't another "search advertising"
business but there might be 100 other smaller businesses that they could
invent/run just as profitably. But it is hard to see that.

[1] Confronting Reality -- [https://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Reality-Master-
Model-Succ...](https://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Reality-Master-Model-
Success-ebook/dp/B000FC2JN4/)

~~~
nostrademons
Heh. My first project at Google made roughly $100M/year. It was shut down by
my department (Search) after 3 years because it "didn't move the needle",
resurrected by Ads for another couple years because it apparently moved the
needle enough to make it worthwhile for them, then shut down for good. I
remember joking "Well, could I buy it off you if you don't want it? I'd love
to have a $100M business", but it was a little too integrated with Google's
systems & salesforce to make that feasible.

~~~
rabidrat
Too bad they don't have Amazon's foresight to platformize their systems and
salesforce.

~~~
ChuckMcM
That is a very salient observation. Of course if they did that they would lose
people who would step out, start their own business and just rent Google's
infrastructure, but as AWS has shown that could become a meaningful part of
their annual return anyway.

------
kshatrea
I think idea that this blog post is conveying is overrated. People said the
same thing about Microsoft under Ballmer. Then he left. Nadella came in and
continued many of the things that he did, and their stock price has soared.
For Apple the opposite happened - their profits and stock price have soared,
yet Tim Cook can't catch a break. Every little error leads to a chorus of "It
wouldn't have been like this if Steve was around". Perception isn't
everything. In my humble opinion, Sundar Pichai must go. Ballmer said it best
- "I am a pattern"[0]. I think Pichai has been a great manager but he, from
the outside, doesn't seem to be a great leader. If he steps down, the new
person gets leeway to change some things and get some social capital.

[0][https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/11/outgo...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/11/outgoing-microsoft-ceo-steve-ballmer-tells-wsj-that-he-was-
part-of-the-problem/)

edit: fixed language

~~~
bluedino
Cook’s successes have been....AirPods and the iPhone X?

Sure, Apple has made tons of cash but their products have been lackluster. The
Mac Pro bombed, keyboardgate, the stagnated phone development...

~~~
akvadrako
They haven’t been lackluster by objective measures. They still sell a lot with
high profit margins.

------
Doctor_Fegg
> the politically-motivated hands of the lying Google haters, who have already
> been screaming for Google’s blood

Yikes. Maybe tone down the invective a bit? It’s possible to think Google
something other than a force for unalloyed good without being “politically
motivated”, a “lying hater”, or consumed by blood-lust.

~~~
bitL
MSFT was caught buying services of some PR company to make negative waves
about Google. The "general hackers" discontent is pretty recent. We can't
really tell who is paid to talk bad about Google and who does really mean it
due to ethical concerns, so she has a point.

~~~
t0astbread
But what if YOU were paid by Google to make that comment?

~~~
bitL
I am just trying to be objective; the next statement would tell you I was not
paid - except for GMail and a bit of Chrome for dev work I am now completely
Google-less, moved over to DDG, ProtonMail and my phones are running iOS and
Sailfish OS. Exceptions are TensorFlow, Keras and Kubernetes.

------
komali2
>Today’s belated announcement of a security breach related to Google+,

People keep calling it a breach, but I thought it was merely an unexploited
vulnerability? I may have missed it, but did it come out that there was a
breach as well?

~~~
kenhwang
> merely an unexploited vulnerability

The footnote there is, unexploited in the last 2 weeks they had logs for. They
have no way of knowing if it was exploited earlier than that.

~~~
foobiekr
A source would be great if there is one.

~~~
kenhwang
Straight from their announcement [https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-
security/project-s...](https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-
security/project-strobe/)

> We made Google+ with privacy in mind and therefore keep this API’s log data
> for only two weeks. That means we cannot confirm which users were impacted
> by this bug. However, we ran a detailed analysis over the two weeks prior to
> patching the bug, and from that analysis, the Profiles of up to 500,000
> Google+ accounts were potentially affected. Our analysis showed that up to
> 438 applications may have used this API.

> We found no evidence that any developer was aware of this bug, or abusing
> the API, and we found no evidence that any Profile data was misused.

~~~
foobiekr
thank you

------
flyinghamster
He mentions DEC, but I'd go further and note that Google is making the same
mistake Digital did with Alta Vista - namely, returning irrelevant search
results because it thinks you really must be searching for Y even though you
entered X. This gets especially annoying when one searches for a specific word
and gets a page full of results that don't have it.

Getting rid of the +word search syntax in favor of quotation marks was also a
bad move - it makes it much more tedious to edit your query when you're trying
to tell Google "Hey, I'm really searching for that word."

~~~
lubujackson
It's the problem of maximizing gross acceptableness vs. accuracy. If there is
a term that has 1,000 results but could be a misspelling of a term that
returns 100,000 results, Google will always go with mob rule. It's like when
the bean counters take over and shave a nickel here, save a penny there, until
everyone leaves because your product has become garbage. Optimizing for search
happiness sounds good on paper but winning on edge cases SHOULD be Google's
strength - instead, it is their biggest weakness.

I wouldn't even mind the mob rule if Google still had a way to clarify your
searches by default. Instead, they continue to assume more and more user
intent and remove more and more options for clear user input.

~~~
anoncake
That does not explain why Google ignores entire words. People misspell words,
yes, but who accidentally enters random other words in addition to their
search terms?

~~~
pas
A lot of people actually. English has a lot of dialects, people have different
styles of communication, and Google tries to search across all that. It tries
to guess at intent and match that to their index.

Does this help? I have no idea, and at least nowadays it offers to include
that word explicitly with one click.

------
mcguire
" _...legions of politically-motivated Google haters are using to further evil
agendas._ "

" _...played directly into the politically-motivated hands of the lying Google
haters, who have already been screaming for Google’s blood and for its
executives to be figuratively drawn and quartered..._ "

" _...giving the evil haters even more ammunition to use for false accusations
of political user censorship, they give the EU additional excuses to try fine
Google billions extra to enrich EU coffers, and they give massive energy to
the forces who want to break up Google into smaller units to be micromanaged
for political gain by politicians and those politicians’ minions and
toadies..._ "

Wow.

~~~
908087
It's almost like listening to a captive cult member decry the "evil that lies
outside of these walls". The idea that people who criticize an
advertising/surveillance corporation worth several hundred billion dollars are
"evil" is delusional.

I always knew the kool-aid was potent at Google, but not that potent.

I have pretty low expectations of HN in general, but seeing this on the front
page is still kind of confusing to me.

------
MarkMc
Companies exist to make money, and by that metric Google is a long, long way
from dying, as the author admits: "It is indeed possible, even likely, that
Google can continue onward without the kinds of changes that I and other
Google supporters have advocated over the years, and still make bushels of
money"

Google's revenue today is six times as large as it was a decade ago. And I
expect its revenue in a decade to be at least 3 times as large as it is today.
The reason is that many of the causes of past growth will continue for the
foreseeable future:

1\. The people who are connected to the internet will continue to become
richer - in particular booming poor countries like India and Indonesia

2\. The amount of time people spend on the internet will continue to grow

3\. The amount of advertising Google can show people per hour will continue to
grow. For example, Google can show many more ads on YouTube and still be less
saturated than the old network TV model. Another example: The Economist app
currently shows untargeted ads copied from their print magazine - but in 10
years these ads will probably come from Google.

4\. Google can continue to improve its algorithm for placing of ads. Google
knows so much about me yet I'm amazed how stupidly untargeted its ads
sometimes are. Eg. if my photo stream doesn't include pictures of cats, don't
show me ads for cat food!

5\. Google can continue to collect more personal data. Right now it doesn't
know when I last purchased toothpaste, but it might in 10 years from now.

6\. The number of people connected to the internet will continue to grow
(although of course at a slower rate than in the past)

[Note: I am a Google shareholder]

------
echevil
Even with recent criticisms there're really no sign that Google's business is
anywhere close to dying (or shrunk at all). Their core products, the search
engine, Google Map, Youtube, etc. are still best of its kind and no where
close to be replaced. Yes some people are pissed off, but Google's user base
is way beyond the tiny community that cares about HN, and many would continue
to love Google's products.

------
nwah1
I've thought this for awhile, and have seen other articles about it.

While Amazon and Microsoft seem to be executing well on their respective
visions, Google, Apple, and Facebook all seem asleep at the wheel. Nothing
gamechanging from any of them, lots of scandals and user complaints piling up.

There's nothing unusual about it. Big companies usually go this route. It is
frankly amazing when they don't.

~~~
siquick
Apple is the most valuable company in history and the new focus on privacy is
going to win them even more loyalty.

~~~
thrower123
> the new focus on privacy is going to win them even more loyalty.

This seems to be a common talking point, but I'm not convinced it is a real
driver outside of a small niche of within the niche of software people.
Privacy is not something regular people really are aware of or give a damn
about.

The biggest driver towards getting an iPhone that I see is shutting up friends
who whine because you're a "green person" in their iMessage.

~~~
aaaaaaaaaab
Apple have an edge over its competitors because they can afford to go full-on
tinfoil with privacy; it wouldn’t put a dent in their business model.

And while laypeople today care little about privacy, Apple can bring it into
the collective consciousness. All it takes is a good meme (in the original
Dawkins sense, not in the image-macro sense). A meme that tells people: “only
the poor can’t afford privacy”. If they can get this into people’s heads then
they’ll _demand_ privacy, because nobody likes feeling poor.

~~~
sdenton4
That causality assertion is hard to prove... Maybe true for you, may or may
not be true generally.

------
eam
I use to be an ardent supporter of Google. As soon as I installed a new
browser or a got a new computer I would set Google as my home page without
much thought. Then over the years they've lost my trust little by little.

I never really tried using Chrome unless I absolutely had to because I believe
in the separation of services and because I started losing my trust in Google.
I didn't want to be tracked. I don't have nothing to hide, but I still
appreciate my right to privacy. I thought I was already sharing enough with my
Google searches and YouTube usage.

I do continue to use gmail, but I've been keeping an eye open for reputable
alternatives with security that matches that of Google, since it has that
going for itself. I still haven't really found an alternative... yet, at least
not one that is convincing enough to make the switch.

Just recently I changed the default search engine on all my devices to be
DuckDuckGo as they seem to be a much better alternative when it comes to
privacy.

It's pretty sad that greed has consumed Google and all they care is about
maximizing profits instead of balancing profit and user experience/privacy. I
really wish they can be that company they used to be, until then I'll keep my
eyes open.

~~~
bigger_cheese
These days I pretty much view Google through the same lens as Microsoft they
have eroded basically all my goodwill. I use their products begrudgingly and
view everything they announce with a healthy cloud of suspicion.

------
laichzeit0
Google is crap until you set your default search engine on your mobile and
desktop to something non-google. Bing is a good example. It looks almost
exactly the same as Google and you probably won’t even realize it.

Until you actually use it for a few weeks. And go like “wait a minute why am I
not seeing this so and so result.. I remember Googling this exact search term
a few weeks back and.. oh wait..” or you click on the News tab in the search
results and it, well, sucks.

I really want to move off Google but they are just so. damn. good. right now
it’s actually scary. It feels almost like search is a “winner takes all” game.
Even if the runner up is really good, it’s still not good enough.

------
sonnyblarney
It's interesting how in tech people talk about such specific cultural issues
as though they're inexorably related to outcomes. Sometimes it is, more often
it's not. 'Culture' is always a lynchpin of success, but Google has classical
company 'good culture' in droves. The things mentioned in the article aren't
as important as we might instinctively think.

Google is a de-facto monopoly on search (ok, that's debatable, but there's no
debate they 'own it' for now) with massive moats like Chrome and Android, vast
datacentres, literal ownership of the brand i.e. 'to Google' is a colloquial
_verb_ in many languages.

They are going _nowhere_ \- not for a very long time.

They are 'dying' about as much as MS is dying ... meaning they are not really,
they're just losing their lustre to 'us' types.

The only way Google will hurt, is the same way MS has hurt - meaning a
fundamental shift in users behaviour or market architecture. MS started to
hurt when the world went to the internet, and went mobile. That hurt their OS
and Office solutions somewhat, but they've adapted and in $$$ terms, they're
just fine. So Google will hurt when people stop searching (!) meaning, not
anytime soon. Now - the change to mobile which is partly dominated by Apps
presents a pretty big threat, but they seem to be managing it. That's the
'kind of change' that will hurt them.

Facebook on the other hands, has some existential trouble, but even they will
likely be ok.

Twitter has a hardcore userbase in the press etc. and might wane, but likely
aren't going anywhere for a while.

Snapchat ... could be in trouble.

Google is maturing into 'regular company' phase. They still have amazing
momentum, massive cash, 'everyone' wants to work there, it's still a solid
resume placeholder, they have talented Engineers - and the culture as far as
doing stuff still works.

FYI - they were _never_ good at UI, and their products have always been a
little bit of a gaggle.

But search, their ads, maps, chrome, android, youtube ... those are formidable
assets.

So yes, the 'Do No Evil' Google is gone, and we're now into the next phase.

They could possibly be overvalued as are many tech stocks, but they're going
to be around for a very long while.

------
vl
Death of Google is exaggerated. Patient is more likely alive than dead.

~~~
noncoml
He means the spirit of Google is dead, not the company itself:

> It is indeed possible, even likely, that Google can continue onward without
> the kinds of changes that I and other Google supporters have advocated over
> the years, and still make bushels of money.

> But it won’t be the same Google. It will have become the “conventional
> company” kind of Google, not the firm of which so many Googlers are so
> rightly proud, and that so many users around the globe depend upon
> throughout their days.

> The Google that we’ve known will be dead

~~~
freetime2
I suspect that "spirit of Google" probably means different things to different
people. To declare Google "dead" just because he doesn't like some of its
recent decisions seems awfully self-centered.

"Google is changing" would be more accurate. And of course it is - as every
living entity does in 20 years. Have you changed at all in the past 20 years?
Would you describe yourself as "dead" because of it?

------
dgudkov
I don't think Google is dying. Sony is probably dying. IBM probably too.
Google is in its "productivity plateau" which is not a bad thing. It's just
not the Google we used to know, the one where "don't be evil" meant something
and that could make radically new, awesome things. Now it's just another
powerful, profit-oriented corporation.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> they give the EU additional excuses to try fine Google billions extra to
enrich EU coffers

From wikipedia:

 _The European Union provides more foreign aid than any other economic
union.[20] Covering 7.3% of the world population,[21] the EU in 2017 generated
a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of 19.670 trillion US dollars,
constituting approximately 24.6% of global nominal GDP[22] and 16.5% when
measured in terms of purchasing power parity.[23] Additionally, all 28 EU
countries have a very high Human Development Index, according to the United
Nations Development Programme._

The EU is one of the most prosperous, more wealthy regions of the world with
some of the most robust legislation to protect citizens' rights, including
consumer rights. Arguing that it's going after Google's (and Facebook's, etc)
violations of its users' privacy is meant to "fill its coffers" is just
clueless.

------
Animats
Facebook is already "Mad Men". Google is getting there.

------
feri339
I still believe that Google leadership (maybe different for middle management)
really has altruistic aspirations. Or rather, they think it's better they grab
the power because they won't abuse it.

People complain about the monopolistic market power of Google. But in reality
this is the only way big tech works at this time. You either grab the market
or you'll loose out.

Anyway. Alphabet has to get cloud and Waymo right because long term they can't
keep relying on advertising. In the end it's all about who gets to "real" AI
first. Out of all the serious contenders I'd rather it be Alphabet than Amazon
or worse, Baidu or Tencent. Because whoever gets that will probably dominate
on whole new level. And that believe is really based around the ideals of the
founders. Bezos for example seems much more like a typical business person
with profit motivation. Page and Brin seem like they're just using the
financial success of Alphabet as a means to an end. Because when you're that
rich your world view and ideas for the future seem much more relevant than
simply getting more money.

------
gaius
The author of this is clearly deeply emotionally invested in Google and
desperately struggling with the cognitive dissonance of things not being as
she idealised

~~~
dekhn
He, not she.

------
phs318u
What they definitely don't do well is corporate marketing and sales. I've been
involved in two RFP's in which Google were invited, and in both instances
Google lost out to other vendors. Two significant factors in their losing out
were:

1) the naked arrogance and almost-disinterest of their people when in the room
with the client's business people i.e. the people signing off on the vendor
selection.

2) non-trivial examples of products that were terminated at short notice, in
some cases with no clear migration path.

While 2 can be mitigated, it was 1 that stuck with me. I've been in the room
with quite a few big vendors and Google were BY FAR the most arrogant. Quite
appallingly so actually. SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM - however crap some of
their products and services may be (as are some of Google's), they at least
have the common sales sense to make the prospective client feel listened to.
In my experience, SAP were masters at this.

------
mahemm
In case this dies: [https://archive.fo/f4RHX](https://archive.fo/f4RHX)

~~~
jtbayly
That is dead, for me. Sadly. Since the original is also dead.

~~~
y0ghur7_xxx
[https://web.archive.org/web/20181009200058/https://lauren.vo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181009200058/https://lauren.vortex.com/2018/10/08/the-
death-of-google)

------
nicodjimenez
Google is probably the best company in the world at copying successful
products. They copied AWS, Amazon Echo, Evernote, the iPhone, and the list
goes on. While maybe this isn't the most sexy strategy, the truth is that it
CAN work when you have really amazing engineers. As the ad margins diminish,
they will fiercely compete with everyone who seems to be doing something
interesting. They are definitely fighting very aggressively on many fronts and
are definitely not dying _yet_.

~~~
bitL
I think that award goes to Amazon - they are ripping off successful designs
from their own marketplace; can't really beat that! Clueless 3rd party
producers take all the risks; once Amazon notices them they are done within a
few months as Amazon prepares their own "clones" under their own brands with
prices nobody can beat.

~~~
degenerate
I agree, Amazon is the better copycat. Remember when Google tried to buy
Groupon for $6B and they declined? Both Amazon and Google subsequently created
a Groupon clone, and the result: "Amazon Local"[1] was way better than "Google
Offers"[2]... and interestingly both shut down in 2015.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon_products_and_se...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon_products_and_services#Amazon_Local)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Offers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Offers)

------
krschultz
You can't cite AT&T without mentioning that AT&T was broken up by the
government. It's entirely possible that the government will come and split
Alphabet into several companies. That has been suggested by several
knowledgable tech pundit. But until that happens I just don't see Google
faltering.

------
Zhenya
Site is down.

Cache:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20181009200058/https://lauren.vo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181009200058/https://lauren.vortex.com/2018/10/08/the-
death-of-google)

------
caro_douglos
Love the joke at the beginning of the Internet & Empires talk where he says he
was scared google would take him out with the hardwired mic.

------
utopcell
The TL;DR of the article is "Google is dying because ..Google+". Funny
argument. If that were the case, then Google would be on life support since
Orkut, Wave and many other bets that just didn't pan out.

The fact of the matter is: Google is by far the best search engine. Google is
the _only_ company I'd actually trust to drive me around in a self driving
car. Its cloud services are 2X more cost-effective compared to AWS. Google's
Android is by far the most popular mobile OS in the US.

Google is growing like crazy both in terms of employees and in terms of stock.
Who even cares about Google+ ?

------
394549
The site is down for me, but this works:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20181009200058/https://lauren.vo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181009200058/https://lauren.vortex.com/2018/10/08/the-
death-of-google)

------
metalliqaz
Netcraft confirms it?

------
whateveryou381
"The death of Intel..."

------
crave_
Ironically, the site is down.

------
candiodari
What is it with the systematic anti-Google messaging these days ? The G+
breach, for example, did not justify the titles it was given.

Second ... Google is still the champion of good on the internet. There is no
other way to put it. Google's ads, on Google itself and on youtube ... are
still absolute champions of reasonableness compared to all of their
competitors, even the ones that are sponsored, like Bing.

Google's moral stance ... still far exceeds the moral stances from their
competitors on nearly all fronts. Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, ... there is
just no comparison. Go to their pages and compare their attitudes towards,
say, drug ads. Ad blockers. There is just no comparison.

And as for Amazon. I used to joke: 'Google's motto is "Do no evil". Amazon's
motto is the other thing'.

And yes Google works with the military (well, not really, it was planning to
at some point, but that's it), so does Microsoft with Bing. So does Yahoo's
parent, Verizon. So does Amazon (hell Amazon's EC2 has a CIA-only cluster
[1]). There is just no comparison.

Google's products have no comparison anywhere. From Google Docs, Gmail,
Search, Youtube, Android, Blogger, Flights, Translate, Scholar, Cache, Chrome,
Hangouts, Play, Tensorflow, Drive ... all are really great products compared
to their competition. Really, really great products, most of which are
entirely free as well. Ad-supported, but not obnoxiously so.

Does nobody other than me remember how other companies treated the web in the
late 90s, early 2000s ? How about the cell phone maddness of the early 90s and
how obnoxious the telcos were with their "sms services", "ringtones", ... and
so forth. That's what you should compare to Google.

Is there anyone here that seriously doubts the web would be incredibly poorer
if Google either relented on the above stances or disappears ? Because I
don't. Google would be an incredible loss.

Google is growing like crazy ... and to some extent that probably means
turning into a more normal company. But ... it's still VERY far removed from
being one.

This post ... well the guy initially said this in 2006 (
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGoSpmv9ZVc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGoSpmv9ZVc)
). I mean at some point he'll be right of course, but 10 years seems a long
time to wait.

Google is still a very early stage business. Look at it's valuation, and it's
STILL not paying dividends ? I mean how much more proof do you need ? And
Google is absurdly amazing: it makes almost 12% of it's market cap in profit.

What do you suppose would happen to Google's stock if it paid a 5% dividend ?
We all know it could easily cover a 15% dividend for a century or two.

Google is here to stay.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEc6kVAXSs8&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEc6kVAXSs8&feature=youtu.be&list=PLhr1KZpdzukePsKIUofhgp50b63-5yr1V)

------
imleft
link?

------
908087
Whoever wrote this comes off like an angry 13 year old fanboy/girl with the
"evil Google haters" BS.

~~~
i_am_nomad
It’s code for hating conservatives and anti-censorship people.

------
B1FF_PSUVM
One of these days, a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Noogler MBA will shoot down
the Takeaway service, because it will be clearly intolerable to have a moat-
bridge that 0.01% of the users know it's there and serves to keep them calm.

(Then the volcano erupts and kills the dinos.)

