And what it says about Google. +5 years into their life as a big public company and they still "get it".
I'm thinking of how many desks such a decision would cross at my company (publicly traded, ~1500 people) and it's amazing that Google turned it around in two days.
if they "got it" they wouldn't have done it in the first place. It's just damage control for them,
Sure the fact that they actually try to damage control gives them lots of points, but let's not kid ourselves, without the outrage, nothing would have happened.
Google's "don't be evil" motto is a weak one for several reasons. Negative mottos are inherently weak because they provide a lot of leeway in definition, it's always possible to fuzz the line on what's evil and define evil to be a smaller and smaller zone of behavior. In the strictest terms Google has already committed a fair number of evil acts (e.g. cooperating with Chinese persecution). Also, a double negative (essentially don't be not good) is fundamentally weaker than a positive statement (e.g. "do only good"). More so, over time a statement such as "don't be evil" quickly morphs into "be much less evil than the competition" which then slowly morphs over time into "be just a little bit less evil than the competition". Reading the comments here defending google's actions re: etherpad it's hard to argue that google is at any stage other than the last "be a little less evil than the competition" stage.
And at that point your precious "don't be evil" guidance is worthless because at best you are so inconsequentially less evil than the run of the mill heartless corporation that you really haven't decreased the amount of evil being done in the world.
Exactly which part is evil?
1) Buying AppJet
2) Publicly announcing their intentions for the service
3) Listing to feedback
4) Changing their intentions for the service (on a weekend)
This is a serious question, btw. Obviously shutting down a service isn't evil on it's own - it's a net good for the world if no one care about it (saving electricity, giving people more fulfilling work etc).
Perhaps your argument is that they should have responded quicker. If that's the case then would it be possible for you to lay out your proposal for quicker responses?
2.5) That their intentions are "now or soon you must stop using this service which you like, and instead you can use our unfinished, very different service or you can fuck off".
We call it 'evil' (to some degree) when a big supermarket starts up on the edge of town, shuts down the small independent shops and offers you the choice of supermarket-butcher and supermarket-baker or nothing, don't we?
We call it 'evil' (to some degree) when governments or industry forcibly buy up houses and turf people out to build a railway or reservoir, and offer people the choice of whatever-the-government-wants-to-pay or nothing, yes?
Yes Google have turned it around very quickly, but in the context of the parent post "we like EtherPad let's use our massive amounts of cash to hire their developers and incidentally ruin their product but who cares" is not on the same level of goodness as "we like EtherPad let's use our massive amounts of cash to train our developers and make our product so good that people move over by choice".
You know, shutting down creating new documents for two whole days (for free users, not paying ones) has to be pretty low on the evil scale, when the next announcement is that they're going to open-source it. C'mon.
Reading the comments here defending google's actions re: etherpad it's hard to argue that google is at any stage other than the last "be a little less evil than the competition" stage.
Google has managed to stay significantly less evil than the standard for large companies. They're big enough now that, no matter what they do, people will accuse them of insidious things, but it's hard to argue that they don't represent an incremental step in the right direction. It's not obvious how much of this is self-determined and how much is the zeitgeist of the internet, but I'm not sure that's too important.
You could start with the fact that they bought Etherpad in the first place. In its heyday, a certain leviathan that comes to mind would have simply killed it by any means necessary. (And then stood gloating over its remains, cackling and pumping its fists in the air. And saying "it's just business" to anyone who had a problem. But I digress.)
Comparing how Google uses their power to how Apple uses theirs, or what Microsoft would do with the power they wish they still had, I'm glad Google have managed to preserve the evil-to-non-evil ratio that they have, even if it is far from zero. As Sarah Vowell once said, don't diss the lesser of two evils; less evil is a big deal!
This is exactly my point. "Don't be evil" so quickly becomes "be less evil than the competition", it's already the standard that YOU use to judge google's actions.
Buying the competition in order to shut them down seems, well, evil.
Make no mistake, I'm glad that google is less evil than other corporations its size, but I don't delude myself into imagining that they fully, or even remotely, live up to their "don't be evil" mission.
It wasn't "exactly your point" at all. I objected to your saying they're a little less evil because IMO they are significantly less evil. You trivialized a difference which ought not to be trivialized. I don't see how my objection could have been clearer, given the first two sentences I wrote (or the last one, for that matter).
Why is Google is significantly less evil? Because they pursue their interests in a way that is far more aligned with the public interest than any other corporation of their size ever (that I've observed). Making the internet faster. Digitizing all the world's books. Sure, it's all self-interested, but it's self-interested in a more enlightened way than we've ever seen in a large corporation. How can that not matter?
Do they still do evil things? Duh. This isn't binary.
I also disagree with you that their "Don't be evil" slogan is a weak one. It's just a slogan, but based on numerous things I've read, it does put some pressure on their decision makers to consider these things. Who else does that?
Actually, I disagree with pretty much everything you said. I don't accept your cynical slippery-slope argument at all, and you haven't provided any evidence for it.
> Any sufficiently advanced damage control is indistinguishable from ethics.
i suspect this is more a (cynical) definition of "advanced damage control" than a definition of "ethics" (in which case it's not a win for nonevil; it's evil being smart enough that you can no longer tell the difference).
Kudos to Etherpad && Google. Lets just take a moment and acknowledge that fact that if etherpad was taken over by any other company they would never release the source, or feel compelled to continue the service after the acquisition.
As much as some of us love to hate Google, you have to agree they deserve some kudos too.
I hope it's a trend other companies will be prepared to follow. Value the work methodology - not just the end product.
In this case, the initial end product may not be needed by google, as it will most likely require a significant restructure to fit in with Wave, but this shows that they appreciate the original idea to the point where they are prepared to let it stand on it's own merit.
The greatest gain to google (as with most of their acquisitions) is the talent. Its a new form of hiring - you get to see the quality and end results of the team, taking much of the guesswork out of the hiring process.
So I wish the guys from AppJet all the best, thanks for your work so far, may you go on to do great things from your new positions! And thanks for etherpad too!
If you like what an architect can do, and you hire them for a lot of money, you don't automatically get rights to all the buildings they have designed and power to shut the buildings down and kick the tenants out.
This sort of thing is one reason why desktop software is still superior - our helpdesk software company sold out and closed down years ago and it didn't affect us, for instance.
All the hullabaloo the past couple days has inspired me to try EtherPad for the first time. Death has long been a great career move for artists, but I never thought it would be that way for web applications.
Has the hullabaloo left you feeling better or worse about Google?
I would hate it to start a precedent where every takeover goes:
Takeover with intent to open source site, but announce site closure. Lots of fuss and free marketing profile raising. Pretend reversal of intentions and announce site can stay, appear benevolent and wonderful.
It's left me feeling a bit better about Google. My reaction isn't that strong because the route they have chosen obviously makes the most sense for them, especially given that Wave itself is open-source so it's not like they would gain a lot by keeping whatever technology in EtherPad they may adopt secret.
Although Google's behavior has indeed painted a better picture of them in my mind, I would argue that I would have the same impression had they just agreed to open-source it from the beginning.
If you mean Wave, there is some code open sourced (syncronizer), and we're working on getting the rest out. Also, we have federation testing. You should join the dev list if you want to try it out. There are some neat non-google implemented wave servers based on the protocol docs we released earlier this year.
As remember from the early videos there is a limited client without some of the features (statistical spell checking) that is (or will be) available open-source.
Yes, the Wave interface. The Wave interface acts as a client of the Wave protocol and servers they have running internally, hence his use of the word "client".
I instantly became incredibly happy when I read the title of this link. I'm so glad that Google and AppJet were actually listening to us and addressed our complaints in just a day.
The hardest part is not knee-jerk reacting to the vitriol and trying to get to the root of the complaint. So instead of saying "Some jerk wants us to open source project x" we try (and sometimes it is harder than you think!) to say "Okay, should we open source project X." and go from there.
From what I've seen in companies large and small: Outrage works against the outraged, most of the time.
Possibly a lame theory, but after they shut it down, clone talk was spreading pretty heavily. By open-sourcing, did they just take away the biggest player AND stop the competition in one swoop?
This afternoon, I installed node.js, started reading papers on operational transformation and sketched ideas based on the Jef Raskin's humane interface.
You know, I feel a little bad for the Etherpads. They were gonna go off and work on a totally new project as big shots and now they have to spend time supporting a software product that they've already EOL'd.
I'd imagine they'll still get some good wave time in. They'll have to spend some time on support and such, but it's not like they'll be working on new features, looking for acquisition, or doing any of that.
Also, if support becomes too much of a burden, I could see google having them train 1 or 2 google employees to do a lot of it.
These guys are some of the best real-time web programmers in the world. Google just spend "low eight figures" and tried to kill their product immediately. They clearly want them to spend as much time on wave as possible, so they'll find a way to make that happen.
Would Google have paid low eight figures in a talent acquisition if they weren't?
In particular, they probably are the best people to join the Wave team because not only have they been doing real-time, they've been doing a real-time app that is very similar to wave, since they're both essentially documents (though wave is a little more like a series of sometimes-nested documents, but it's all the basically the same).
Saying that real-time/comet/AJAX/[technology name] isn't hard is meaningless. I can easily say, for example, that "programming in C" isn't hard. I just don't see what your point is.
My original point was that "These guys are some of the best real-time web programmers in the world." is pretty silly. For one, 'real-time web' isn't hard, and secondly, there are people who have been doing it for years.
I hate this trend of coming up with fantastic buzz words and making people believe they're something new/hard/fantastic.
1. you are pretending that all real time applications are equally hard, they arent, etherpad has a level of complexity beyond most things people do.
2. because people have been doing it for a long time means it isnt hard? there isnt any way to read that that makes any sense, brain surgeons have been around a while, its still pretty hard.
like most people who complain about buzzwords you are actually putting more emphasis on the 'buzzwords' than the actual point.
This is great. Big "stupid" (at least from some specific point of view indeed) companies are well known, when they do a mistake, to take huge time before to realize it.
Google is Big, but apparently does not suffer from this problem, so I can only conclude is NOT "stupid".
Thank you. Tonight I was beginning my transition - downloading my pads (zip, thanks!) and moving up to Bespin. Glad I don't have to worry about that now.
