Floridian here. For all those people who are concerned about the environmental impact of eliminating these species, I suggest you take a closer look at how mosquitoes are currently controlled. Maybe they don't have mosquito control where you live? When the mosquito-spray truck comes by, it doesn't just kill mosquitoes.
It kills all kinds of flying insects. That includes thousands of species which cause no harm to humans, but also provide pollination and food for birds, frogs, etc. Before you object to this plan, please realize that this plan is replacing a sledgehammer with a scapel. All the things you are worried about happening are already happening right now, but effecting many more species! If that's the status quo you want, by all means keep objecting, or come up with a better plan.
I should also note that samples of the eradicated species will be kept, so if it does turn out that it is a mistake, they can be re-introduced.
Hold up, another Floridian, these are only used when the mosquito populations sky rocket out of control. These are last resort measures when water control tactics failed. Typically after massive flooding occurred in an area.
This was the go to solution in the 90s. Yes. Totally. At least in both Hillsborough and Pasco county that I can personally attest to. But that changed in the 2000s when the casualties of it were apparent. Now, it's only when too many phone in and complain about mosquito bites and mosquito traps show populations are too high in an area.
Unless you're in a really backwater county...cough...Dixie county...cough... Then yea, I think some commissioners don't care and do what they want. But it does go against state guidelines to just truck-spray all the time. But I think part of the guidelines also state when a mosquito trap finds one infected mosquito, it's free game to go nuts with the trucks. If I also remember right, only a certain amount of truck sprays are covered by the state per year (the chemicals, lic and maintenance is expensive). After the county does a certain amount, they have to pay out of pocket. You might want to FOIA the department that handles mosquito control in your county.
Are mosquitos the only insects that breed in standing water? If not, then wouldn't water-control tactics also cause a decrease in the populations of beneficial insects?
Yes and no. That's actually part of what's researched before they do a treatment. From what I know, it takes about a week from deciding to "treat" a body of water to actually treating it, at the fastest. They collect a bunch of samples of the body of water, find out what's considered norm from past samples, what's going on now and find a method of approach and the weakest concentration needed.
Frogs and some fish feed mostly on the larva stage of their lives (egg>larva>pupa>adult). The hormone treatment they use, can't remember it for the life of me, affects their pupa to adult life cycle. Something about screwing up the deterioration of the "shell" before they turn into adults. It stays hard and they are essentially buried alive since the hormone responsible to degrade the shell, so they can emerge, doesn't function properly. But that hormone, in the past 20 years, has not shown to affect fish, frogs or mammals, even down the food chain. There's technically 2 hormones, if I remember right. It was 2 years ago when I was hired to do a research project on prediction of mosquito migration and outbreak spread. My memory is not 100% on this. But one hormone is better to attack than the other because it doesn't affect anything other than mosquitoes. Obviously, "so far known". But it's also been a few decades since testing this at a pretty good scale. Only problem with this method, you only have a few day window of applying this in their life cycle. That's why consistent testing is done and it's used proactively, rather than reactively.
But some of the other tactics, is to speed up and help the flooding/draining process that happens naturally. There are waterworks programs that route water and keep it moving enough to deter mosquitoes, but not affect other wildlife (fish, frogs, other insects, fauna, etc). Those are technically the most effective, economical, and least likely to cause wide scale harm if a problem occurs. Plus, there's specific planting of native plants that suck up water fast. Then there's educating the public to not be retarded about standing water. Plus a few other minor methods. Mosquito control is not a one vector approach. The idea of "one action to rid them all" was shit canned long ago. Literally. The guide for mosquito control, that county commissioners and other gov officials here have to read, specifically mention that there is no single approach to mosquito control and no one should ever think there is one. It's been multi-faceted for many decades. At least in Florida. Other states, apparently, have not adopted that approach.
Edit: Shit, failed to explain my yes/no response. By yes, other animals can potentially be affected. But there is a conscious effort to use minimal concentrations of chemicals needed. Also, they don't intend to eradicate all mosquitoes. If the population of larva and pupa found in a body is deemed normal or below normal. No treatment is done. That way there's enough pollinators and food for the local wildlife. Also, if there isn't an outbreak too. When there's cause of concern for some disease that's actively being found, it's open season for mosquitoes until the outbreak is considered over. It's a really rough balancing act. It succeeds often, but you only hear about the few times it fails. Out of all the research, reports and interviews I've done with folks, it's a conscious balancing act and continual learning process with those in the field. But to be fair too, I only talked to professors who are active in research, CDC and officials in counties that matter. I honestly don't know what it's like in the hillbilly Florida counties. They probably still think bathing makes you sick.
I wasn't even aware this was a thing. I live in Phoenix. I thought you meant some sort of pest control, like a company coming out to a house to give a quote on an isolated problem.
Instead, a truck literally "comes by" and sprays the area, like a bug street-sweeper. Fascinating.
Sigh, I knew before clicking that the comments would all be low effort "ho ho - but unintended consequences!" snark. Yes, everyone knows about that risk.
At least two points are important: they're not eliminating all mosquitoes, just aedes aegypti, which are the disease carrying ones, and there's a huge opportunity cost in not doing something here. There's always the risk of unintended consequences, but you really have to have extremely severe ones in order to offset the known cost of this species of mosquitoes.
I'm actually very interested in hearing concrete ideas of what the unintended consequences could be and their cost, from actual experts.
>I'm actually very interested in hearing concrete ideas of what the unintended consequences could be and their cost, from actual experts.
Not all unintended consequences can be predicted let alone have a cost attached to them. In fact by definition unintended consequences are those we cannot forsee or prepare for in any meaningful way. Of course virtually any action has some unintended consequences but I think what the naysayers are saying in this case is that with something as complicated and untested as this, there is potential for massively negative unpredictable outcomes (maybe a new invasive species, maybe aedes aegypti perform some as yet unknown ecological function and their loss would be massively detrimental in ways we can't as yet predict etc), and there's some justification for that from human experience. This was the entire premise for movies like Jurassic park
But you're right. The moral of the story to Jurassic Park pretty much was "Just because you can science against nature, doesn't mean you should."
But to be fair to, ae. aegypti is technically invasive, to the entire USA. Ridding it TECHNICALLY is a good thing for the local ecosystems. However, I personally don't think the method they're going about it will be as effective as hoped plus it seems like a pandora's box of food chain chaos.
That's kind of where global warming would actually help. Due to the life span and mating cycle, along with egg hardiness, if they have a good drought for about 8-10 months. And then they do extensive hormone pupacide and larvacide treatment. They can nearly eradicate the entire nearby population in one year's time. However, a. aegypti have like an average 800m migration distance within their lifespan (if I remember that right). Thus, they can then do perimeter containment of certain areas to ensure no new migrations into their area. But instead, let's play god and engineer bacteria to fuck with reproductive systems.
> but I know that I'll be unlikely to get that from HN
This is super unfortunate, because it's why I came to HN in the first place. But unfortunately the site is becoming more twitter and less serious discussion.
No, the constant spreading of FUD around the hivemind-identified “bad” companies, semi-intentional misunderstanding of how they operate, and general pessimistic vibe make it Twitter.
I ended up editing that out since it was unnecessary. I've been here for 10 years and HN often has commenters with amazing domain expertise in tech things, but outside of tech it's hit or miss.
"Sigh" just indicates you couldn't care less about a contradicting opinion. Why should anyone discuss anything with you/care about what you have to say when your default mode is to disregard critique?
Expecting free consultings in a very delicate and complex environmental theme wouldn't be realistic. If they want a specialist they could just try to hire her/him.
We had explained here (many times) what type of unintended consequences we could expect. Superficially of course (Don't expect a free 40 pages report about basic autoecology of mosquitoes here, this is not the place for that). It seems that a lot of people just do not want to hear about it. There are entire books written about this theme.
This story sits side-by-side with the recent reporting by the NY Times that we're facing potential biosphere-level effects from an unprecedented die-off of insect life.
That struck me as well. However I have to wonder how many insects in the 'Armageddon' are just caught in the crossfire in our battle with a handful of harmful species like these mosquitos. For example, you can buy yard spray to eliminate mosquitos in your yard for a day or so, which people use all the time, but which also kill all the other insects in your yard.
So if we could target single species like this, maybe it would actually be beneficial for all the other species that are collateral damage in our current wars.
I've been hearing about this. What are the chances of resistance developing? In Australia, the introduction of myxomatosis almost wiped out rabbits, but sure enough they developed resistance and now it's just an endemic disease on par with smallpox.
If the mosquitoes are all raised in a lab environment, and they are not descended from mosquitoes from areas that have been subject to this control, I feel like the risk would be significantly mitigated.
What Google is doing now is to try the same scheme in California, on a much smaller scale, but with the hopeful option to go wide. The target is South-East Asia and Africa.
While Google (and Verily) are getting a lot of the credit here, the underlying technology was developed by entomological researchers at the University of Kentucky [0] and the resulting company, MosquitoMate [1] partnered with Verily [2] to automate and scale the breeding of the sterilized male mosquitoes.
As far as ecosystem impact goes, it seems Verily's approach can be easily controlled as they releasing roughly the same number of mosquitoes as they are eliminating from the fertile population. This contrasts with the gene drive approach, which has recently been shown to be successful at eliminating populations albeit in an experimental setting [1]. Given their theoretical ability to spread throughout an entire ecosystem within only a few generations, it seems like that is a potential panacea though with a much higher risk of unintended consequences.
Is it only me that did a double take: "Google" (Technically, it's Alphabet Inc)?
What is a tech company doing in the field of pest control? Are not the big pharmas, the big chemical companies a better fit?
The article states how Verily Life Sciences is a 'unit of Alphabet' and whose mission statement is:
"We are builders. We create tools that put health data into action." ~ https://verily.com/
I did not realise that Alphabet was into everything. No wonder they've been lobbying for military projects...Now I truly understand how distanced they are from their old Google roots.
The law of unintended consequences will prevail as it does with most attmempts of man intervening in complex eco systems. This will more than likely not be serendipitous, but more of a drawback.
We have caused famines messing with little things like this. Just my 2 cents. I think it is a noble idea, I find it hard to believe that alphabet Inc is in it for all the reasons they state, but I will have to take them at face value.
There are other ways, the reason you don't see them is because they more than likely require too much work, too much change or don't turn a profit.
There are many, many species of mosquitoes. Just a few of the species carry malaria. If you kill those species, they will quickly be replaced by the other species in the ecosystem. There would be no negative effect on the ecosystem and countless lives would be saved.
Right, when the whole company was restructured for the explicit purpose of allowing independent parts of the massive Google to operate independently and efficiently with respect to their different business models.
To be clear, I don't believe any part of Google's ad side has ever influenced their life sciences division, as it has been led by the same man, Andrew Conrad, since 2013. That being said, Andrew Conrad still works for Google as a subsidiary CEO, and I hope he continues to do great things with Verily.
Interesting to see the first world perspective folks here. Probably all high privilege, fat and rich / well sheltered.
"Stupid idea" - you wouldn't be saying that if your kids were dying around you from something preventable because in some cases a non-native species of mosquito is spreading a deadly disease.
Mosquito abatement is not stupid, and targeting things narrowly here as they are proposing is even less stupid.
I'm serious - have you ever lived in a developing country, or even stayed for a few months? The cluelessness and heartlessness here of the entitled and privileged is kind of shocking.
> "Stupid idea" - you wouldn't be saying that if your kids were dying around you from something preventable because in some cases a non-native species of mosquito is spreading a deadly disease.
Should we always let people with dying kids make important decisions? I'm not saying you're wrong, but this is a strange argument to make.
The point I am making is that someone in a rich / sheltered / high lifespan country is calling an idea stupid because it affects a one out of many species of mosquito in a specific area, that is non-native to the area. They seem to totally ignore the benefit in terms of lives saved, both old and young - perhaps because they will not experience the benefit themselves.
Ironically, what I've noticed. Those same folks go totally ape and over-react to even relatively modest threats to their OWN lifespan.
Your point is not wrong - the dying kids argument is often used in high lifespan countries to overreact to things. In this case I think it's not an unreasonable point however.
We hear about these mosquito eradication plans a lot, but why haven't I seen much about developing new repellents? Perhaps we could come up with pills that make our sweat repulsive to them without having to use tons of gross, poisonous sprays.
I'm not convinced on your repellant idea, but generally agree with the approach. Vaccine research (eg. malaria) would be better than messing with the environment.
The Gates foundation alone has granted more than $2 Billion on Malaria vaccine, control, and protection research.
Vaccines, in general, make a lot more sense for diseases spread by human to human contact due to herd immunity. Since malaria isn't spread that way, vaccines in general would be much less effective. And the number of people you would need to vaccinate is massive (north of one billion), as well as any new children who are born (infants make up a significant number of Malaria deaths).
As I remember, there was not any mosquito in Dublin, Ireland and there is not any mosquito in Wellington, New Zealand. Move in these cities and you will have really nice dreams. ;)
Who gives anyone the right to try to wipe out a species? Generally speaking of course. I mean even something as annoying as mosquitoes, ticks, lice, fleas, bed bugs. I just can't fathom the idea of someone coming along, deciding for the whole world, that they need to do something like this, and the whole world can just accept it. As much as I hate mosquitoes, the diseases, etc, I can't make that call for the rest of the world to try to kill them all, or even a large portion of them.
Well, those few hundred thousands dead every effin' year give a lot of right for this. You are writing this on your computer, so you are among the privileged ones of this world and most probably not in any direct threat by malaria. You for sure have access to proper medicine in case you would get infected. The people worst hit by malaria don't have any of this luxury. You don't have to vouch for them, thats OK, I will do that for you, and so will others.
And of course, as many have mentioned here - this is not about wiping out every single species of mosquitoes on the planet. Just those few that transfer malaria, just in places they invaded recently. It is a good move.
Which ones? Are there any birds that have mosquitos as a major part of their diet? (and how does this compared to hundreds of thousands of human deaths caused by malaria?)
Before people go too far with not actually reading the article, here are the main points to actually understand:
1. This is Verily, not Google, owned by Alphabet.
2. They are releasing male mosquitoes (that don't bite) in the area, where the species is not native. They are attempting to remove the species only from their unnatural habitat.
3. The headline is clickbait, as Google is not involved and no one is trying to eliminate mosquitoes "around the world."
In all cases I've seen of countering mosquitoes in any way, all researchers are aware of risks and take them very seriously. The goals tend to be similar to this one or have to do with eliminating the spread of malaria and other mosquito-transmitted disease.
Alphabet was a corporate restructuring of Google, which also changed the name "Google Life Sciences" to "Verily." The search engine Google is not involved, but the company everyone knows as Google is involved.
That's as relevant as saying "everyone knows" that the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation has Microsoft involved.
In other words, not relevant at all. The money can originally have been generated by Google, and now it's invested in something completely different but that has the same ultimate owners.
People and investors can legitimately start new ventures with different missions that operate completely independently for all practical purposes. Nobody claims that The Boring Company is just Tesla, or that Tesla is just SpaceX, or that they're all just PayPal.
I don't get why people are so quick to jump on the assumption that because there are things they dislike about Google's business model or practices, the whole umbrella of Alphabet's hugely diverse set of businesses is somehow tainted by association.
Google does what it does - bad things included - thanks to the decisions of a small group of people, who is now also controlling Alphabet and its subsidiaries like Verily. It's perfectly rational to assume they have not changed the methods, management style and ethical boundaries that led to the disliked behaviors in Google.
Citation needed. To the contrary, Alphabet is an enormous conglomerate with over 100,000 employees, where the kinds of methods, styles and ethics you talk about are largely determined (successfully or not) by the director-level leader of each one (suppose ~100 people), and the leaders of Alphabet only have the time to handle the highest-level questions of coordination, investment, and biggest-picture thinking among them.
Alphabet is a complex group of people, and the idea that its operation and behavior can be reduced to just a handful of controlling people is overly simplistic. You try getting 100,000 people to follow a single method or style and see how successful you are at herding all those cats... (not to mention how famously de-centralized Google has been from the start).
That's all is not a change of "the methods, management style and ethical boundaries", is it? For example, to change it to a strict enforcement of certain ethical boundaries.
As you said it also applies to Google, and nobody to my knowledge ever claimed that all departments and all people in them a e.v.i.l., not even criticis of all sorts of things Google did and does.
>I don't get why people are so quick to jump on the assumption that because there are things they dislike about Google's business model or practices, the whole umbrella of Alphabet's hugely diverse set of businesses is somehow tainted by association
Because Alphabet is Google. The only reason that diverse set of businesses exist are the practices previously at the same company. There is no separation like your other examples, they just changed the name.
However, they are different companies with different staff, mission statements, and overall goals now. Conflating them to suggest that an ad company is trying to eliminate mosquitos is misleading, at best.
Alphabet is a company that still makes the bulk of its revenue from advertising, and invests that money in its other ventures. It's not misleading at all to suggest that this project is being funded by advertising revenue.
Sure, Alphabet makes a good chunk of revenue from advertising, and re-invests it. Verily is not an advertising company, even if they get some money from advertising.
Furthermore, Verily has its own profit streams, and isn't doing anything with mosquitos that increasing advertising streams to Google. The projects are unrelated. If I work on software and work and later clean my toilet at home, you wouldn't say the gloves I wear are my IDE and that I'm programming. However, I bought the gloves using money from my software development job.
Google makes the bulk of its revenue from advertising. Google generates substantial profits. The non-Google parts of Alphabet are, as a group, running at a loss. Google's advertising profits are used to subsidize Alphabet's "other bets."
Yes - you're right. I already understood that, but thanks for the patronizing comment that actually side-steps any point about how Google is not the company fighting mosquitos in California.
Google is busy trying to maximize advertising profits.
Verily is focused in Life Sciences.
Different companies, with different goals. Verily isn't trying to maximize advertising profits for Alphabet.
And you're side-stepping the point that many people are making here, which is that being an Alphabet subsidiary means that they're subsidized by Google's ad business. It's concerning that massive public health projects -- of the sort that used to be undertaken largely by governments and non-profit NGOs -- are now undertaken by a company that got rich off advertising and the owners have decided to reinvest in such ventures. Ostensibly, if the US government goes out and decides to eliminate malaria, they are accountable to people for how they do this. As long as Verily is under the Alphabet umbrella, it's not even a private firm, it's a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet. They can write all the mission statements they want, so long as Google continues to provide advertising revenue in sufficient quantity to cover the losses of Alphabet's "other bets," the only accountability for what Verily does is to advertisers and the shareholders of an adtech firm.
> you're side-stepping the point that many people are making here, which is that being an Alphabet subsidiary means that they're subsidized by Google's ad business.
I'm not side-stepping that point. I literally conceded it multiple times.
> It's concerning that massive public health projects ... are undertaken by a company ...
You're concerned that a public health project is being undertaken by private industry...but what concern is there? What are you worried about? I'm happy to discuss that. I probably share concerns regarding the same thing.
However, if a private company invests in public health, I tend to see that as a good thing. I also agree that such private companies should be accountable. This necessitates government regulation on private companies. I am for that, to the extent that the company can still do things in the interest of the public.
However, if your point is actually that there is limited accountability for private companies working in the public interest (or their own interest), then why conflate Google and Verily? It doesn't make your point more or less valid and contributes to a fundamental misunderstanding of the context around a given issue.
If that's really your issue from the start, then just say you think these types of things should be done by entities which are held accountable to the public.
Nobody's _conflating_ Google and Verily. Verily is owned by a holding company that was formed for the express purpose of allowing Google's profits to subsidize projects that Google's founders want to pursue.
It's the ownership that matters. Ownership matters because that is where the decision making and control is. Verily is a 100% owned subsidiary. If Alphabet decided to amalgamate Google with Verily, could they? Can Alphabet pull money out of Verily? Can Alphabet decide to shut down Verily? Yes, in all cases. Who does Verily CEO report to? Your claim that it a separate, stand-alone company is false.
Both companies can informally be referred to as "Google." One because it runs the search engine. The other because it was known as Google until a few years ago, owns the search engine, trades as "GOOG," and a variety of reasons. It would be more misleading to refer to them as Alphabet, as everybody knows them as Google.
"everyone"? I suspect of the non-echo-chamber populous that is not on this website, 99.9% of them would "know" the search engine Google as "the company" Google.
I think you've misunderstood the parent. Everyone knows the search engine is Google. If you say "Nest" or "Waymo" or "Verily", people think of those as... Nest and Waymo and Verily. The same way when you say "Instagram" or "Whatsapp" the average person certainly does not think of Facebook.
>If you say "Nest" or "Waymo" or "Verily", people think of those as... Nest and Waymo and Verily.
Yes, and if I said the company that owns those was Alphabet, almost nobody would know what I was saying. Everyone would understand if I said Google owned them, though they actually don't.
That's a minor distinction without a difference in the public's mind. Alphabet == Google unless you care an unusual amount about that corporation's org charts.
It's very different. They are literally different companies with different mission statements. Just because you don't want to take the time to understand, being content to become outraged whenever you read a specific six letters in sequence, doesn't mean everyone else should, or that you should contribute to FUD.
This comment and a few of your others have crossed into flamewar, which is the opposite of what we want here, so please don't do that.
As for your main point, I don't see a good solution. No one has heard of Verily. If we /s/Google/Alphabet/ in the title, that feels a bit like weasling to me. Everybody knows this company as Google. On the other hand, if we leave Google in the title, we get irrelevant (and worse) comments about search engines and ads.
Hey - I realize that comment was a little over the top, not sure what others you're referring to, though. My irritation got the best of me.
Regarding your other point, I think the good solution is to accurately address the topic/subject, even if that means some people don't recognize the connection. If the headline was referencing Verily, instead of Google, then a good number of people would learn about Verily, right? Pandering to the uninformed doesn't help anyone, except in this case, the publisher, which was clearly going for clickbait.
I really don't think it's a good idea to favor inaccurate information over writing a few extra sentences (maybe just one?) in the article.
As a better alternative: "Verily Has a Plan to Fight Mosquitos in California"
Then in the article, something like "Verily, a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google's parent company, ..."
Boom, no false info, people learn who Verily is, and the world is better off for not leaning into clickbait and outrage-based journalism.
> It's very different. They are literally different companies with different mission statements.
Only if you care an unusual amount about that corporation's org charts. Corporate mission statements are meaningless, except to an even smaller group of people.
Insisting that Alphabet isn't Google, is sort of like insisting that Puffs [1] tissues aren't Kleenex. While it may technically be true in some legalistic sense, a vanishingly small number of people actually care and colloquial language disagrees. People will look at you funny if you act like the distinction matters, because it doesn't.
The distinction matters a lot for Google and Verily because they have different motivations.
If you are trying to understand what incentives impact the company, you have to address them specifically. Google is incentivized by the drive to make profits from advertising. This leads them to do many things that are predictable. Verily has different motivations, which change predictions about them. Their parent is motivated to make profit exclusively, so you can make predictions around that.
It absolutely matters when two companies are different, especially if you actually want to understand the situation, motivation, etc.
I'd agree that it doesn't matter to the average person who isn't interested in discussing topics related to the company, and colloquially, the terms are used interchangeably, which is fine. However, for discussing the moral, ethical, legal, etc, issues around the company, it's important to make the distinction to more accurately understand and predict future behavior.
In the case of this click-bait-titled article, it does matter though, as Google has a publicly understood identity, which has no business playing with mosquitos. Verily is in the business of life science, and therefore has plenty of business with mosquitos.
Conflating the two in this context first makes the company recognizable to the general public, probably the point of the mis-representation in the title, but second, it serves to lead the suspicious people on HN and elsewhere to wonder how Google is making destroying the environment profitable in advertising, which is so far from what's going on it would be laughable, if it wasn't so dangerous to the actual scientific and policy dialog that should happen around the topic.
> It's legally a subsidiary and must have 'co mingled' accounting.
Which is the point. They have much more in common than being simply owned by the same owners. They're a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet. And when Verily needs to raise money to cover losses, they don't go to the bank, they don't sell shares, they go to Alphabet.
" And when Verily needs to raise money to cover losses, they don't go to the bank, they don't sell shares, they go to Alphabet."
No.
The sub is totally independant: governance, liability, stock holders etc.
Alphabet just has to report the sub on it's balance sheet, but otherwise it's like owning stock.
Now, Alpha does have a deeper relationship with it's companies, but they are still independent.
Google does not share information, money, talent, office space or much else with most other Alpha companies, so they are essentially separate companies with little to do with on another.
Do you happen to work for Google/Alphabet or have you in the past? I imagine that the distinction is actually pretty meaningful and important for people who work there, but pretty meaningless to everyone else in the world who doesn't.
Most companies are broken up into separate entities. For instance, nearly 100% of the banks you interact with are more than one "company". You have mortgage, auto loan, credit cards, etc. The reason for this is liability and billing (same as Alphabet). They may even have different mottos and definitely different management. All that is to mitigate risk and work more effectively, but they are the same entitity owned by the same people, typically with the same driving factor or competitive advantage.
In the case of Verily and Google, however, they don't have the same driving factor or competitive advantage. Google's profits and business strategy revolve around advertising. Verily revolves around life sciences.
Great question. I'll look into it later, but you should do the same. I'm fairly certain they have their own profit model, and don't cover all costs strictly from Google's advertising business.
The immediate jump to assuming outrage and FUD in others strange. I associate Alphabet as ~= Google and I am not outraged that they're researching this topic. Why the overeager apologia?
I'm not particularly interested in defending anyone here, but I am very concerned with how easy it is to lead online opinion by misrepresenting the facts.
The article is clickbait, the comment I responded to is misdirected outrage without a genuine effort to understand the context. This is a problem that is plaguing our society, and therefore gets me a bit worked up. It's so much easier to drop a snarky remark that is irrelevant to the conversation or doesn't actually refute any point than it is to engage with the context, but that's bad for society and the current conversation.
I generally associate Alphabet and Google because they are related. However, only through a parent relationship are Verily and Google related - and there is no "ad company" trying to "eliminate" mosquitos.
Nope - I'm not an employee and don't own stock, but I have spent a good deal of time trying to understand how Google makes money, as well as how their company is structured.
I tried to understand Alphabet and Google because I use Google products and care about what they do with the data.
Given an understanding of how they work, I see a lot of misrepresentation of their business model and lack of understanding around it. So I try to help with that.
On HN in general, there is a ridiculous level of mistrust for Google. I think it's good for everyone to be critical, but to be critical, people need to actually think and understand what they are being critical of. Instead, they often skip past all the thinking and go straight to worst-case doomsday scenarios. In this case, that means only reading the clickbait title of an article and assuming Google has some nefarious plot to destroy the ecosystem worldwide.
That type of behavior is dangerous.
People should be critical of Google. There are real issues with advertising revue, how that industry is motivated and incentivized, damage that can be done by the industry and powerful players, etc etc. When people don't think about and engage with the topics they are discussing it causes more harm, because it distracts from real problems. People in this thread are looking at the article's headline and questioning why an advertising company would try to kill mosquitos worldwide, which is a far cry from what the article is actual talking about.
These problems arise in a number of topics, I just happen to see it a lot in Google related articles and say something because I know more about Google than other topics.
Alphabet never was “only Google” even on day 1. Google was long a conglomerate containing Google and “Other Bets”, other companies such as Nest etc before the alphabet shuffle.
Google was more or less just as much a holding company for a diverse range of other companies such as this Verily then as Alphabet is now, which is why the distinction between the two is considered so artificial by many here, an idea further compounded by the fact Google stock was converted to Alphabet stock and still uses Google’s ticker symbols.
> And what business does an ad company have in getting into this?
Yes, instead of applauding the effort of solving a very difficult problem that could help people in real meaningful way, I am just going to go for cheap potshots to show how elite I am.
I'm 100% sure that such worldwide environmental changes will have no negative effects. There is no hubris involved here, future humans will look back with nothing but thanks.
Thank you search engine company! Silicon Valley / PHP engineers really will save the world!
Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN. Even if you're right, this is just the sort of shallow dismissal the site guidelines ask you not to post, because it degrades discussion badly.
Instead of the sarcasm, please elaborate on the harmful effects of complete mosquito removal (those that carry diseases) from the ecosystem. These bugs cause an immense number of death and suffering every year, and eliminating them seems a good solution in that it removes the carrier of the diseases, eliminating the disease without having to worry about finding cures and expanding health care access in a lot of the impoverished places where these diseases strike the hardest.
Male mosquitoes pollinate many plants that keep ecosystems in balance. Plants that bees normally don't pollinate.
Plus they are a food source for many other animals, including birds.
In Florida, the state uses university researchers to try estimating populations of mosquitoes that can keep ecosystems mostly in balance, along with prevent too much outbreak in disease. Hell, a lot of the state workers are uni grads that deal with mosquito populations. Since the 90s, they've been doing pretty well with all the research gathered since the 1920s.
In this case, I bet we're going to get something similar to Mao's great ecological experiment with eradicating sparrows and whatever the other pests were. Not as severe. But, in a few years, "Yea, that was really stupid".
Humans have a very good history of fucking up ecosystems. We think "we know better" or "I have this great idea!" or even "I have this totally under control". No. We don't. We're morons when it comes to controlling ecosystems. I also find "I don't see how this can go wrong" to be a fault in logic. Just because YOU can't figure out how something can go wrong, doesn't mean it will not go wrong. Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth.
And infecting one species with a bacteria that alter's their reproductive system could never transfer to animals that consumes them?
Before reinventing the wheel, why not look at Florida's century long research into controlling mosquito transmitted diseases? All the failures and successes. The chemicals used only affect certain hormones that occur in mosquito life cycles and have not been found in other critters. Even with that, they use it as sparingly as possible. Only if larva and pupa populations are in excess of normal levels. "Outbreaks" are considered in the single digits in a week's span. And when they do occur, they're dealt with swiftly.
Just because you can't see the domino at the end of the line, doesn't mean it won't fall. I have no faith in silicon valley corporations. They've built themselves up on the platform that "We know best". What's worse, they believe their own bullshit.
>And infecting one species with a bacteria that alter's their reproductive system could never transfer to animals that consumes them?
...No.
> Wolbachia is a genus of Gram-negative bacteria that infects arthropod species, including a high proportion of insects, but also some nematodes. It is one of the world's most common parasitic microbes and is possibly the most common reproductive parasite in the biosphere.
>In early 2016, the [Eliminate Dengue] team discovered that the presence of Wolbachia bacteria in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes also inhibits replication of the Zika virus, in addition to dengue and chikungunya viruses. Since then, the World Health Organization (WHO) held an emergency session of the Vector Control Advisory Committee on developing a response to the Zika epidemic. At the session, WHO recommended that the Eliminate Dengue program proceed with pilot deployment of its Wolbachia strategy to build capacity to support operational use.
This is a well understood and widely regarded as safe method of dealing with mosquitos.
These mosquitoes are non-native in the areas they are being removed. Can you walk us through the "disastrous" consequences of removing them. Why is introducing non-native wildlife OK, but removing nonnative species not OK?
"Non-native" is a much fuzzier term than it seems. There wasn't really any absolute blessed state of perfection that populations were in before humans started having an impact on the world, you know.
All the reports I have read indicated no species has mosquito's or their larva as its primary or even a significant food source. So the impact of wiping out only one species of the thousands of mosquito species as alphabet is planning seems very low risk indeed. This species doesn't even live in the far north where birds eat the larva in the tundra as a part of their diet, so it wouldn't affect birds at all.
Changing the ecosystem can have ripple effects that we cannot foresee due to our limited knowledge. The so called butterfly effect. Throughout history there are plenty of cases of humans changing the ecosystem with disastrous consequences for local wildlife.
I don't know if exterminating mosquitoes will be good or bad for us. What I am saying is that we've got far bigger problems to solve first and in this case priorities do matter. What if exterminating mosquitoes will also exterminate various bird species? Well, some people might be willing to pay that price, but thinking of the butterfly effect, this being in the context of global warming and human driven mass extinction of animals, so can we really afford to exterminate animal species right now? And I think the answer to that question is no.
So eliminating mosquito might be a great idea, but I hope the people responsible for it will do their homework.
Fair enough, I will elaborate on this: we have no idea what the effects will be. It could be anything from "nothing bad happens" to apocalypse. Maybe we shouldn't do things that have such a wide range of possible outcomes. Maybe.
If you look into it a bit, you'll find that the article title I assume you are reacting to isn't quite right. They are targeting a very tiny slice of mosquito species that both bite humans and carry malaria. The scientists involved (who are world-class in this field) have run the numbers on the effects of eliminating these species. This isn't childsplay, and at risk are millions of human lives. Mosquitos reproduce very quickly and if these species are removed then another will easily take their places. This is not like someone deleting all files of a certain extension in an OS directory to just see what happens, this is careful and researched biotechnology being put to use to end suffering.
>> The scientists involved (who are world-class in this field) have run the numbers on the effects of eliminating these species.
FTA: "It’s unclear what would happen if the world’s disease-causing mosquitoes were done away with. The ecological role that mosquitoes play hasn’t been thoroughly studied, though some scientists suggest we might be just fine without them.”
At least as reported in this article there seems to be a lot more doubt about what could/would happen than you suggest.
The real genius of the plan is in its' second phase - dragonflies who will have nothing to eat will be hired by Google to fly around people with nano billboards.
Sure thing. He didn't write an article and doesn't have a plan on how NOT to eliminate all the mosquitoes around the world. That makes him a bad person who doesn't think enough about things.
The fact that no one can remember a reason for why mosquitoes should not be exterminated is not a reason in favor of total extermination.
The Four Pests Campaign is thought to have contributed significantly for the death of around 30 million people in China.
And fish eat mosquito larvae. So there's that. Anyone observing larvae in a pond's surface will notice that they will shake and dive whenever a change in lighting occurs. That tells me that they probably have non-aquatic predators. I'm gessing dragonflies, although I suspect these insects only prey on adult mosquitos.
I'm not sure of this. And that is exactly the point, because Google must be completely sure of what is doing.
I should also note that samples of the eradicated species will be kept, so if it does turn out that it is a mistake, they can be re-introduced.