Google Fights Back - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2019/google-fights-back/ <comment><USER3> Google owns my soul. Their boxes know when I sleep, when I wake, how much I exercise, what I listen to, my innermost thoughts, my chats with loved ones, what I watched on Netflix last night, what my company does, the flu I have at the moment, what the hypochondriac in me looks up in the middle of the night, what I buy, whom I call, what I spend money on, where I spend it...

I nominally pay for these services, but I suspect it makes me a vassal instead of a serf. Google consumes. Google contemplates. Google cognates. Google knows. Google sees me while I will never get to see it.

At face value, as long as Google is Google, everything is okay but what happens when google is Google no more? When it goes to join the great corporate farm in the sky? What happens to the exabytes of data they'll have gathered by then? Who will own it once Google is Google no more? What will happen to our lives once the data changes hands a decade or four from now?

Are there any contingency plans for the largest dataset on Earth? Do we get to know these plans?

Who the fuck owns MySpace now?

Say what you will about Apple (and I've said a lot), at least I know where we stand. I have switched to iOS and I recommend that you should do the same. At the very least, Google will no longer know when you sleep.

<comment><USER4> Google is already not Google.

The "Don't Be Evil" corporation that valued open source rather than open- washing, that valued openstandards over "oops, we didn't mean to break that for you!" isn't here anymore.

The company that bends over backwards, much farther than the law requires, to enable the surveillance state.

I despise Apple. Especially on mobile. No SDCards, no headphone jack, walled garden app stores. Ugh ugh ugh.

I have applications that does E2E for contacts and calendars that I'll have to find an iOS solution for.

I loathe the notch.

But my next phone will be an iPhone.

Google collects so much absurd amount of data - that all the Proton-mail, DuckduckGo, Wire/Signal, Firefox (loaded with adblocking and tracking plugins) apps in the world can't keep you totally from it as long as you're on Android. You disable things, you opt out of stuff and it just keeps on collecting anyways.

And i don't believe for a second the data they're allowing you to "autodelete" genuinely gets deleted. It just gets removed from your view.

<comment><USER5> I fully switched from Android to iOS when iPhone X came out in November 2017.

I realised in the next months that the perceived "freedom to tinker" on Android is something hugely overrated. I could achieve almost everything I wanted on my iPhone -- it just took a bit of time to find the proper apps. Later Apple added the Shortcuts which is a very solid automation app.

Many Android users also lament the lack of a visible filesystem but that's a huge plus in my eyes. What are Android apps doing with that? You guessed it, scan your internal storage and SD card and upload them feck knows where (and this has been proven by many advanced Android users). iOS' sandboxing is not a bug. It's a feature which I appreciate a lot.

I'll not shy away from the fact: there are areas that I miss from Android. For example, I could have inspected WiFi strength signal with an Android phone and I cannot with a non-jailbroken iPhone.

Again though, as a guy who used Android phones for 4.5 years before switching to an iPhone, I found that the uncomfortable feeling of switching to an entirely new (and supposedly more "locked down") ecosystem is mostly an illusion created by our brain's unwillingness to endure big changes. You get over it very quickly. Don't trust your brain on these matters, it floods you with non-truisms to avoid cognitive shock.

 _P.S._ I too loathe the notch. So after 15 months with the iPhone X I switched to iPhone 8 Plus. Easily the best phone on the planet to this day (plus a bigger screen and a slightly bigger battery). Now I dread the day the device will no longer be sold.

<comment><USER4> >Many Android users also lament the lack of a visible filesystem but that's a huge plus in my eyes

That's awful in my eyes. What's more is my inability to browse that file system without a third party application when i want to simply move files to my computer.

The only reason I'm even contemplating the move to iOS, is b/c I have a android based, digital audio player that has 2 SDcard slots that I keep disconnected from Wifi (and it does n't have a 4G connection at all).

If my music was still on my phone, I simply would not move to iOS over this singular issue. You're talking 250-400GB of files, not including my downloads, my pictures, my Keepass databases, my SSH keys, my certs file for my VPN, and files that I don't want the OS to index and put in some general library.

It stills seem ridiculously daunting to let go of. Because I use it extensively. Daily - even without my music on there.

>ou guessed it, scan your internal storage and SD card and upload them feck knows where (and this has been proven by many advanced Android users)

Except only the apps I trust are allowed storage access.

<comment><USER6> Android Q is adding scoped storage and it's more or less the end of a visible file system. Even the existing file manager apps will have trouble to show files without special permissions.

<comment><USER7> Key word is "permissions", right? Meaning apps that don't wish to scare users with permissions will adopt the new API, but existing filesystem access should continue to function. Otherwise this would be crippling to some users and apps and I doubt it would go over well.

<comment><USER8> That sounds like the right way to do it. I would love a file browser that has no network permissions but special file permissions, and my network capable apps to have no extra file permissions beyond their own needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm impressed with the direction Google is taking, and how they've pivoted in the face of public awareness of privacy concerns.

I like the Google products and services that I use. There are some that I miss (Reader) and some that just confuse me (Bookmarks), but the core works for me.

Based on commentary I've seen, I may be the only person on Hacker News to think so. Regardless, I'm hopeful for the future.

<comment><USER10> FWIW, I agree with this sentiment.

Google did not _need_ to give this stance at I/O. It appears that they're being as transparent as they can about the fact that our data is their business model.

I get it: our online privacy is important. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to remain truly anonymous on the Internet, and this is mostly thanks to Google. However, the converse could be Google using our data for malicious purposes. Has there been any evidence of that? I have not seen any.

I believe we live in an age of online convenience, and not just for the average user. Google generally makes security-conscious products, especially with Chrome. Heuristics has proven to become very effective in combating online malicious behavior. By establishing our identities with Google, Google can generally say "we are who we say we are" with a degree of confidence, without us having to do much of anything. This is generally bad from a privacy stand-point, but can be good from a security stand-point.

Overall, I think Google has done good things for the Internet. But good things sometimes come at a cost, and sometimes third party companies want that cost paid in a way we do not agree with. I think Google is doing all they can to make that point clear.

<comment><USER11> > the converse could be Google using our data for malicious purposes. Has > there been any evidence of that? I have not seen any.

You are right. I have not seen any evidence of this yet either. What frightens me is that IF something happens and Google is compelled or chooses to give that data to an entity to use maliciously there will be nothing we can do.

As I look at it: It is dangerous for that much data about that many people to exist in one place period.

<comment><USER10> I look at it this way: What is your threat model?

What do you stand to lose if:

* Google shuts down tomorrow?

* Google turns into a malicious conspirator tomorrow?

* Google's databases are compromised by a separate malicious party tomorrow?

Each of these can have different outcomes for your data. Do you wish to mitigate, avoid, or accept that risk?

Likewise, what do you stand to _gain_ from using Google services? AKA, do you get substance out of their services in exchange for the information you're giving them?

Everyone can have different answers to these questions. If you choose not to use Google services, more power to you. I simply encourage everyone to think about their threat model critically, and make an educated decision - <USER2> than hopping on a bandwagon.

<comment><USER12> I think for me personally its:

Over the next 20-30 years personal freedoms and economic opportunities in the United States gradually erode, and large corporations seeking to continue/increase profit are entirely complicit in legally feeding their data into a surveillance state.

The goal of the model would be to decrease how fucked I am from this eventuality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _> It all begins with our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, and today, our mission feels as relevant as ever._

I said this 15 years ago and I will repeat it again. Google is like a man selling boats after a dam brake. They are profiting by managing the problem, not by fixing it. It is to their benefit if the problem actually gets worse. In other words, looking at their long-running effects and initiatives, I see that they aim to change the Internet so that it's completely unusable without their services. (The recent stunts with AMP and Gmail are great, obvious examples, but it didn't start there. It was going on for a very long while.)

This not the kind of thing that I want to spread to my offline life.

<comment><USER14> Google is also holding the plunger that helped create the dam breakage. Not to mention the pry-bars being applied to any attempts to fix the dam.

EDIT: For those who want to downvote, consider that the vast majority of Google's revenue comes from the use of your personal information to target you with ads, and that most of the advances in ad targeting using personal data have been made by Google.

<comment><USER15> I think you are espousing an "ADS ARE INHERENTLY BAD" mentality that just doesn't resonate with people. I want to know about the best services that are useful for me. I do not want to be advertised women's swimsuits on Instagram (I'm a male with no interest in purchasing said item). When I see ads that are useless its infuriating. However, when I see an ad for Allbirds or a cool new leather jacket, I feel very much inclined to explore or purchase a product that I will genuinely be happy with. So, ads aren't inherently bad, they become bad or unfulfilling when they aren't personally relevant or become overly invasive in experience or content.

<comment><USER16> It resonates with me, because I view ads as (intrinsically) mentally intrusive. I find seeing any ad, regardless of its relevance, infuriating; the advertiser is paying someone, not me, to place a thought or perception into my brain _that I do not want there_.

If I decide that I want to purchase a new jacket, for example because I'm traveling to a much colder climate, I want to be able to seek out (ideally unbiased) information about jackets and make my own decision.

Some of that might be in the form of advertising, but I will have made the decision to seek it out, rather than my plane ticket purchase being mined and then targeted with a clothing company ad.

I consider it to be equivalent to someone unexpectedly spooning food into my mouth, then arguing "Well, you have to eat anyway, why are you complaining?" It violates my sense of agency.

Perhaps I have a higher desire for agency than most?

<comment><USER17> Do you believe you are being force-fed thoughts any time you hear or read anything anyone else expresses? Seems to be just as much the case whether on not that expression is part of an ad.

I personally have a pretty strong desire for agency. I'm also conscious that my understanding of the world is entirely constructed by the sum of my interactions with said world, and advertising is only a tiny part of it. I'm thankful for the sensory input this world provides me - without them my brain would have nothing to do and my agency wouldn't be very useful.

It sounds like you are suffering a lot because your experience of advertising in the world is incompatible with your opinions about advertising. I can see two ways to solve this problem:

1) Adjust your opinions about advertising, so that you think of them as part of your voluntary engagement with the world around you, not something that is being forced on you.

2) Remove advertising from your life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think this is all just a PR stunt and Google's business model goes against user privacy.

It's quite interesting the way people are more willing to trust Google than Facebook with their data though. I think this might come from Google actually offering more "useful/needed/can't live without" offerings vs facebook's more vanity based services.

For example, Google takes your very privacy sensitive location data but also returns you amazing mapping capabilities (google maps), transit information, nearby points of interests etc.

They might have access to all your text messages, emails, contacts etc but returns you useful features like the last year's Duplex feature or auto reply suggestions in emails etc.

Facebook's vanity based offerings are quite shallow imo - Instagram is just hyper edited pictures to scroll through, messenger/whatsapp might be useful but it has quite good competition from iMessage or simple text messaging. So for people who actually care about privacy, they are still okay with Google having their data but are not okay with Facebook having their data because FB doesn't really offer much of real value. This could be because Google being a much older company than FB. FB has also had quite major privacy issues (Cambridge Analytica being one of the major ones) and they have shown that they really don't care at all about privacy.

One thing to note though, I still don't think Google should operate the way they do and I am not willing to compromise so much of my privacy. That's why I stick with iOS even though I know Android offers more power (especially since I am an iOS and Android Developer). iOS's AI might be inferior but it gets the job done for me and I appreciate the privacy stance of Apple over Google.

<comment><USER11> It is possible for most people to live their lives without Facebook's Apps.

It is not possible for most people to live their lives without some form of Google, whether it's search, email, drive, maps, docs, or calendar. It's almost impossible to function today without using Google or interfacing with someone who is using Google.

People are more OK with Google because there is no alternative.

<comment><USER18> Don't forget YouTube! I sort of agree but I think this is changing for better as competition improves. If I were to rate google services in order of importance and lack of decent competition, it would be:

0\. YouTube 1\. Maps 2\. Search 3\. Email 4\. Docs 5\. Drive 6\. Calendar

I put YouTube as 0 as it is at the very top of the list. There's virtually no comparable competition for YouTube and that's why Google is also getting away with abusing their power with YouTube trending feed, censorship, demonetization, clickbait etc. YouTube really needs some proper competition but I really doubt any company will want to take over this massive infrastructure. I don't consider Twitch to be a competition for YouTube for non-gaming content.

Maps is the only one which I cannot live without. Apple Maps has improved drastically in the last couple years though but in Canada, they are still not as good as Google. But they seem to be on the right track.

DuckDuckGo is pretty good actually and I think most people can get the job done pretty well with it. For email, there are okay competitions and I still have an alternate yahoo email but they have been going downhill in last few years.

Docs is one place where Microsoft Office is good but Docs is superior if online collaboration is needed.

Dropbox is superior to google drive imo, especially since I am on iOS and Mac.

I have never used Google Calendar as I use iOS offerings and it does pretty well.

I think if Apple can improve their Maps and if Siri stops being so useless, it would be for the better and will help take away some power from Google. And somebody really needs to compete heavily against YouTube.

<comment><USER11> I totally forgot about YouTube, but that is a great point.

There is no good alternative to Google maps on Android IMO. I've tried

\- HERE: the app is not great and I'm not sure it's any more private than Google.

\- OsmAndroid: as a map it is fine. It doesn't do address searches very well which makes it useless when you need to get somewhere you haven't been before.

If anyone has a suggestion I'd greatly appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Say what you will about Google, they're really good at PR. They and Facebook share the most indefensible tech business model in today's political climate (at least in the west), but Google does such a better job of obscuring and re- framing that fact than Facebook does.

<comment><USER20> I think there's also a distinction about what you get in return.

When I let Google track my location, I get useful hyper relevant results for searches. When I let it track my emails, I get useful flight reminders and package delivery notifications.

But Facebook doesn't really need to track my location to offer the service I want from it, the extra privacy invasion very specifically only helps advertisers. By giving it access to my contact list I can add friends more easily which is nice, but it also does so much more analysis of my extended offline friend network than I want it to, which feels like it hurts me more than it helps me.

Both companies are monetizing my private data, but with Google it feels like I get enough out of the deal that I'll (sometimes grudgingly) allow it. With Facebook I feel like it's an adversarial relationship where I have to constantly defend myself from FB. Obviously each person's valuation of the deal will be different; for some people there's no amount of usefulness Google could offer to justify the data they collect. But I suspect for many people Google is on the right side of the usefulness to creepiness ratio.

<comment><USER21> Flight reminders and package delivery notifications... seriously?

This is what we let Google ruin the internet for?

For all the things people have mentioned here: maps, e-mail, search, docs, etc. there are alternatives. Sure, they're not (yet) as good or convenient but put some effort into this guys.

<comment><USER22> > Flight reminders and package delivery notifications... seriously?

> This is what we let Google ruin the internet for?

If you use any other searchable email service, you have exactly the same loss in privacy. The only difference is they don't give you these value adds from the data they already have about you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Every company has two mission statements: The stated one and the real one. Google's real mission statement is "make shitloads of money selling everyone's personal information to advertisers."

The noises Google makes about being "useful" are just cover for the fact that being useful is the only way they can entice everyone to give them that personal information for free. If Google could get a law passed that required everyone to have a grain-of-rice sized Android tracker implanted in their body, Google would do it in a heartbeat. And then the need for all that expensive "usefulness" would be over.

<comment><USER24> Given that you lack basic understanding of how advertising works, the rest of your argument is moot.

<comment><USER23> Please enlighten me as to what I'm missing about how advertising works.

<comment><USER25> If you think Google "sells everyone's personal information to advertisers", then you are mistaken about their business model as umeshunni said.

Google themselves explain it clearly and openly.

[https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and- data/](https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-data/)

<comment><USER23> I know Google doesn't literally sell my personal information. They collect it and use it to match a demographic that advertisers want. But the fact remains that Google _collects_ my personal information -- they couldn't match my demographic otherwise. And that means that Google itself is a giant repository of everyone's personal information, even if they choose (today) not to sell it, not to give it to governments on demand, and not to misuse it in any other way. But should we trust them forever not to do so? And why?

<comment><USER26> But that's what you said:

> "make shitloads of money selling everyone's personal information to > advertisers."

It's a very important difference between trusting Google with the data, and trusting a random advertiser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I appreciate the fact that they are being transparent about the nature of the deal they are offering. I suppose my own naivete was partly to blame, but I might not have wasted my time going to work there back in 2011-2012 if they had been clearer about their value proposition. I remain convinced that Google is full of intelligent, thoughtful, well-intentioned people who are shackled to a business model I will not participate in, and all of their beautiful technical achievements therefore remain irrelevant to my life.

</comment><comment><USER28> This article is uncritical.

In particular it doesn't mention the critical problem that Google makes its money from advertising, not from people who pay for premium phones or premium services. That is, you are still the product.

I recognize social positives from advertising, but there is a fundamental conflict when you are dependent on "free" services paid for by a third party.

<comment><USER29> You can still make money from advertisements if you don't track everything your users do. Magazines don't know how long you look at a page and they still sell ads. It's just harder.

<comment><USER28> The services would still be bad services.

I don't see tracking as the problem with Google.

The problem with Google is that it crowds out competition, also that it contributes to a "data smog" environment. The way we would get better services is to pay for them ourselves so we establish a feedback loop such that encourages better services from our point of view (not that of advertisers)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The problem with google's mission is that it doesn't say which information has to be accessible to whom and in what way it's going to be useful.

Given that google's income is mostly from advertising, it feels like the mission is about making my information available to someone else, and useful for them to make money.

<comment><USER31> Absolutely agreed. The doublespeak and lack of transparency leaves a really bad taste in one's mouth.

It would be one thing if they were very straightforward the 'with whom' and the 'for what' of the data they harvest. Users could weigh the pros and cons, make an informed decision, and move on.

But instead they choose to masquerade as a forward-thinking philanthropic organization, burying their ulterior motives behind pages of fine print and intentionally vague 'disclosures' about what they do with your data.

Wearing a disguise makes one appear guilty. I would be wary of any individual or group intentionally presenting a false image in order to mask their true intentions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Google is not too evil presently, but nothing is guaranteed and the amount of data they have gives them more power than most nation states. So on principle I've been degoogling. Here are my approaches:

      search:  duckduckgo
      android: copperheados (dead ended, waiting for puri.sm librem 5 on order)
      chrome:  firefox, containers, uMatrix.  Isolated usages of chrome w/o logging in.
      gmail:   fastmail
      youtube: peertube
      docs/sheets: local software (libreoffice)
      reCaptcha: isolated chrome usage w/o logging in, or I avoid the website and email the webmaster.
      fonts:   uMatrix block them, I live with the fallback fonts. On my sites I host the fonts locally.
      analytics: uMatrix blocks it. I don't need it myself.
      maps:    OSM or other mapping websites
      earth:   [never needed it]
      sky?:    [never needed it], stellarium

I'll know that I'm invisible to them once my family members start getting funeral service advertisements. Unfortunately, they can still see me.

</comment><comment><USER33> Privacy is going to be the most valuable commodity of the 21st century.

Google is doing everything in its power to buy/take/borrow that commodity from people (just like FB. Amazon, MS, etc...) They can say things like "We are moving from a company that helps you find answers to a company that helps you get things done…We want our products to work harder for you in the context of your job, your home, and your life, and they all share a single goal: to be helpful, so we can be there for you in moments big and small over the course of your day. "

But I don't buy it.

<comment><USER34> > Privacy is going to be the most valuable commodity of the 21st century.

Pretty bold statement. Can you expand on that?

<comment><USER35> OP is probably confusing service with commodity, as privacy is not a tangible to be sold or exchanged.

<comment><USER33> No I did mean commodity, but a personal commodity. Essentially when you are born you are born into a certain level or amount of privacy. And slowly as you age and use technology, everything you wished to remain personal or private is slowly given away or sucked away, stolen, etc.... It's near impossible to remain a private individual in today's world. And privacy is something that once gone you can never get back. So I refer to it as a personal or individual commodity, and these corporations would love nothing more than to take that from you... for in their words "the greater good".

Clearly an opinion piece.

<comment><USER34> A philosophical question... but what do you think is the objective value of privacy?

<comment><USER33> Ultimately freedom (as a human) and opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Regarding that lady. I am from India and I see 100s of people everyday struggling with this exact problem, unable to read what's written. BUT as awesome the technology is it doesn't solve the advertised problem. The very same people, almost everyone I know/see are above the age of 20 and don't even bother to learn the language when they easily can from the $.01 books available almost everywhere. You can give them a tool but how will you give them the motivation?

<comment><USER37> I found that lady fascinating. I wonder if she has a learning disability. In any case, Google's solution is amazing: by highlighting the word while reading it to her, she is likely to learn to recognize words, leading her to improved literacy. If this solution works as well as Google hopes, Google may end up raising literacy throughout the world. Even if that means Google gets more data about everyone, I think the effects on the world would be a net positive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> So if I am using an ad blocker and dont see any ads at all, dont I just _cost_ google, facebook, etc. money from using their services and having them store my data?

What if the majority of people would block all ads? Wouldnt data collection become meaningless?

<comment><USER20> Ads are much harder to block on mobile. Especially on iOS, it's nearly impossible to block ads in a native app. There are some tricks you can do with a VPN but the coverage isn't great and it's error-prone enough that I don't bother, which means casual ad-block users like my sister will absolutely never go that route. So to the extent that mobile is the future, it seems ad- blocking is not a long-term solution.

<comment><USER5> As much as I like iOS, I agree with you and I am still waiting for a good ad- blocking solution.

But I am not sure it's ever going to come. Many smaller devs and studios publish free apps which they monetise only with ads. Not sure Apple wants to scare off millions of developers by officially streamlining app ad-blocking.

On iOS, VPN remains the only good choice so far, sadly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> In the video, they say they have compressed translate, vision and speech into "just over 100kb."

That seems pretty magical. Perhaps it is all server-side?

<comment><USER40> This is definitely a sneaky twisting of words in my opinion. Maybe they mean the size of the js that powers the app, or something along the size. Even simple dictionaries on my phone are never less then 500kb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The author is naive about monetization. Google should not care if making a better product hurts its existing revenue sources. If Google doesn't do it, someone else will. A smart company worries about having the best products that people want to use first and about monetizing those products second, and unlike a startup, Google has the luxury of being able to wait to monetize new products until the ecosystem around them becomes clearer.

The author's simple-minded reasoning is why Microsoft was late to the Internet search engine game.

</comment><comment><USER41> I wonder if someone can explain to me why I should be upset about Google collecting my data. I would pay money for Google to continue collecting my data and improving its predictive model of my behavior, in order to better address my needs as they arise. They're getting better and better at this over time. It has improved my quality of life.

</comment><comment><USER42> Yeah I don't buy any of it (full disclosure I and my household are an Apple only household). I've been moving away from google services. It's slow. And it's tough because most everything they do is so damn good: google search, amazing; google maps, gold standard imo; gmail — eh? It's rather good. But I would rather a company like Apple study me because currently they're not in the business of monetizing my every thought, action, or whim. I pay a premium for the hardware and in return I get a company hellbent on privacy so much so that they refused to unlock an iPhone used by a terrorist.

So while I often hate that DuckDuckGo's results are sometimes wildly laughable compared to Google's I'll continue supporting privacy first companies and pay a premium to do so before I let my phone be a Google phone.

</comment><comment><USER43> The inline translate text using your camera, right from search was in windows phone circa 2010. Just sayin'. This feature plus offline maps caching & offline routing with subway info was incredibly useful for a European vacation my wife and I took.

RIP WP8

</comment><comment><USER44> I would love to pick all of the arguments in this topic and fit them in this: [https://maxwellito.github.io/tilt/](https://maxwellito.github.io/tilt/)

Not sure if I'm the only one but I don't see a perfect solution on the smartphone part: \- iOS is privacy focussed but walled garden and overpriced and impossible to repair. \- Android is affordable and hackable but Google powered. \- Cyanogen alternative: not easy to access and remain dependant to the Play Store to get apps (so back to Google power)

</comment><comment><USER45> So we live in a society that isn't able to find the resources to teach someone how to read and get free... Instead that people can buy an Android phone and become a slave of the technology... what a shame

</comment><comment><USER46> I see a lot of comparison of device makers, with regards to privacy, in this thread. I think this is a moot point, in that data is collected regardless of what company, service, device is used. The fact that the data is being collected is key; your anonymity is compromised regardless. Google is an easy target due to their size and market share, but many people here work for tech companies of all sizes. Reflect on what data that company collects, how it is leveraged, and if the semantics is much different. Collect, leverage, repeat.

</comment><comment><USER47> The first thing that comes to mind here is Google trying to remove the edge they themselves required to get into the position they are now in. They used and abused data for two decades (and will continue to do so) to become an absolute behemoth.

If they now play the "privacy" card it will stifle competition even more, as there will forever be a compromise on either the amount of data they are able to gather, or the public perception due to being less "privacy" focused than big G.

</comment><comment><USER48> They get the most elementary thing wrong in their "mission." The very first search link should be the most relevant, right? Now the entire first PAGE is often bought and paid for.

</comment><comment><USER49> Yet another hit piece. It's disgusting how obvious and desperate these are getting.

> To put it more succinctly: "Yes, we collect a lot of data. But that data > makes amazing things possible."

I don't like Google, but stating that collecting data is bad just because, doesn't sell it for me. Oh, and this refers to data already available to the general public.

It makes me wonder if there is something behind. What's the agenda behind all these hit pieces? I really don't know.

<comment><USER50> It could be that it's a hit piece concocted by the secretive privacy cabal, still working at their evil plan to hurt people by making them control their private information and at the same time to inconvenience powerful corporations from doing whatever they want.

<comment><USER40> There is no privacy cabal that you sarcastically suggest, but there is a lot of money to be made out of paranoia, justified or not. Protonmails worthless encryption, the dubiously safe vpn ads I see everywhere. I tend to see a lot of exaggerations from some privacy oriented companies. I still trust those companies far more, and a sizable portion doesnt try to spread fear and exaggeration, though, but I do believe that a lot of companies are trying to make a ton of money off of paranoia they help create.

<comment><USER5> > _Protonmails worthless encryption_

Can you elaborate on that, please?

<comment><USER40> Protonmail advertises special end to end encryption thats only available when sending emails to other protonmail users. Others get the standard TLS that every provider uses. Recently they added a feature convert emails a link to a page that asks the non-protonmail user for a password (not a private key or login) and then decrypts the email in the browser, which I find pretty worthless.

<comment><USER5> That's suboptimal but worthless might be too strong a word to describe it.

It's definitely better than nothing.

The proprietary thing does not look good I admit. But maybe they think the open stack is easy to pwn?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Mission statement at I/O "be helpful for everyone" They showed how their improved software helps diabled and illiterate people around the world.

</comment><comment><USER52> The other day I sent my nephew a text on my smartphone:

As Morphius said, "Now do you believe?"

My Android phone decided what I really meant was "As Amorphous said..." So maybe before they decide they want to control everything in my life with all the data they are collecting, they should figure out spell correction first. I got the spelling wrong, but their correction was completely stupid.

</comment><comment><USER53> I changed my default search engine and homepage to DuckDuckGo. Two weeks later, I didn't even realize I was still using DuckDuckGo -> it's that good. Once people realize this, and how easy it is to switch, google may be in trouble.

i don't have anything against google. I just think, having only 1 search engine is too much power for any 1 company, no matter how benevolent.

</comment><comment><USER54> Most of the things demoed existed before in Translate app. I have used it and as far as I know someone good hearted at Google did this in his/her 20% time. The speaker, who seems to be some sort of executive, pretended that this is new achievement from her side and Google is suddenly socially responsible. I don't get this article and its author.

</comment><comment><USER55> Can Google become privacy focused faster than Apple can develop decent software/services, thats the question.

</comment><comment><USER56> If only this technology could actually educate people, instead of being used as a crutch. This is what Google wants, to have you so dependent on their technology that living life without them is nearly impossible without them.

</comment><comment><USER57> For me, a timely discussion. Early this year I signed up for GSuite, copied stuff over from the free gmail account I have had for about 15 years, decided Cloud Search, etc. made the privacy hit worthwhile.

Well, I got fed up this week because release of new GSuite services lags the free offerings, and sometimes just aren't released. I lived with switching between free and paid accounts depending on what I was doing (made OK by using Firefox containers).

So, I switched my ProtonMail account to a paid for account, applied my custom domain, and flipped back to using Apple's Calendar, Siri, Maps, etc.

Literally Google lost a tiny bit of my business because their paid for product in some ways was worse than the free offerings.

I can see myself going back to Google paid services in the future but they have to up their game.

</comment><comment><USER58> This is a painfully well contrived bit of PR.

When companies start peddling poor people in need from some desperate place to pull on our heartstrings ... it's a problem.

If this were something related to their core product - maybe.

But this is virtue signalling at it's ugly finest.

Surely, they mean well. Kudos for that - it's good they're spending a tiny portion of their trillion dollars doing that.

What I object to - strongly - is the attempt to brand themselves by this act, to imbue themselves with some kind of moral fervour, especially in such an emotional way.

"Look at these puppies, they were starving, and then we saved them! Everyone likes puppies, right?" Ok, so they actually saved puppies.

\---> Now please fix our privacy problems, which is actually the core of what you're supposed to do.

</comment><comment><USER59> I will stick to my on device privacy thanks. I know it costs more but its well worth keeping my entire life out of being a lab rat for company that wants to do good for yet to be born rats.

</comment><comment><USER60> > The implicit message was clear: "Yes, we have all of your data, but the fact > we have all of your data is a good thing, because it allows us to make your > life easier."

This is why a) free/libre software and b) Moore's law are important. Trading privacy for convenience is a real trade you can make right now, and nobody benefits from pretending it isn't--the first step to fixing that problem is to admit it exists. But there's no inherent reason this has to be done "on the cloud" (which is just a marketing phrase for "on other people's computers"). As an industry, I would like to see us putting more computing power into end users' hardware and more intelligence into freely available software so that more of this work can be done on people's personal computers without giving their data to amoral corporations.

<comment><USER61> It's not really about it being cloud based. It's about having a central trusted party with access to private data which has public utility. As an example, Tesla collects lots of private data about their users' driving, in order to train their self-driving tech. Doing this in a free software solution (if you consider the training to be part of the software) would be less practical, as it would require training journeys to be publicly available.

The way out of this situation is to develop competitive solutions which are less private data dependent.

<comment><USER60> > Doing this in a free software solution (if you consider the training to be > part of the software) would be less practical, as it would require training > journeys to be publicly available.

I think most free software folks would agree that the training data doesn't have to be public.

I do agree that there's some problem to be solve here, though. Part of the point of free software is to be able to trust that the code you are running is serving your interests. Right now I don't know of any proofs of concept of manipulating what an AI does by manipulating the training data, but it's a very plausible attack vector.

<comment><USER61> > I think most free software folks would agree that the training data doesn't > have to be public.

That seems antithetical to me. The trained model is the program, and the training data is in-essence the source code.

> manipulating what an AI does by manipulating the training data

You don't even have to do this. You can manipulate the model directly. Writing neural networks manually isn't difficult. You can't do more with that than conventional programming, but its sufficient to add malicious behaviour.

<comment><USER60> > That seems antithetical to me. The trained model is the program, and the > training data is in-essence the source code.

No, I think that trained models and training data are entirely new concepts. I can see the similarities between trained models/programs a and training data/source code, but there are obvious privacy concerns with training data that don't apply to source code. Calling the training data the source code is a leaky abstraction.

You could, for example, equally argue that the trained model is the source code, and the program which operates on the trained model is an interpreter which runs that source code.

Even if you refuse to concede that there are differences between training data and source code, you'll note that I am talking about free (libre) software, not open source. There are lots of cases where free software doesn't mean opening all the source up. Free software is about freedom, not about open source. For example, while there's plenty of source code in settings files, I don't think there's anyone arguing that we need to check in our settings files on open source projects. The point is to put the power in the hands of users. Putting users' data out of their control is the antithesis of that.

> You don't even have to do this. You can manipulate the model directly. > Writing neural networks manually isn't difficult. You can't do more with > that than conventional programming, but its sufficient to add malicious > behaviour.

That's an interesting point, and may provide a workaround making training data public, i.e. you can generate the model and then make a representation of the model public, rather than the training data. However, there's an assumption here that the training data can't be reconstructed from the trained model--if a study of this exists, I'm not aware of it.

<comment><USER61> I think the trained model is analogous to a program (which may be interpreted by a virtual machine; not necessarily a machine code program) because it is not intelligible by humans. I'll admit that there are tools for analysing neural networks, but these are like disassemblers.

Trained models carry all the hazards of binary blobs, and so can't just be trusted. Training data is no true analogue to source code, but the concept of reproducibility is still relevant. At the very least, the production of blobs should be auditable.

<comment><USER60> > I think the trained model is analogous to a program (which may be > interpreted by a virtual machine; not necessarily a machine code program) > because it is not intelligible by humans. I'll admit that there are tools > for analysing neural networks, but these are like disassemblers.

Yeah, I agree that's a valid analogy, but again I'll say it's _just_ an analogy. The training data still differs from source code in its privacy attributes, so I don't think it should be treated the same way as source code in a free (libre) software context.

> Trained models carry all the hazards of binary blobs, and so can't just be > trusted. Training data is no true analogue to source code, but the concept > of reproducibility is still relevant. At the very least, the production of > blobs should be auditable.

This is true, and it's a big problem, not just because of free software concerns. One of the deeply problematic effects of this is that we can't always explain why an AI does what it does, leading to horrifying possibilities[1].

[1] [https://www.jwz.org/blog/2019/04/frogger-ai-explains-its- dec...](https://www.jwz.org/blog/2019/04/frogger-ai-explains-its-decisions/) (WARNING: I recommend copy/pasting this link to a separate tab rather than clicking it. JWZ has a rather negative opinion of HN and a while back his server started serving up rather unsavory images in response to requests with an HN referrer. I'm not sure if that is still happening, but I know that if you copy/paste the link there's nothing offensive on the page.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> What exactly is the fighting back in this article?

</comment><comment><USER63> Apart from the privacy concerns I'm rather hesitant to switch to anything they make, only to see them kill it off again later. But well that also happens all the time when they buy other companies, so you cannot really avoid that from happening to you. Just like the nest news from yesterday.

</comment><comment><USER64> Good job Google. Nicely done.

</comment><comment><USER65> Google has become so evil, their whitewash attempts are a sad joke.

</comment><comment><USER66> how does illiterate pass through driving license test that they can rent a car?

</comment><comment><USER67> The F'ing Circle.

</comment><comment><USER68> Just look at Admob latest releases notes, and understand this is all PR bullshit

</comment><comment><USER69> Everyone was concerned about the old big brothers: the government, the police,etc. Now the real big brothers are silently here already: Google, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook,etc. They can own the government and the police force if they want to, and all citizens, of course.

</comment><comment><USER70> I think people misinterpret Google's vision as neutral:

"To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"

They want to make Laplace's Demon real in the form of their publicly traded company. That's a breathtaking vision statement.

They explicitly want to collect every piece of information on everything that happens worldwide, and then influence how that information is used. "Useful" is in the eye of the beholder and is the wonderful escape command that lets them do anything they want.

If that doesn't inspire/terrify you then it should.

</comment><comment><USER71> Honestly the amount of people concerned about their "privacy" is shocking... kinda makes one wonder what most of these people are up too, what are they trying to hide? Obviously, some people are just concerned for good reason but I get the feeling most people are concerned because their hiding shit.

If it means that an literate mother of 3 from India can become literate when it counts then Google execs can take naked pictures of me and publish them in the New York times for all I care.

<comment><USER25> "Not having anything to hide" isn't a great argument because some people, for completely legitimate reasons, _do_ have something to hide. It could be an abused person hiding from their abuser. It could be somebody with strong political views entering an unfriendly territory. There's reasons for privacy and it should be protected.

That said, there's also much value in allowing this data to be free. Google are open about their business model (and they always have been), and provide services that make use of it.

I do think it's funny when people accuse them of "harvesting data" or "surveilling" people. That's just using emotional language to paint a more sinister picture than is warranted, and it's rampant on HN unfortunately.

Try to watch out for extremist positions on both sides of the debate. Reality is more nuanced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> If Google's possession of all this data makes many new good things possible, then sharing this data broadly and freely with others would make even more good things possible. Would Google share the data with other corporations so that they, too, can innovate and serve the consumer _even better?_

I mean, if I buy into the notion of Google's benevolence, I should buy into that notion for other corporations, shouldn't I?

<comment><USER22> Isn't that the purpose of Google Takeout? If Google isn't providing the most value for your data, you can take it elsewhere.

That's how I use Internet services. If they don't do anything useful with my data, I don't use them. If they do something useful with my data, I use the one that does the most useful thing with my data. Thus, Gmail over other email services and Slack over whatever nonsense Google's messaging product managers are pushing today. And Apple services for nothing — collecting data and not being helpful with it is stupidity, not "privacy."

<comment><USER72> thank you for making me aware of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Google should fight back at last years promisses.

Where is the feature of calling people automatically on google assistant?

Last year they promised they would call my hair saloon for me, and it's all BS.

Like everything they say every year, it never works in real life.

But I see lots of "journalists" praising it, while criticizing Siri as useless.

Where is their self driving car too? Never complete, they always promise "it's the next year".

<comment><USER74> > Where is the feature of calling people automatically on google assistant?

already available in 44 states, they're bringing it to the web.

[https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/goo...](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/google- is-bringing-ai-assistant-duplex-to-the-web/amp/)

> Where is their self driving car too? Never complete, they always promise > "it's the next year".

there's zero rush when there's a chance of killing people.

also this: [https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp...](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/5/7/18536003/waymo- lyft-self-driving-ride-hail-app-phoenix)

<comment><USER73> It simply doesn't work in any real life situation.

Yes, the problem of self driving cars is they can kill people, that's the whole problem, thing is that google is always promising that "they are here for all", "it's the next year", etc. it's all BS.

You don't have a google self driving car, and you didn't book your hairdresser via duplex, and you won't be booking your car or anything through any of this.

Those are the facts.

<comment><USER75> duplex is available though, have you even tried using it ?

can you provide any basis for your "facts"

Siri being subpar when compared to Google Assistant is well established.

<comment><USER73> > Siri

Is this about Siri?

<comment><USER76> You're the one who brought it up.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google services on the iPad and tablet computers - <AUTHOR> http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/04/google-services-on-ipad-and-tablet.html

<comment><USER2> I admire Google's ability to provide so many specialized views to GMail. There's one for the Android application (which, realistically, just syncs information and store it locally for display), one for the iPhone/Android in a browser, one for desktop Browsers (+ basic HTML), one for mobile (non-awesome) browsers (+ basic HTML), now one for the iPad, and of course POP3 / IMAP for use with native mail clients.

They've really covered all the bases here.

</comment><comment><USER3> Now if only they'd port this interface to standard GMail.

<comment><USER4> [http://lifehacker.com/5508260/how-to-use-gmails- attractive-n...](http://lifehacker.com/5508260/how-to-use-gmails-attractive- new-tablet+friendly-interface-on-your-regular-old-computer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting; it appears that the best interface for browsing Gmail is only available on the iPad (for now).

Steve will be pleased.

<comment><USER6> Well, you can always set your user agent in Safari to:

      Mozilla/5.0(iPad; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B314 Safari/531.21.10

and experience the new layout. To do this, just go to Develop -> User Agent -> Other...

<comment><USER4> Or you can use the iPad simulator (if you have the SDK).</comment></comment></comment>


Building a legacy search engine for a legacy protocol - <AUTHOR> https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/building-a-search-engine-for-gopher <comment><USER2> Do you still have the raw crawl data? If so, have you considered uploading it to the Internet Archive to help preserve it for the future?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice idea, I've rolled up all of my data and crawl database and put it on the internet archive:

[https://archive.org/details/gopher- may-2017.tar](https://archive.org/details/gopher-may-2017.tar)

<comment><USER3> Could someone please help seed the torrent? It has been stuck at 99.9% for the past day.

<comment><USER2> The Internet Archive should be seeding all the torrents they host. Have you tried restarting your torrent client, forcing it to recheck your local data, or re-downloading and re-adding the torrent file?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Windows 98 is a flaky OS, IIRC it used to crash with BSoDs multiple times a day even on real hardware. That AltaVista standalone crawler software probably could run much better under NT 4.0 or Windows 2000. And NTFS allows for much larger datasets than FAT32. NTFS hasn't much changed since that time, by the way.

<comment><USER5> Old Windows versions crashed so much because hardware manufacturers at the time slapped together poor drivers, and Microsoft couldn't do much about that if they wanted people's computers to work at all. The #1 thing that as improved since then, was simply that more of the drivers are now written by Microsoft themselves. The #2 thing is Microsoft getting enough power over hardware makers to force driver quality-assurance and signing on them.

Which is all to say: if you run Windows 98 on hardware that has good drivers written for it—or especially on _virtual_ hardware whose "drivers" are just paravirtualized calls into a modern OS kernel—your copy of Windows 98 won't be BSoDing any time soon.

<comment><USER6> There's also the thing where, uh, Windows NT has full memory protection.

On Windows 9x it was trivial for any app to hose the OS, because critical memory regions were unprotected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone remembers back in 93/94 hearing about HTTP and saying 'gopher, but with images? Neat! Oh, but I need a graphics terminal... damn'.

</comment><comment><USER8> Very cool and a nice write-up, thank you.

I know absolutely nothing about the AltaVista software so this was interesting. I'm wondering, were there limitations in scale? Did the search engine have other types of technical limitations? If you had to choose from modern software, what would have been your choice?

</comment><comment><USER9> Gopher was awesome back in its day, and I'm sad that the semantic web efforts (its nearest modern aspirant) have done so poorly.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow ... weird to think I'm running one of the 370 gopher servers left in the world: gopher://gopher.conman.org/

</comment><comment><USER11> I actually thought about doing this a couple months ago but never got past the "cool idea in my head" phase. Great to see this!

</comment><comment><USER12> AltaVista brings back memories!

And in the archive I was able to find some of our old text from '92! It's alive I tell you.

I didn't use gopher much if at all when I had the chance back in mumble mumble '80s/'90s so I'm pleased to finally use it. Surely it'll be back in fashion soon?

</comment><comment><USER13> But still, I would rather use xapian over AltaVista. Same technology (inverted index), but stable and much better. Win98 as service is just asking for too much trouble. And no, not ElasticSearch. No java in the house, C++ is enough.

</comment><comment><USER14> Fantastic article. Wonder if the altavista software would run under reactos?

</comment><comment><USER15> Gopher strikes me as something of a file explorer for the net.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow, this really brings me back. Well done.</comment>


MySQL (and others) very high cpu usage after leap second (June 2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.corrspt.com/blog/2015/07/01/mysql-very-high-cpu-usage/

<comment><USER2> I'd be interested in knowing which distro you were running, which NTP daemon, and which version of each.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're running Debian 2.6.32-45, and NTP outputs this: ntpq - standard NTP query program - Ver. 4.2.6p2.

Does it answer your question?</comment></comment>


The Illegal Ramen Vendors of Postwar Tokyo - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-did-ramen-become-popular <comment><USER2> Not mentioned in the article, but Japan occupied/colonized large chunks of China before and during the war: there were close to a million settlers in Manchukuo alone, plus up to 1 million Japanese soldiers in the China Expeditionary Army. For those returning to Japan, wheat noodles and rich soups would not have been a new taste.

<comment><USER3> Ramen (Chinese noodles) were introduced and popularized by Chinese immigrants in Meiji-era Japan.

<comment><USER4> Yes, they were popular as far back as 1860. I think the Kanji 拉麺 means pulled wheat (Chinese) noodles, but many of them are cut which confuses me. Modern Japanese Ramen comes from the early 20th century (~1912?) and is distinct because the broths were much lighter flavored (like miso, shoyu, or pork bone) and less funky than those traditionally from China. The latest trends in Tsukemen ramen challenge this tradition as they go for stronger flavors.

<comment><USER3> AFAIK other than the name the Japanese dish ramen doesn't have a whole lot in common with Chinese la mian.

There is a ton of food around the world that has Chinese roots but isn't a direct analog to any Chinese (country) dish. For example Tenshinhan in Japan or Chop suey in the US

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was an existing soup/noodle culture. There was a black market and structures to divert central planning into commerce. It was a marriage made in heaven. I think the best Ramen I've had was either down the end of the toden line or out Shinjuku by a jr station

<comment><USER6> > There was an existing soup/noodle culture.

The article covers this. Wheat noodles and a rich broth were new.

> I think the best Ramen I've had was either down the end of the toden line or > out Shinjuku

Menya Musashi and Fuunji are both generally very well regarded and about a 5-7 minute walk from the SW part of Shinjuku station.

<comment><USER7> we went to menya musashi tonight

<comment><USER6> The wine-braised pork at Menya Musashi is amazing, but I don't recall thinking the rest was really that noteworthy. Fūunji is worth trying for the very different style of ramen -- the broth is chicken and fish based.

<comment><USER7> Thanks we went to Fu unji and it was great too. My wife got the dipping noodles and I got the regular. I did like the pork at menya musashi a lot and the overall flavor of Ichiran the most though. Can't believe I got some random shinjuku advice when I just happened to be visiting.

Annoyingly some other americans next to us at Fu unji were complaining about the pork in the ramen.

<comment><USER6> Sadly I've only spent a few days in Shinjuku, and those were the only two ramen joints I hit up. Fūunji is definitely known for their dipping noodles and that broth. If memory serves, Menya Musashi has a rotating menu so that can be fun.

My favorite of that trip was actually the Kio chain in Osaka (cold noodles and beer on a warm summer day were perfect). There are a ton of great resources for sussing out good ramen in Japan, thankfully.

What noticed though was that while all the ramen I tried was better than what I've had stateside, each ramen shop would typically nail one or two things and the rest would be good but not amazing. I never did find an egg as well cooked as I have in the Bay Area.

Also right by Shinjuku, the French bakery was pretty darn good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hokkaidō ramen. That's the stuff. Find a Santōka near you and thank me later.

[http://goinjapanesque.com/05425/](http://goinjapanesque.com/05425/)

[https://www.santouka.co.jp/en](https://www.santouka.co.jp/en)

</comment><comment><USER9> Japan's turn from a predominantly vegetarian diet to one that is almost anti- vegetarian, is very interesting. Eating out in Japan is generally a nightmare.

<comment> ur-whale "Eating out in Japan is generally a nightmare"

My experience has been the exact opposite. Japan is (with Singapore) one of the best place on the planet to eat out.

You might want to mention what kind of dietary restrictions you're subjecting yourself to before making such broad claims.

<comment><USER10> The comment seems to imply that the person posting it is vegetarian; I'm pretty sure it's meant to be read in the context of that implication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice to see some proper research and citations from an internet article these days... Fascinating article too.

</comment><comment><USER12> A few years ago I watched a street performance in Ochanomizu: a post-war Japanese spiv, wearing a wide pin-stripe was selling bananas.

Apparently in Japan now, banana-selling is one of the strongest stereotypes of post-war capitalism - for all its good and ill.

</comment><comment><USER13> introduced by Chinese but it's interesting noodles (soup) as street fast food ain't THAT popular in China

i don't think noodle dish would first come to mind when thinking about Chinese cuisine

</comment><comment><USER14> If anyone knows an expert on Japan (or other non-Chinese Asian nations') noodle typologies and preparation, please put them in touch. We aim to open 300 robotic service locations across three markets next year.

<comment><USER15> You're planning to disrupt noodles in Asia?

Good luck.

<comment><USER14> No, we're planning to feed hungry high density urban consumers noodle and soup cuisines in existing high demand with more availability, choice, consistency, time-efficiency and profit margin than manual competition, plus complete personalization support on every order. Think "take-away noodle restaurant minus overheads", 10-20x faster than delivery options, cheaper and closer to the consumer. We're located in the largest province of the largest market in the world, and on track for launch next year in HK/Macau/China. Currently raising Series A with commitments @ $125M pre and accepted in to YCSS advisor track.

<comment><USER2> At any _tachigui_ (standing-only) soba shop in Tokyo, you can get a bowl of noodles made to order and customized to your liking from around 200 yen ($2) and delivered in approx 30 seconds:

[https://digjapan.travel/en/blog/id=11660](https://digjapan.travel/en/blog/id=11660)

There are many opportunities for disruption in Japan; this does not seem like the easiest or most profitable one.

<comment><USER14> Sure, there are high volume, low cost, single dish restaurants out there. Obviously that's not our focus, even though if they can do it at $2 we can do it cheaper and closer to the consumer, in their language, with full support for personalization, 24x7x365. Traditional food retail suffers from the following limitations: relatively high startup cost (real estate location, rental, renovation, fit-out, licensing), relatively high recurring overheads (staff, management, inventory management) and internal processes unsuitable for specific requirements (religious, medical, lifestyle or other specialist diets, plus other forms of personalization), typically limited hours due to reliance on staff, limited languages of service staff, food safety issues due to human preparation. In short we have enough USPs in enough areas that we don't have to compete on cost - the industry is vast - and if a single location fails to grow adequately we can literally move it within an hour or two.

<comment><USER16> > ...and if a single location fails to grow adequately we can literally move > it within an hour or two.

And one would imagine there'd already be a noodle stand sitting there since they've had ~80 years to find the optimum spots (going by TFA).

Brings back memories of when they opened a Taco Bell close to the Humboldt State campus and then had to hire 24/7 security to protect it from the anti- corporate vandals who didn't appreciate having tasty tacos within walking distance from campus. I can certainly imagine the mobile robonoodle stands will suffer many an unexplained breakdown when they try to displace another noodle stand.

<comment><USER14> As an outsider it is easy to severely underestimate the dynamism of mainland Chinese urban environments. Also, according to a recent international study by HSBC mainland Chinese consumer enthusiasm for technology adoption is off the charts versus all other countries surveyed.

While resistance to vandalism is a design consideration with any public facility, mainland China has extremely small rates of petty street crime relative to, say, the US or UK. Besides, our business model is not "displace another noodle stand" but "serve frustrated demand wherever it exists" which is typically somewhere else.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What if Google Analytics makes all traffic Not provided? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bitscup.com/post/d4c7746740d7/what%20if%20google%20makes%20all%20traffic%20%22not%20provided%22

<comment><USER2> It has already done that.</comment>