
No longer loving Google - robk
http://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/no-longer-loving-google.html
======
pg
Like any anti-Google post lately, this one has been reflexively upvoted, but
if you look at his reasons for not loving Google, they're pretty thin. The
Kenyan episode was obviously one rogue branch with insufficient oversight; as
soon as the guys in Mountain View found out what was going on, they stopped
it, and with a minimum of the sort of corporate doublespeak you'd expect from
most big companies. The changes to privacy policies are the sort of thing
hackers love to gripe about, but don't actually matter much. (How many HN
readers are going to stop using Google because of them, for example?) All it
really boils down to is that he's mad because his friend got cut off by
Adsense. And it is uncool the way Google just blows people off like that, but
it's not new. They've always been that way. So if you didn't hate Google 5
years ago, this post offers no reason to hate them now.

~~~
NelsonMinar
I buried this in the post, but of all the things Google's done this month the
promotion of Google Search Plus Your World (aka Search+) is what concerns me
the most. The other negative stories are less significant, I only mentioned
them because they're part of the trend I'm feeling.

I think it's interesting that anti-Google posts are reflexively upvoted. Ten
years ago that would have been Microsoft.

~~~
pg
I agree that's the most worrying sign. In the past Google won by making what
people needed. But it seems clear that was not their primary motivation for
SPYW. Their primary motivation was clearly fear of Facebook. That hasn't made
Google evil yet. It's just the first step down the road to mediocrity. Which
may lead to evil in the long term, because to make lots of money despite being
mediocre, you generally have to do evil things.

I don't think it's that interesting that anti-Google posts get reflexively
upvoted though. The cause is one of the more common and least discriminating
aspects of human nature: whenever any person or organization is successful,
there are a lot of people who want to see them cut down to size.

~~~
bambax
> _whenever_

Why doesn't it happen to Apple, then? Apple is much much more successful than
Google, and, arguably, more "evil".

What I think people react badly to, is hypocrisy (real or perceived). Apple
does what it says and doesn't apologize. Google has this whole blurry theory
of "not being evil" which many of its own actions prove false, hence the
backlash.

~~~
rahoulb
Also, at least at the moment, Apple's profit model is easy to understand - you
pay money, receive something in return and they pocket the profit. Google's
model is based upon understanding who you are so they can place the best
adverts in front of you. When you're an upstart, that "who you are" bit
doesn't seem to matter too much, when you're a behemoth, it becomes pretty
scary.

------
pamelafox
When I first started working at Google, I truly loved them as a user-facing
company. And for the first few years, I thought I would work there forever and
I could imagine no other place for me. But by the time I left, I was bitter
and no longer in love. For various reasons, I felt like I had been betrayed by
what I thought Google was at the beginning.

It is my fault for having such idealistic expectations for what ultimately
boils down to a money-driven company but I also think that there is a world in
which I could have left Google loving it, or at least not so entirely
disenchanted.

I look back on my grade school and college with fond memories; I wish I could
look back on Google the same way.

Oh well, onwards and upwards.

~~~
NelsonMinar
Hey Pamela! I fear you had a particularly rough time at Google. Bad project
luck, also coming in later. I do look back at my time on Google as fondly as,
say, graduate school. Particularly the early years, 2001–2004, it was a truly
amazing place to be.

That's why I wrote this post up, I just feel sad about where Google is now.
Fortunately there's organizations like Y Combinator and places like Hacker
News with a lot of startup passion and excitement.

~~~
cdibona
You know, I miss both of you at Google. I'm clearly fine with where Google is
(or I'd leave) but I wish that you both felt differently. (edit: I changed we
to I, I mean, this is more a personal thing..)

~~~
fred_nada
@nelsonMinar @pamelafox @cidbona and any other googlers.

Do you think it could actually ever go back to the way it was? Or is it too
late? The beauty of Google in 2001-3 was that it gave you hope for what a
company could be in the future. We all knew about the Jobs/Gates/Ellison
shenanigans and some of us hoped for a better future. Better work environments
for employees, innovating vs stealing, 100% focusing on the user, and not
throwing integrity out the window for a couple of dollars per share.

Can they get back there? or is it gone?

------
untog
_Google is too powerful, too arrogant, too entrenched to be worth our love.
Let them defend themselves_

Wise words. I think the same applies to companies like Apple as well- I'll
never understand why people dedicate so much personal energy to defending a
company that needs no help. They're big enough to look after themselves.

~~~
sek
This is bullshit. To bring these few examples to discredit Google here.

Think of their record: OpenSource, Android, SOPA, Fight against Software
Patens and so on. Google is still on our side and we need them against all the
Microsoft and MPAAs.

To be on so many battlefields and doing so few problematic things is
impressive. Did they ever really compromise their core values? Google tries
not to compromise them, but they are not naive, look what happened to Sun.

I don't trust Google as a company as i trust the values of the Founders. I am
convinced they are legacy focused and as long as they are in charge they try
their best.

~~~
waqf
What happened to Sun? (Or rather, what are you implying about the causes of
its decline?)

~~~
marshray
It was the beginning of the end for them when they started bundling pay-per
install crapware (Yahoo toolbar) with the JRE installer (the first impression
and only Sun product for the vast majority of their users).

------
gabaix
Mozilla Foundation has not moved on its position of bringing good. I think any
IPO company is ultimately compelled to choose profits over values.

~~~
hbar
In a public corporation, this is always true. The first responsibility is to
the shareholders. This point seems to be frequently overlooked.

~~~
ekianjo
Agree, but they should always keep in mind what made them successful in the
first place: the fact that they had backing from users. The day you start
listening more to your shareholders than you spend time with your users,
there's something really wrong going on.

------
jrockway
Google's problem is that their public communications only communicate a tiny
fraction of the information they have available.

For example, people are worried about privacy, so they say "you can choose
what to share with these cool buttons" rather than discuss their internal
procedures for employee access to user data. The other day, someone on HN
wrote, "I trust Google, but what about a laptop with malware?" Google could
respond and say, "we believe it's physically impossible for an infected laptop
to access the production network", but they don't. This makes people fear the
worst. They think that Google is withholding information because it would make
them look bad, rather than withholding information because they think their
message has already been clearly communicated. (The more evil you think Google
is being, the more likely they're doing the opposite of what you think they
are.) Employees don't speak up very often because we aren't really supposed to
say more than what's been publicly announced. (And, they're focused on
programming and not PR.)

Everyone hates big companies, but Google is near the bottom of my list of
companies to hate. The only thing that worries me is the customer service
reputation, but customer service is expensive and nobody else provides it
either.

Search Plus Your World and Google+ are, like every Google product, works in
progress. They will get better over time, and if people don't like them or
don't use them, they'll go away. To provide the best product, you have to
experiment. Right now, many Googlers think that social signals are going to
make everyone's life much better, and so they're writing code, deploying it,
and seeing if it works like they think it will. The result is better search
results and better software. That's progress, not evil.

~~~
thebrokencube
> Search Plus Your World and Google+ are, like every Google product, works in
> progress.

I don't understand why so many people don't get this, and especially here on
HN of all places (maybe I'm missing something, I dunno). Isn't that how
startup products work? Release early, release often? Maybe Google isn't
specifically saying this, but it seriously seems like that's the road they
take for the majority of their products.

~~~
marshray
Google Search isn't a startup product. You can't just tack on big sections of
stuff smack in the middle of the top results and claim that it's just a WiP.

~~~
jrockway
Apparently you can.

~~~
marshray
s/claim/validly claim/

------
mahmud
Is there a check-list for Google products & alternatives? I was just thinking
of going through this exercise last night. Don't feel comfortable with them
anymore.

~~~
peto123
I am currently going through this exercise, and here's what I done:

1) Chrome -> Firefox (Firefox 9 is surprisingly snappy, seems to me like a
perfectly sensible alternative)

2) Search -> <https://duckduckgo.com/lite> \- doesn't even show your query
string in the URL. BUT: Works only in general search terms, not for specific
(long) queries. There, Google is still unavoidable, it seems. But for 90% of
my searches, DDG is perfecly OK.

3) Zoner instead of Picasa and zonerama.com instead of Photos in G+. [zonerama
gives 2GB for free]

4) GMail: I found Hotmail to be adequate, but recently I switched to paying
for my own webhosting, so I don't use free email anymore.

5) Google Calendar/Tasks -> Toodledo.com

6) Google Analytics,Adsense -> don't know...haven't found alternative yet.

In mu current understanding, it is not a problem to use some of the Google
services, if one found them to be the best. What one should avoid, in my
opinion, is to register account with Google and attach one's real-life
identity to it. I did it in the past, and now consider it a big mistake of
mine. I must say that I am still amazed so many people are ok with that.

~~~
dagw
_4) GMail:_

For a highly symbolic $5/year (with options to buy more space and features if
and when you need them) fastmail.fm has an excellent mail service.

------
ohashi
This echoes my sentiments quite well. I had a discussion with a colleague
today about Google and I realized that I used to be very passionate and
trusting of them but as of the past month they are teetering on the edge of
that trust I still have for them. Where once I had respect and admiration, a
growing mistrust exists. They are powerful and entrenched but I think it's a
dangerous misstep to really offend their core users (I would think I am one
being a user of their search, paying customer, publisher and many other
services). I am not locked in entirely and would be more willing to try
alternatives if I stop believing in a company.

------
logn
Whether we love or hate google, we sure love to either love or hate google.
Companies like, say, 3M would kill to be "hated" and "evil" like google is.
Our hate is really more like us picking on that girl we like.

~~~
rickmb
3M has no influence over my life. 3M could disappear tomorrow and I couldn't
give a toss. 3M doesn't know enough about me and mine to harm me, and I don't
depend on 3M in a way that would hurt me if I could no longer use their
products. At worst, it would be slightly annoying.

Google has the power to seriously fuck with my life. I neither love nor hate
Google, but I do care about what they do more than most companies, and
certainly more than any company in our industry, and for good reasons.

Google is not "that girl we like". Google is "that guy that stands behind us
with a big stick", and we don't know if he's going to use it to defend us or
beat the shit out of us.

~~~
marshray
I think I understand your point, but 3M is probably not a great company to
compare to. My understanding of their business is that most of their revenue
does not come from retail products.

Wikipedia:"With over 80,000 employees, they produce more than 55,000 products,
including: adhesives, abrasives, laminates, passive fire protection, dental
products, electronic materials, medical products, car care products (such as
sun films, polish, wax, car shampoo, treatment for the exterior, interior and
the under chassis rust protection), electronic circuits and optical films"

So unless you influence the purchase of these products, 3M will be perfectly
happy for you not to care about them. In fact, they may prefer it that way.
Manufacturers in the US seem to be quite shy.

Perhaps a better example would be Sony. They would love it if you couldn't
live without your Sony pictures, BluRay, Playstation 3, Sony cellphone, VAIO
laptop, Sony Camera, Sony Camcorder, Sony video editing software, etc.

------
MrScruff
I think in the past the 'Don't be evil' thing as an informal company ethos was
ok, and people respected that as a target. Then they started using this as a
stick to beat their competitors with and it had the result of putting their
own conduct under greater scrutiny. Now with the SPYW stuff, they look pretty
hypocritical and appear to have abandoned their principals in order to play
catch up. They might not be evil yet but the trajectory they're on isn't
promising.

------
fady
some very good thoughts indeed. it's interesting to see your point of view,
especially the part about how they're just worrying about market position,
etc.

i'm curious to know from current employees, if the change of ceo has made
things better, worse? how are things internally these days with larry running
the show?

~~~
NelsonMinar
Hi, I wrote the linked blog post. I don't have many friends left at Google but
from what I've heard there's a lot of internal debate about the direction of
the company now. There's been years of grumbling about how big the company has
gotten, but more lately there's a lot of dissent around the outsized role of
Google+. If you believe this story, the debate is quite heated:
[http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/24/larry-page-to-googlers-
if-y...](http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/24/larry-page-to-googlers-if-you-dont-
get-spyw-work-somewhere-else/)

~~~
cromwellian
I wouldn't trust everything you see on PandoDaily if I were you.

You're never going to find any large organization that satisfies all of your
wishes, even a non-profit has internal political struggles.

But on a relative scale of evilness, which big companies would you want to
work for? For example, Apple (Doesn't trust employees, has them work on fake
products, super-compartmentalized secrecy on campus, has agents spying on
people to stop leaks, abusive douche-bag boss (Jobs) of shitting on people
when the demo doesn't meet expectations, squeezing all partners for every last
nickle, super-controlled closed proprietary ecosystem, on and on)? Apple
sounds like a place to work on amazing products, but shitty otherwise.

Google made a mistake by coining "Don't be evil", because they are held to a
much much higher standard now than any other company because of it. The
smallest change or transgression is hyper-analyzed by a cadre of people just
waiting, sometimes wishing, to find a mis-step, anything they can run to the
blogosphere with and claim "See! Evil!"

Basic cynicism in people seems to relish those who preach superior ethics to
fail. A guy who talks about "Don't cheat on your wife" will be scrutinized
much more than someone who doesn't. And if he is seen in public having a
business dinner with an attractive lady, of course the stories will be "See!
Mr White Knight is unfaithful!"

~~~
spazcat
I've heard that they require that employees sign a new NDA every time there is
a company all-hands.

The place reeks of lack of trust and just sounds _depressing_ to work at.

~~~
waqf
Google, or Apple?

------
DirkScheuring
I can't quite understand this "privacy problem". What's wrong with just
accepting Google's TOS, use it for what it's worth (doing "public" stuff), and
making room for "private" operations elsewhere? Aren't higher levels of
"privacy" just a browser profile/user profile/machine profile away any more?

------
kprobst
I don't understand why people thought that somehow a _publicly traded
corporation_ was going to behave forever in the same way as a garage startup.
Once Google reached a certain size, a certain revenue level, and became
beholden to institutional shareholders plus (in this case) found itself in a
position of largely uncontested market control, I think it was inevitable that
it would turn into the all too familiar caricature of a corporation.

~~~
Aloisius
Don't Sergey and Brin have 10x voting rights? I was under the impression that
common shareholders couldn't do a darn thing to them.

~~~
abruzzi
The problem is its not just who has the most votes, but in the US, companies
have a legal obligation to do what is in the best interest of the shareholders
(even minority shareholders) over all other claimants.

California just created a new corporation type that allows 'public benefit' to
take precedence over shareholder interest:

<http://www.alston.com/environmentalandlandblog/?entry=4488>

~~~
magicalist
no they do not. not only is this not established in law (in fact, congress has
made it harder for civil suits to be filed), they are almost never brought
unless there has been a large drop in stock price (not for tepid or slower-
than-desired growth), the ones that are brought are usually dismissed, and the
ones that are not dismissed are almost universally settled.

take a look at, for instance,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_judgment_rule>

~~~
marshray
Perhaps, but it's still such a widely held belief among businesspeople and
shareholders that it's probably not a battle that would be wise to pick (very
often).

------
alimbada
I think Tim O'Reilly has the right of it:
[https://plus.google.com/107033731246200681024/posts/fWJtC2mb...](https://plus.google.com/107033731246200681024/posts/fWJtC2mb3Eq)

------
alexyoung
I'd like to print out the following quote from this article in a huge font and
read it before I'm tempted to write anything pro/anti Google/Apple/Microsoft
in the future:

"I'd rather devote my emotional energy to the upstarts and startups. They
deserve our passion."

------
batista
_And if a big company like Google can't avoid being evil, then what world-
changing enterprise can?_

A company owned by actual persons, i.e. a privately owned company, can better
avoid turning evil. There are lots of world-changing privately owned
companies, especially in Europe.

Profit seeking by committee (a.k.a. board and stockholders), turns companies
into un-ethical, maximum-profit seeking machines. Even more so, since noone
feels like he has "real" responsibility for the whole company's actions).

~~~
amac
True, public companies are driven more by quarterly results, but they can also
be more accountable and transparent. Private companies can be as equally evil
as public ones.

FWIW, I believe private companies tend to be better run and usually operate
with a longer or more rounded perspective. In this sense, I would favour being
a stakeholder of some sort in a private company over a public one.

------
Johnyma22
Relevant: <http://mclear.co.uk/2011/12/15/the-day-i-gave-up-on-google/>

~~~
fennecfoxen
Relevant? Incoherent.

