"Google: it is time to return to not being evil" - <AUTHOR> https://vivaldi.com/blog/google-return-to-not-being-evil/ <comment><USER2> Google are really shitty with their web browser especially on mobile.

If you run Firefox you get a stripped down version of Google Search also with no infinite scrolling for images and low resolution.

Use a user agent spoofer like this: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- GB/firefox/addon/chrome-ua-on-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- GB/firefox/addon/chrome-ua-on-google-android/)

And it seems to work fine on Firefox.

I'm sure their official excuse is that they only support WebKit based browsers on mobile, like it's the new Internet Explorer with some modern day ActiveX

<comment><USER3> Let's not forget the time they refused to make a YouTube app for Windows Phone and when Microsoft made one, Google forced them to remove it. And then seemingly in retribution for making the app, Google blocked Windows Phone from being able to access Google Maps even though the browser was technically capable of using it. Google's reasoning was (similarly to another comment here) "it's too hard to check functionality in so many browsers" like they're not literally the most powerful Internet company in the world engaging in petty nonsense with a basically non-existing competitor.

Remember when Microsoft did the stuff Google does now and the government actually cared enough to do something about it?

<comment><USER4> Microsoft's YouTube app removed the ads. Violation of TOS. Pretty straightforward reason for wanting it removed.

Don't act like Microsoft, of all companies, is some poor victim. They compete their ass off, and sometimes they win, sometimes lose. They lost that time.

<comment><USER5> Don't forget that Microsoft _publicly offered_ to work directly with Google to get the Youtube app working correctly according to what Google wanted, ads and all. The only reason it "stripped" ads originally was because Google didn't work with them to add them in the first place. Also keep in mind that there were, at the time, other Youtube apps that worked (to some extent) just fine, and Google didn't go after them.

I also remember something about how Google demanded that Microsoft implement something that wasn't technically possible at the time in order to get the Youtube app to be fully compliant. I don't remember what that was exactly, but I think it had something to do with how they were rendering the videos.

I was a Windows Phone user at the time, and was very irritated about Google being petty and not working with Microsoft to get the app working with ads.

<comment><USER4> Ahh, the public offer to help. Great PR move that ignores all Microsoft's other actions against Google throughout time.

Competition is fair game. Consider:

\- the existence of Bing

\- Every version of IE and Windows starting from over a decade ago has made it more difficult to change the default search engine from Bing. Comically difficult, even

\- Microsoft's creation/funding of entities like Fairsearch.org, whose primary reason for existence is to destroy Google

\- Stealing Google's search results

\- etc etc

Microsoft has tried to defeat Google from day one. Again, they competed and lost. If they had built up any good will maybe Google would have helped. But they didn't.

<comment><USER3> Consider:

Microsoft got forcibly fucked by the US government for unfairly damaging their competition. Is that really the path that Google wants to follow?

<comment><USER6> I wish they would. Does anyone think all the Microsoft engineers and managers started off wanting to be known as evil monsters and having to explain to their friends and families "I'm not evil!" every week? Google has become the next Microsoft.

However, I don't see Google being sued in the USA. Why? Because (per my other comment) prosecution of White Collar crimes dropped over 20% (a whopping amount) when Eric Holder came into power over the DOJ. 20% DROP DURING one of the largest recessions in USA history! Bush destroyed Enron and sent them to jail even though that would kill people's pensions. Meanwhile, Eric Holder brought about the Too Big To Fail era where the DOJ was outright AFRAID of prosecuting big companies.

We basically don't have a government now. We have corporations. And they don't have to wait to be voted in, and they don't have to leave after four years.

Look at how companies like Comcast (after the Telecommunications Act) can now own NBC, and NBC news. They can own the entire chain of wire, to media, to control of information itself. Is it any wonder why, when ~5 companies control 90% of all US media, that we never hear of "big bad evil corporations" anymore? In the 90's everyone was rushing to burn Wal-Marts to the ground for pushing out "the little guy". Now when Google does it, platform liberals and news pundits cry "Free market!". Are we supposed to believe that in ~25 years, the same corporations suddenly became ethical? Why is there never any serious talk of unions (a central tenant of the Democrat platform) anymore? Because they corporations (not Democrats) control the news now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A lot of words, but it seems to boil down to:

        In exchange for being reinstated in Google's
        ad network, their in-house specialists dictated
        how we should arrange content on our own website
        and how we should communicate information to our
        users.

It's impossible to evaluate this without more details. If their web site actually broke reasonable elements of Google's terms and conditions then it sounds like this is completely expected. The lack of any further detail to the allegations makes me strongly suspect that there's another side to this story. It may still not add up in Google's favour, but without something else I'm left feeling sceptical about this.

<comment><USER8> That is a valid point, but the question remains: How come that one ad network is powerful enough to make a customer beg for three months to be reinstated instead of simply choosing a competitor?

Something is clearly out of whack in this market.

<comment><USER9> Because that ad market is coupled to the largest search engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Vivaldi CEO – "Google: it is time to return to not being evil"_

Me: that train has left the station. When you have monopoly power (70%-98% of market share) the governments should return Google and Whatever Corp to not being evil.

<comment><USER11> It seems like companies are stuck in a losing game. We constantly push small companies to capture more market share. Any companies that fold during that effort, we bring out the pitchforks because the services they ran get shut off. Any companies that _succeed_ , we bring out the pitchforks because they own too much market power.

It seems a bit much that we ask for companies to constantly grow and simultaneously ensure they never pass 70% market share.

<comment><USER12> Do "we" really push companies to capture market share? I mean sure, stockholders do, but "we" as the general public don't really care about a companies size until they become too big.

<comment><USER13> I respectfully disagree that "we the general public" don't really care about a company's size. I know a lot of people who will not adopt an app or product until the company has proven and/or established itself in the market. I think this describes a lot of Apple users who won't adopt new products until Apple gets in the game (the Apple watch being a recent example). A lot of people want a seamless and connected experience, and you have to be a massive player in order to provide that in a lot of cases.

<comment><USER14> And the XMPP Federation couldn't provide that ideal?

<comment><USER15> Of course it couldn't. Messaging was moving very rapidly with new features like stickers, reactions, expiring messages, phone number IDs, SMS fallback, stories, bots...and all of this had to be presented a very integrated and user-friendly package. You simply can't move that fast (or move much at all) with a huge standard like XMPP with 20 different clients that barely change.

Not to mention that in this capitalist society, messaging services are incentivized to grow at all cost because user-base is the best fuel for monetization. Holding onto XMPP federation like Google did in XMPP's final years of relevancy would be suicide; you would be helping your competitors while gaining nothing.

<comment><USER16> But by that same token, could it be possible for a new standard which incorporates all those features to become viable when the messaging space has stabalised?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wish I could use Vivaldi, it seems like a nice browser for power users. Unfortunately it's closed source (besides the Webkit parts). Considering how much sensitive information goes through a browser nowadays, I would never consider something closed source.

I'm sure Vivaldi has no intentions of becoming "evil" like Google, but because of its closed source nature it wouldn't be hard to slip a tracker or two in the browser and regular users would be none the wiser.

<comment><USER18> I don't know what browser you're using, but assuming chrome : it's not open source either. Chromium is open source, but Google Chrome is proprietary, much in the same way vivaldi is.

If you want a truly open source modern browser, the only options are chromium or firefox these days, AFAIK ? (If you know an alternative I'm interested !)

<comment><USER19> I don't think it's fair to assume that someone who is calling for a browser to be open sourced is using Chrome rather than Chromium.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> YouTube website does everything to be unusable on the iPad. They don't use the default player. They won't save your settings if you use Safari. They do not allow full screen video. Even when you request the desktop site, they resist to load the video properly in first few trials. They are being as annoying as they can!

<comment><USER21> That's because they want you using their app, which they have more control over and where they can disable features like background playback and Picture in Picture which they can then charge you for.

<comment><USER22> On a side related note, YouTube Red still isn't available worldwide, so most people outside the US don't even have the option to pay for background/PiP. It's a subpar user experience _by design_ and Google apparently doesn't care at all (it's been years now). Also, still no speed control on the mobile YouTube app. All of this being true even on Android O.

As most people, I cannot avoid using YouTube, but everytime I need background play of podcast-like content, I default to another activity (eg actual podcast app, an audiobook, whatever). Typical case is when you need to communicate at the same time, or do 'stuff' while listening. When you add it all up, that's hours everyday lost from me. And I'm just one user, iirc the majority of human beings don't live in the US...

It's frustrating that you can't even pay to resolve the issue, let alone knowing that they themselves placed a restriction (background play) that didn't exist in the first place. Reminds me of the worst from the likes of MS, Apple, Oracle, Verizon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > _It is also fair to say that Google is now in a position where regulation is > needed. I sincerely hope that they'll get back to the straight and narrow._

Hah. Even before I read any of this article, just reading the post title as submitted here made me think of something I ponder often:

The Microsoft antitrust regulations happened ultimately because Microsoft read the situation wrong and pushed too hard. It's sad to say that Google have studied what happened very, _very_ well, and they've stepped carefully enough that, well, we now have Chromebooks - the exact direction Microsoft was heading in. And nobody's batting an eyelid.

Yes, Google needs to be reminded what its boundaries are.

I believe this can be done.

My guess is that Google have successfully ridden the general consensus of "it's open source, anyone can fork it" to get away with having Chrome be the world's dominant browser. But Chrome is not Chromium. Yeah, yeah, the binary differences are just a crash-reporter and autoupdater (mostly, IIRC), but still.

So the politicos need to be convinced that we've revisited the same situation. My suggestion is _stifles laughter_ requiring that Chromebooks provide the option to install Firefox. :D

(OT trivia: Chromium's builtin spellchecker is fine with "politicos". That's hilarious. (I know it's on, it doesn't like "autoupdater".))

<comment><USER24> > My suggestion is stifles laughter requiring that Chromebooks provide the > option to install Firefox. :D

Google should take that upon themselves.

I was prepared to refute your suggestion until a quick Google search told me Chromebooks have 58% marketshare in K-12.

It's probably much lower across home devices and much lower still across the world, but popular enough that, like Android, it should allow installing competing browsers.

For an antitrust lawsuit to be successful, I imagine their marketshare would need to be much higher.

<comment><USER25> Do Chromebooks actively block you from installing another browser?

I mean I have a Chromebook and I can install crouton and run Firefox.

Or would Google have to provide a "supported" way to install other browsers?

<comment><USER24> > Do Chromebooks actively block you from installing another browser?

I don't have one. If it's sufficiently harder, like it was in the Microsoft IE antitrust case, there may be an argument there. IANAL but I think an antitrust lawsuit would have to show they have majority marketshare too.

> Or would Google have to provide a "supported" way to install other browsers?

I don't how ChromeOS works. Is Chrome the OS? If so they might have more of an argument than, say, Microsoft, since Windows existed before IE and it was clear IE was not integral to the base system.

Still, now we have pretty easy to install flavors of Linux, which is another difference between now and 2001 when Microsoft settled their case.

<comment><USER25> > I don't how ChromeOS works. Is Chrome the OS? If so they might have more of > an argument than, say, Microsoft, since Windows existed before IE and it was > clear IE was not integral to the base system.

It is essentially a really light Linux Distribution with Chrome running on top of it. But I have no clue, how hard or easy it would be for Google to allow a package manager or something to work.

As I said, they do not actively block you from installing crouton, which allows you to use any browser, but I don't know, if that would help with an antitrust lawsuit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Well, if I were the team at Vivaldi, I would be using as little of Google's tech until THEY bend. After all, Opera 15+ and Vivaldi now both use Google's web engine. That feels like a major mistake to me, because it constantly tells Google, "regardless of what we say, we need you and we'll give in to your demands". Attacking Google just turns into biting the hand that feeds when you rely on them not only for revenue, but even for the core technologies which you need to exist. Instead of relying on Google for email and online office function, two options come to mind - either develop your own (time-consuming and extremely technically challenging) or support Zoho. For search, there's privacy-friendly DuckDuckGo & StartPage, or Exalead if you're worried about index size.

I was sincerely hoping that we would get to see a modern equivalent to Presto in Vivaldi when I first heard about the browser and who was backing it. I think this would be a great time to begin serious work on that project, a new and proprietary web engine that's not beholden to Apple, Google, Mozilla, or any of the major firms.

<comment><USER27> > a new and proprietary web engine that's not beholden to Apple, Google, > Mozilla, or any of the major firms

I wouldn't necessarily go as far as proprietary, but I agree everywhere else. Now that we essentially have a bunch of Chrome flavors, I'm finding myself missing the browser wars of the mid 2000s. Real competition producing real results.

<comment><USER28> Have a look at what Mozilla is doing with Gecko (Project Quantum) and Servo. Even Microsoft is moving in a much better direction with Edge in the recent years, doing a lot of work and opening up parts of the engine.

I don't know why parent put Mozilla into the same bucket as Apple and Google, they are not comparable in any conceivable way.

<comment><USER26> Because I don't trust Mozilla to put the user first and not give in to Google's demands anymore. Between the Australis UI ("Looks like Chrome") and now WebExtensions ("Works like Chrome"), the fiercely independent and unique Firefox (and by extension all of Mozilla) from days/years past is forever gone. Losing Thunderbird & SeaMonkey as fully developed projects was really the first warning of many; but many people were willing to let it go. I don't trust any of their new projects to actually remain stable and different from Google's desires, and really I don't have any reason to believe that they give a tinker's damn about their long-time users or their original ideals when they split from Netscape. They are no different from Opera who capitulated completely (and we see that Vivaldi, while calling them out, isn't announcing that they're creating their own engine, or switching to raw KHTML), and I'm just waiting until the day I have to start laughing because Mozilla announces that, in order to develop for the mobile space of Android & iOS, they're switching the desktop browser from Gecko to WebKit/Blink. Because I'm sure, given the track they're on, that day will come. I can no longer summon the appropriate dread. I can only laugh.

<comment><USER28> > Because I don't trust Mozilla to […] not give in to Google's demands > anymore.

Huh? How's Google able to demand anything from Mozilla? If you'd refer to the Search deal, that has long changed. The only way Google can "demand" things from Mozilla is by the force of the market. That's what happened in many regards, i.e. users expect certain things from the browser and Google managed to set the expectations.

> Australis UI ("Looks like Chrome")

Oh come on. This again. And it's been discussed again and again (and, by the way, clearly visible) that the Australis UI is as similar to Chrome as any other tabbed browser out there.

> WebExtensions ("Works like Chrome")

I agree that it's sad to see the maximum extensibility go. But it proofed to be the source of many issues (mostly browser stability and speed as well as complexitiy, speed, and flexibility of development) for the browser developers. But also for extension developers since the API was not stable. The Web Extensions API is far, far better in these regards. Starting from a tried and tested base instead of rolling your own API was a good decision, especially considering that MS was also in the same boat.

Keep in mind that the Web Extensions API in Firefox is already much more capable than what you can find in Chrome. So it's still "Works much better than Chrome".

> They are no different from Opera who capitulated completely

Uhm, Fx still has their own browser with their own engine which they are putting an enormous effort into, especially in recent months and to a great part _enabled_ by the painful decisions they made, e.g. _removing_ support for the legacy extension system. That's far from "capitulating". Quite the opposite, they're doubling down on their engine (paradoxically by developing yet another engine and programming language, but it turns out they were right!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> >The idea of the Internet turning into a battlefield of propaganda is very far away from the ideal.

Too late, it already happened, and had nothing to do with data collection. When television was invented, people had much the same visions of utopia: it'll be used to educate people. The internet is now flooded with propaganda from think tanks banked by billionaire wingnuts to the Putin Troll Army.

<comment><USER30> And think tanks banked by Google, who will pressure them to fire people if they say the wrong thing.

<comment><USER29> Nice try, but no one's complaining about the Web being flooded with propaganda from Open Markets, nor can really call Eric Schmidt saying he is displeased as "pressure", then every time Steve Jobs threw a fit about a less than 100% positive iPhone review, we'd have to be talking about Apple's control of the media, the blacklisting of reporters, and the withholding of "access".

The kinds of think tanks I'm talking about are things like the Scaife's funding of the Project for A New American Century, you know, the guys who masterminded the Iraq war? Or how about the Koch brothers funding of climate denial? You know, things which actually are fucking up our world and getting people killed.

I would imagine the kinds of propaganda the Vivaldi CEO is worrying about is the kinds that get hate groups out in the streets with Nazi signs, not the kinds that try to lobby the government to protect net neutrality.

<comment><USER30> Are you really suggesting that Eric Schmidt personally calling their CEO and expressing his "displeasure" isn't pressure? I suppose when a mob boss says it'd be "unfortunate if something happened to someone", you'd characterize that as just an expression of a personal view, too. Perhaps someone "sleeping with the fishes" really is just a leisurely dip in the Chicago river.

It's also worth noting that there are a significant number of examples where your employer has invested specifically in people writing about antitrust law, and specifically, claiming that Google doesn't violate it (see Joshua Wright, etc.). Suggesting their financial investment is limited to net neutrality discussions is... pretty misleading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm a bit skeptical of the claims he's making in his article, since he has obvious incentives as the founder of a browser company competing with Google. Judging from the amazing features listed on the webpage (bar charts of my history, wow, do not need that at all), I'm guessing his product sense might have some something to do with his companies not working out, not bigger competitors that are out to get him.

Can anyone point me to links confirming his two claims: that Google services were maliciously blocking Opera for reasons other than compatibility and efficiency for a low-market-share browser, and that Google blocked his ads for spurious reasons. He doesn't really provide details on what rules he was violating, but judging from the fact that the ads were reinstated the moment he was in compliance with them, it sounds like a trumped up charge.

<comment><USER32> > He doesn't really provide details on what rules he was violating, but > judging from the fact that the ads were reinstated the moment he was in > compliance with them, it sounds like a trumped up charge.

I agree skepticism is warranted.

This is one side of the story. Even if you have it out for Google, you should want more details before grabbing your pitchfork. Mistakenly criticizing someone only empowers them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Don't be Evil" was just code for "Don't be Microsoft."

But, today even Microsoft has enough sense to not be Microsoft.

<comment><USER6> Microsoft is too busy being a dumpster fire to be evil.

I install and maintain their products for a living. I have horror stories upon horror stories representing weeks (if not months) of dev time to work around-- including writing a custom plugin with an SDK just to fix a bug in the data import wizard in CRM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Summary: Google suspends AdWords campaigns of Vivaldi Browser after Vivaldi CEO wrote an anti-Google article

<comment><USER35> That is not a summary. The article opens with Google faking breaking compatibility with Opera in order to push their own browser. Why fake? Because the services worked perfectly when faking the user agent...

<comment><USER36> > The article opens with Google faking breaking compatibility with Opera in > order to push their own browser.

It explicitly states that it got worse when they introduced their own browser, which implies it pre-dates their own browser.

<comment><USER35> I think he means that first Google was cozy with Mozilla, and then later introduced Chrome. Opera the browser predates Google the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Applause for Vivaldi for the backbone to say something openly.

</comment><comment><USER38> There's a pattern here: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric- schmidt-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt- google-new-america.html)

<comment><USER39> Assuming you've seen this too: [https://qz.com/823922/eric-schmidt-played-a- crucial-role-in-...](https://qz.com/823922/eric-schmidt-played-a-crucial-role- in-team-hillarys-election-tech/)

Schmidt has been wading neck-deep in pulling political strings for years now... Google is evil, evil, evil.

<comment><USER40> > Google is evil, evil, evil

well, at least they don't have anyone's personal info

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Setting aside everything else; other comments are doing an OK job discussing those topics...

What were the content changes that Google forced them to make? I'd like to know so that I can evaluate how reasonable that request is from my own perspective.

</comment><comment><USER42> Google has become a really crappy company in my eyes. I run Vivaldi nowadays as my main browser since it is great but it feels like a new UI on Chrome.

Why can't google support all modern browsers for their products? I work as a web dev and have done so for all of my work.

</comment><comment><USER43> "You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain" \- Harvey Dent

</comment><comment><USER44> Never trust a company that has the word "evil" in its company motto, even if used in the negative sense.

Imagine that Disney used the motto: "We won't kill your children". Would you still send your kids to their theme park?

<comment><USER45> Google doesnt use the word "evil" in any of their mottos or official copy.

<comment><USER46> > _Google Code of Conduct_

> _Preface_

> _"Don't be evil." Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our > users. But "Don't be evil" is much more than that. Yes, it's about providing > our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving > them the best products and services that we can. But it's also about doing > the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably, and > treating co-workers with courtesy and respect._

> _The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put "Don't be evil" into > practice._

[0]: [https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of- conduct.html](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Seems to work" is not the same thing as "Working As Intended". I work on Gmail/Inbox (previously GWT). When we released Inbox, it started out as Chrome only, people discovered they could get it to load and seemingly work on Firefox by spoofing, but the reality was, it was still broken, and would eventually consume all memory, because Inbox relies on sparse Javascript array behavior for protobufs, and something like a[300000000]=1, for(x in a)/Object.keys(a) would cause the JS engine to allocate a giant array.

Inbox also was a the first web property to adopt a form of Material Design, and had hard design requirements for 60fps on the Web Animation. Unfortunately, due to the way browsers upload GPU textures when doing compositing, animation timing was broke. (Do they count time spent uploading in the interpolation?) My coworkers spent a huge amount of time fixing it, and then finally making Edge work. There was no ill will or evil plan, just finite engineering resources.

I don't know the details around Google Docs, but my guess (speculation) would be it probably had to do with Content-Editable. Docs was a Google acquisition of Writely. Back in those days, many online editing apps on the bleeding edge (ab)used Content Editable. Those of you who are Web developers know that Content Editable varies wildly across platform, has no real spec stating a deterministic expectation of what it should do. If the original Writely was based on this, they probably didn't want to fix it, instead Writely was rewritten and the new Google Docs basically avoids Content-Editable and implemented their own complete layout/editing engine in JS. Getting that to work correctly across many fonts, languages, BiDi support, etc was probably a hellish amount of work, but the end result was probably to make it more resilient against across browser issues.

We've now reached a stage where every time something breaks or someone gets deranked, they immediately start jumping to conspiracy theories about how they were specified targeted for nefarious reasons, no one seems to understand Hanlon's Razor.

Google only recently retired IE8 support. I wanted it dead for a long time. Am I evil? Our code base is littered with horrific code smell in our JS due to Microsoft's bad garbage collection implementation in prior browsers. In order to reduce memory leaks in our Closure Library code base, it's full of C++-like destructors/retain-release like constructs, which increases codesize, decreases performance. Google Web Toolkit's whole widget system was constructed around the needs of IE6/8, which ultimately bloated and doomed its UI system from adapting to the modern web.

Web programming is still fraught with issues, issues you don't encounter on iOS, and to a lesser extent, Android, because of a single implementation. The combinatorial explosion of browsers, browser versions, form factors, means testing on everything and everywhere, and even with the resources of Google this creates significant impacts on productivity and maintenance. That means you can't expect a modern, bleeding edge web app, to come out of the gate working perfectly everywhere, especially if it is adopting only recently shipped APIs as a core requirement.

So you have only a few choices: hold up your release until everyone catches up, ship everyone the same lowest common denominator triaging out the advanced stuff, shipping an app with all kinds of workarounds and fallbacks, or shipping a native mobile one instead.

It's the threat of the latter which is the real problem these days, because with mobile first, engineering wise, it looks cheaper and more predictable with better user experience.

<comment><USER47> If the Google teams are just focusing on what would get the largest marketshare, then why did we never see Firefox-only launches of Google products?

For many years Firefox was the largest browser that wasn't IE, yet no such launch happened.

Even when Chrome's marketshare was below 5%, Google always launched Chrome- only.

Your argument is nice, but ultimately invalid: Google never cared about providing to the most users first, but only about giving an advantage to their own spyware browser.

<comment><USER29> You answered your own question. IE having the largest market share in those days. "Google always launched Chrome-only" \-- another unsubstantiated claim. When Chrome was 5%, all their launches were always Chrome only?

I know it doesn't fit your narrative, but we don't launch broken stuff to screw over other browsers on purpose, period. The number one reason I've seen for non-working browsers is reliance on some non-standard browser feature/bleeding edge feature which isn't implemented fully or spec'ed correctly and doesn't have a good polyfill.

And because of the these claims of nefarious intent, I decided to go back and look up Writely (Google Docs) and see what it's compatibility looked like.

Here's a description of how it was based on Content-Editable [https://www.theverge.com/2013/7/3/4484000/sam-schillace- inte...](https://www.theverge.com/2013/7/3/4484000/sam-schillace-interview- google-docs-creator-box)

And here's a comment I found claiming it didn't work on Safari nor Opera. [https://www.extremetech.com/computing/50680-writely- googles-...](https://www.extremetech.com/computing/50680-writely-googles- online-word-processor/6?print)

So it seems Google bought Writely, which already did not support Safari or Opera, rebranded it as Docs, and pending a rewrite of the editing/layout engine from the ground up, didn't work with Safari and Opera, most likely due to Content-Editable problems.

<comment><USER47> > I know it doesn't fit your narrative, but we don't launch broken stuff to > screw over other browsers on purpose, period

Sure, you never did something that would improve your browser share and then claim in the media that it was for "technical reasons". You also never intentionally made usability on other browsers worse, and then threw dozens of popups and messages into users faces about how they should "upgrade to chrome".

Oh, wait, regulators actually fined you for that.

It doesn't matter if the browser support is just a coincidence, or actually malicious, the end result is the same, and shouldn't happen.

<comment><USER29> Google fines for advertising Upgrade To Chrome? Citation needed. The EU fine recently was for Shopping, not advertising Chrome downloads.

And as I already pointed out, the Vivaldi CEO claims were based on software which Google didn't even write. Google Docs (Writely) was an acquisition of a service with existing customers and it did not work on Safari or Opera before Google bought them.

Google would have faced a choice after acquisition: continue running a service for existing users that doesn't work on Opera, or, shut it down immediately for a year or more until a rewrite was completed And launch on all browsers.

Of course, Google has been attacked for buying startups and shutting down their products as well, so damned if you do and damned if you don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Google hasn't been my default search engine for 6+ months. In fact the only Google things I use frequently are Android and Chromium (through Opera).

I feel better about my internet usage, and I've been having a much better experience.

Obligatory "username checks out"

<comment><USER49> What search engine have you been using? I've tried others but none seem to come even close, unfortunately.

<comment><USER50> DuckDuckGo works well. Even has those info tiles that google has when you search a store etc.

<comment><USER48> Yeah I've been using DuckDuckGo exclusively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Finally someone other than random bloggers dared saying it clear.

And its not just monopoly over advertising. Lately they are in business of censoring political 'wrongthink' on one hand and prioritizing the management & friends political views in mainstream search.

I don't think Google will change anything on its own though and its sad to see a neutral company of engeeners turn into power hungry megacorp.

</comment><comment><USER52> As much as I'd like to agree with the statement, I can't say the same about Vivaldi/Opera because they have left a bad taste in my mouth when they sued their former employee who went to work later for Mozilla for $3.4M ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5629255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5629255)). That lawsuit was dropped later, but as a dev, I wouldn't feel comfortable working for a company that could sue me later in life.

By the way, I used to be exclusive on Opera many years ago and I loved how well it worked and how fast it ran, until Chrome came out.

I wouldn't say Vivaldi is good and Google is evil. I think they differ only on the degree of evilness.

</comment><comment><USER53> > A monopoly both in search and advertising, Google, unfortunately, shows that > they are not able to resist the misuse of power.

The ONLY thing that makes Google close to a monopoly is government power - hear me out:

Google has patented all of their search algorithms. This is akin to patenting all of the O(nlog) sorting algorithms. Competitors are left with using Bubble Sort.

The simple solution is to invalidate some of these patents. Then the "monopoly" problem will fix itself.

</comment><comment><USER54> It would be great if Google changes their policies and acts responsibly from here on out, but whether they do or not, I think we would all be better off in the long run if there were more competing services.

Maybe it's time for a new search engine? (Or a new video sharing site, or a new email service, or a new online ad delivery system, or a new news aggregator, or a new cell phone operating system vendor, or a new Internet business model that isn't dependent on advertising revenue...)

Google started at a time when most people didn't think we need a new search engine, and it seems to have worked well for them. Maybe it's that time again. I'm not sure when exactly the PageRank patent expires (people seem to be saying 2017 or 2018), but it will be soon and that should open up some interesting possibilities.

<comment><USER32> > I'm not sure when exactly the PageRank patent expires (people seem to be > saying 2017 or 2018), but it will be soon and that should open up some > interesting possibilities.

You could use it right now. In fact, many do.

Google doesn't sue companies for using PageRank or much of their published research. Much more interesting things have come out since then like BigTable (led to Hadoop + NoSQL databases) and Word2Vec (better semantic analysis + search). These are in use all over industry.

ITT people who don't understand the contributions Google has made.

If you're wondering why there aren't competitors, you're not looking far enough. Baidu competes with Google in China.

<comment><USER54> Patents are a pretty big threat to have hanging over your company -- Google might not sue other companies for using it now, but they could in the future. At least, until the patent expires.

I realize Google has created more than PageRank, but PageRank is pretty fundamental technology. If you can't use it for legal reasons, that's a big impediment. I don't know how Bing gets around it.

I've never tried using Baidu, but if my main concern is that I don't want a search engine censoring the Internet, then using Baidu is at least as problematic as using Google.

<comment><USER32> > Google might not sue other companies for using it now, but they could in the > future. At least, until the patent expires

Google's long term strategy is to not do this. So for this to happen they'd have to end up with a CEO who wants to make a huge pivot.

> I realize Google has created more than PageRank, but PageRank is pretty > fundamental technology. If you can't use it for legal reasons, that's a big > impediment. I don't know how Bing gets around it.

Maybe because it's not fundamental at all. It's hardly used anymore. Many search engines are built without PageRank. You could build one. I suggest reading about PageRank before claiming it is fundamental to search.

> I've never tried using Baidu, but if my main concern is that I don't want a > search engine censoring the Internet, then using Baidu is at least as > problematic as using Google.

Then use duck duck go.

<comment><USER54> Do you have an example of a non-pagerank based page ranking algorithm that I should look at?

Duck duck go isn't an independent search engine, it's a layer on top of Bing. That solves the privacy issue, but not the censorship issue, if you're worried about Microsoft censoring content. (At least we have two major search engines and not one.)

<comment><USER32> I suggest reading about search engine technology as a field of study. That would give an overview of the various approaches and their strengths.

If you're worried that Bing is also censorship, then use Yahoo, or Baidu. They all order results slightly differently. You could argue each censorship til the cows come home. I don't see the point. You could say I'm censoring you right now by not telling you everything I know.

Is there something specific you feel all the search engines are censoring? Or you just suspect they are?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Google main focus is AI. To build the future AI (of singularity), google wants to have a full picture of the entire life of as many people as possible. The focus of google is the user, but not for its good, but to replace him by posthumans.

</comment><comment><USER56> I've long maintained that the greatest benefit that Google gets from the slogan "Don't be evil" is how ridiculous it makes their critics sound when they bring it up.

I fully support pretty much everything he says in the article, but can't help but roll my eyes at the headline. I can't see it helping with anyone who isn't already on board with the message.

I think monopolies cause real societal harm, and that large corporations should be held very strongly to the rules by regulators but I still find it hard to use the term "evil" in relation to something that could well just be corporate bureaucracy gone wrong.

</comment><comment><USER57> Besides Google being shitty here, the only thing that strikes me in this article is this irony: According to the article, Jon von Tetzchner is giving talks and raising concerns on "data gathering and ad targeting practices" from Google, but in turn, wants to use the same to advertise his product? Doesn't it show at least some level of hypocrisy? It's almost like "I don't like that Google tracks its users, so I made this shiny new browser, but I'll use Google's tracking services to advertise it nevertheless".

</comment><comment><USER58> I guess this was the reason why Opera was the first browser to support native user agent spoofing? It was a great feature in the days of websites being developed for specific browsers. If that's still going on, that would be really sad and unprofessional.

As much as I appreciate the good work that Google has done, this is absolutely anti-competitive and deserves to be punished. I really hope Google turns good again, because otherwise they're really no better than Microsoft in their worst years.

</comment><comment><USER59> Question for the HN crowd: is there a single-use browser for desktop like firefox focus? I really love it on iOS, but they don't seem to make it for Mac. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER60> You can configure Firefox to always open in Private Browsing mode. Look for "Always use private browsing mode" in Firefox's Privacy & Security settings.

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/settings-privacy- browsi...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/settings-privacy-browsing- history-do-not-track#w_never-remember-history)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> "Don't Be Evil" stopped working for Google the day of their IPO. You become evil when your masters (Wall Street) punish you for not being evil.

</comment><comment><USER62> I tend to focus on individual problems, the recent think tank debacle or the ad bubble being examples.

</comment><comment><USER63> Internet: it is time to return to not being Google.

</comment><comment><USER64> Really sounds like some sort of RICO or extortion charge should be filed against Google, assuming this is all 100% factual.

<comment><USER65> it is probably not RICO [https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its- not-rico-...](https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico- dammit/) (a bit salty on the language)

<comment><USER64> I've actually got a little experience with this particular subject.

The specific part you would charge Google under would be "It shall be unlawful for any person employed by or associated with any enterprise engaged in, or the activities of which affect, interstate or foreign commerce, to conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise's affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity or collection of unlawful debt."

Specifically, collection of unlawful debt.

As noted by the Vivaldi man: "We made effort to understand their explanations and to work with them on their various unreasonable demands (some of which they don't follow themselves, by the way). After almost three months of back- and-forth, the suspension to our account has been lifted, but only when we bent to their requirements."

If any of those requirements involved a monetary payment, you can very-well guarantee Google violated RICO. It was literal extortion.

A RICO trial was one of my most fun days in court as a juror. Armenian Power Gang.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> [https://xkcd.com/743/](https://xkcd.com/743/)

<comment><USER67> Seems you are getting similar treatment as I did in the past for posting relevant XKCDs. I'm guessing it's because you aren't adding much value to the conversation, but could be some folks hate XKCD too I guess.

<comment><USER68> XKCD is a high iq version of a reaction gif.

<comment><USER67> I agree completely now that you say that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Once a pickle, never a cucumber.

</comment><comment><USER70> Isn't vivaldi just another branded chromium? Seems a bit disingenuine for them to be complaining about the company that built their product.

<comment><USER69> Isn't Chromium just a repackaging of KHTML from the KDE project?

<comment><USER70> Is it really? The last time I played with that it was almost unusable. (must've been more than a decade ago).

<comment><USER71> WebKit was originall a fork of KHTML. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Origins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Origins)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder what the correspondence between Vivaldi and Google looked like. Specifically, regarding this section:

> When we reached out to Google to resolve the issue, we got a clarification > masqueraded in the form of vague terms and conditions, some of which, they > admitted themselves, were not a "hard" requirement. In exchange for being > reinstated in Google's ad network, their in-house specialists dictated how > we should arrange content on our own website and how we should communicate > information to our users.

> We made effort to understand their explanations and to work with them on > their various unreasonable demands (some of which they don't follow > themselves, by the way). After almost three months of back-and-forth, the > suspension to our account has been lifted, but only when we bent to their > requirements.

This is one side of the story. Without seeing the correspondence it's hard to decide who's being evil.

</comment><comment><USER72> Google is not evil. They provide fantastic services and value and have made the world a much better place. Mistakes will be made and they will correct them.

<comment><USER73> Hi Larry.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you realise that you are not a false positive developer? - <AUTHOR> I was an average Frontend Designer from 2015-2018 who used to do code WordPress custom development, Bootstrap Sass customisation, Frontend coding etc. for small agency. Beginning of this year, I spent most of the time acquiring knowledge in JavaScript and React ecosystem. I have built open source projects on GitHub to demonstrate my ability to handle Frontend aspect of an application. My questions are:
1. What is the key criteria or realisation point where I am able to work a job as a professional Frontend Developer?
2. The more I learn JS, I realise the lesser I know and there is much more I need to cover. Some days, feeling of being a false positive kicks in and I start to believe that I am a fake and is not ready for a junior position even. This barrier tends to grow in day by day.
3. The decision to spend more time on learning technology and building personal projects solely over a longer period of time costed me on soft skills part and making connections. Is being an extraordinary articulator or good salesman a new vital facet of a Frontend developer?
4. Having a likening for CSS in JS world, or getting generalised by "UX Developer" not "Software Developer", Does it lower the chances of being employable in current market (even though, you as a candidate are willing to learn React ecosystem but where is the line for a self-taught developer: design patterns, hooks, context, redux, saga, reselect, custom webpack bundling, flux, typescript, unit testing, jest)?
5. I have interest in CS and Maths but no clue on how these two fields amalgamate and what pathways from Frontend lead to them? I have curiosity about UNIX, Maths  in general and would love to learn them more at an academic level to attain mastery.
I have attached my Github here: https://github.com/tpkahlon, in case someone wants to review my GitHub and personal projects. <comment><USER2> It's a big leap from WordPress to software engineering. If you're trying for a serious development role, you're going to have to learn modern UI frameworks, build tools, and software development methodologies (many of which you list in #4). You can learn these on your own, but you're not going to have the resume to back it up. It'll be hard to get a foot in the door. You'll have better luck learning--and better luck getting interviews--if you go to a crash-course coding school program (General Assembly, AppAcademy, etc).

Neither CS nor math have any real bearing on frontend software development. They don't matter much for the majority of backend development roles either. You'd learn more relevant skills much faster on your own or in a code academy than you would in a university setting. By all means, get a CS or math degree if you can, but not because you want to be a JavaScript UI/UX developer.

If you're trying to get a job developing English sites, I'd also recommend improving your English skills. While your English is great for a second- language speaker, and perfectly fine for casual conversation, it's not ready for public exposure in a professional setting. You might be able to work on backend code without any difficulty, and you'd be able to communicate with your coworkers, but there are many grammatical errors. Appearance counts a great deal if you're looking for a frontend job. Even most native English speakers struggle to write well enough to be the face of a company.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some background: I'm a professional programmer since 2005, let me say I'm a full-stack, but I don't really like the definition.

> 1\. What is the key criteria or realisation point where I am able to work a > job as a professional Frontend Developer?

There's no "realisation" IMHO. It's like when you can barely swim and someone throws you in deep waters: you can swim, but you won't feel safe for a while. You apply for a job and if hired, you simply feel inadequate for a while. Then after a while everything looks ok and manageable. Until you change your job and start again. Happened to me every time I moved to a new job, it's pretty normal.

> 2\. The more I learn JS, I realise the lesser I know and there is much more > I need to cover. Some days, feeling of being a false positive kicks in and I > start to believe that I am a fake and is not ready for a junior position > even. This barrier tends to grow in day by day.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome) welcome onboard!

> 3\. The decision to spend more time on learning technology and building > personal projects solely over a longer period of time costed me on soft > skills part and making connections. Is being an extraordinary articulator or > good salesman a new vital facet of a Frontend developer?

It depends. The era of the solitary uber-nerd is gone. Find a spot where you feel comfortable, try to join (virtual, with COVID) communities...

> 4\. Having a likening for CSS in JS world, or getting generalised by "UX > Developer" not "Software Developer", Does it lower the chances of being > employable in current market (even though, you as a candidate are willing to > learn React ecosystem but where is the line for a self-taught developer: > design patterns, hooks, context, redux, saga, reselect, custom webpack > bundling, flux, typescript, unit testing, jest)?

Don't label yourself. You're a frontend developer... Companies usually expects you can work with a lot of stuff... Practice interviewing is the only suggestion I can give you... Then, again, look at my first answer...

> 5\. I have interest in CS and Maths but no clue on how these two fields > amalgamate and what pathways from Frontend lead to them? I have curiosity > about UNIX, Maths in general and would love to learn them more at an > academic level to attain mastery.

Good for you, CS and math concepts are universal, so go for them.

> I have attached my Github here: > [https://github.com/tpkahlon](https://github.com/tpkahlon), in case someone > wants to review my GitHub and personal projects.

Looks fine to me for someone at your level. I would start by adding tests to your projects and a travis ci build running them :)</comment>


The Art of Approximation in Science and Engineering [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/6.055/book/book-draft.pdf <comment><USER2> Note: The draft linked in the title [1] has been superseded by the finished book [2] (free pdf download here [3]), which is even better!

This is probably the most useful book I have read during my studies in physics and I highly recommend it to everybody with some technical interest because it focuses on teaching general and useful tools (using science and engineering examples (mainly physics)).

During the first years of my studies I did reasonably well, but it always felt like I was just manipulating symbols on paper, and the results didn't mean much to me -- it was all just theory (and if the results would have come out some other way I probably would have believed that too). This book taught me how to be reckless and throw away unnecessary complexity in order to make said theory simple enough to apply it easily to real-world problems, which suddenly made my theory knowledge much, much more useful (previously it was mainly good for passing exams). Now, during my PhD I still use the methods from the book almost daily!

Compared to the earlier book draft [1] that has been floating on the web for many years, the final book is much improved, mainly because it focuses on general tools rather than specific physics topics. However, if you want to have a quick demonstration of how powerful the methods from the book are, I'd recommend to read chapter 9.3 about waves in [1], which unfortunately only partially made it into the final book. Within a few pages you quickly derive all the properties of waves in different regimes and draw practical conclusions such as the speed limit for boats, the speed of tsunamis, why bugs walking on water don't generate waves, etc!

[1] [http://web.mit.edu/6.055/book/book- draft.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/6.055/book/book-draft.pdf)

[2] [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/art-insight-science-and- engin...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/art-insight-science-and-engineering)

[3] [https://www.dropbox.com/s/bmqwzc8qqt5lv9p/9017.pdf?dl=1](https://www.dropbox.com/s/bmqwzc8qqt5lv9p/9017.pdf?dl=1)

<comment><USER3> The author of the book Sanjoy Mahajan also has a very entertaining book and online course titled "Street Fighting Math" [0]. Previous discussions on HN about the book [1, 2, 3].

[0] [http://streetfightingmath.com](http://streetfightingmath.com)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14343058](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14343058)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11523197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11523197)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1548013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1548013)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of my favorite quotes, which I heard from an older grad student long ago but I don't know the real origins of it:

"There are exactly 3 things an applied mathematician can do to solve a problem. The first is to Taylor expand something. I don't know what the other two are."

<comment><USER5> What I learned in _Linear Systems_ EE120 at Berkeley was that there are two kinds of problems: linear problems and problems you can't solve.

<comment><USER6> I don't like that attitude. There are many non-linear problems which can easily be solved accurately numerically or exactly.

So few people even try to solve problems exactly now that it seems like magic when someone does it. I can recall once instance where a colleague seemed awestruck that I solved Bernoulli's differential equation exactly when I noticed that a problem we were working on could be expressed that way: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli_differential_equatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli_differential_equation)

If you do take this approach, I'd advise against explaining how you solved the problem. My colleague was not impressed that I looked up how to solve the problem, and thought what I did was "only" a trick. But there are many tricks for solving differential equations. Knowing which trick to pull out is part of my job as far as I'm concerned.

On that note, I'd recommend this website and the related books for finding exact solutions or useful changes of variables: [http://eqworld.ipmnet.ru/](http://eqworld.ipmnet.ru/)

<comment><USER5> From your cite:

      Transformation to a linear differential equation

That was the lesson of the class, transform what seems to be a non-linear problem into a solvable linear problem.

<comment><USER6> That's a good strategy, but you should have other tools for non-linear problems in your toolbox too.

I mostly want to push back against the idea that non-linear means unsolvable. My example transformed the problem to a linear one, but that's not the only possibility. Look at my other link for many other examples. Autonomous ordinary differential equations are one possible class of ODEs which don't need to be transformed to a linear system to be solved: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_differential_equati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_differential_equation)

You can often solve a non-linear autonomous ODE by direct integration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been fortunate enough to take a class with Sanjoy (The author) covering this book. It was an incredible experience, and he's one of the best mentors I've ever met.

One of the things I found most interesting from the class that you couldn't get from the book was a particular method of assessment. He would pose a question, and allow you to give a weighted answer across a few options, to better understand your uncertainty. It was a very useful pedagogical technique, and allowed me to quantify my understanding in a very tangible way.

I highly recommend the whole book, but especially the first section, on breaking things down.

</comment><comment><USER6> Dimensional analysis, one of the topics in the book, is a favorite of mine. Unfortunately the more useful parts of the subject are not that well known. Fortunately, this book seems to have a fairly standard introduction to the subject.

Most people seem to think dimensional analysis is limited to checking that the dimensions are consistent ("dimensional homogeneity"). But dimensional homogeneity is a constraint which can simplify problems, sometimes even allowing them to be solved up to a constant. The latter often requires additional reasoning to determine which variables are relevant and which are not. Kolmogorov famously made use of this approach to obtain his "5/3" law in turbulence: [https://micromath.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/kolmogorovs-53-la...](https://micromath.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/kolmogorovs-53-law/)

The details of dimensional analysis seem only to be taught to engineers taking fluid dynamics or heat transfer classes. I understand why: the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid motion typically can't be solved in practice (for the most part), but we usually know which quantities are involved because they appear in the Navier-Stokes equations. Then it's useful to use that as a basis for analysis. In other areas, you can usually solve the equations, so dimensional analysis may not be necessary. Add on top of that the use of _physical_ models (not mathematical or computational models), which may be scale models like a small scale airplane in a wind tunnel. Dimensional analysis provides a basis for scaling.

I'd recommend reading the relevant chapter of the book if you're interested. Dimensional analysis is most useful for physical problems, but you sometimes can generalize the idea of a "dimension" such that two things have different dimensions when it does not make sense to add them.

<comment><USER8> A very nice example is the use of dimensional analysis to cook a turkey : [http://physicsblog.otterbein.edu/?p=34](http://physicsblog.otterbein.edu/?p=34)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this a follow up to Street Fighting Mathematics, from the same author? [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/street-fighting- mathematics](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/street-fighting-mathematics)

<comment><USER2> You can consider it as such, yes. The main difference is that whereas street fighting mathematics was focused more on the mathematical side, this book focuses more on physics. However, the spirit and bold worry-free approach is exactly the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The textbook of the draft can be accessed at:

[https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-6-011-the-art-of- insight-i...](https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-6-011-the-art-of-insight-in- science-and-engineering-mastering-complexity-fall-2014/online-textbook/)

</comment><comment><USER11> It doesn't have any mention of the author(s).

The MIT course website lists Mahajan and Abeyaratne as the instructors, but not clear if one, both, or neither are the authors.</comment>


A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of Immorality  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/business/30oath.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss <comment><USER3> _how to view business as more than a money-making enterprise, but part of a large social community_

False dichotomies, how I loathe thee.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, but considering the social impact of business has traditionally required additional overhead. It even prevents entire business models and even sectors (eg, the debt industry) without a series of mental leaps to justify it as socially responsible. Fortunately, the perspective is shifting toward frameworks where social responsibility can be a part of company culture in a way that actually helps operations, like cost savings due to waste reduction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think it's an _era of immorality._ Some lobbyists managed to convince congress to remove some regulations that turned out to be important. But people aren't significantly different from the way they were in the 80s or 90s.

</comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of those little contracts they give high school kids promising not to drink or have sex. You can't fight nature, I don't care what that little laminated card in their wallet says.

<comment><USER7> It's better than doing nothing. Even if it's only 5% effective, it may still be worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons. - <USER2> Waldo Emerson_

Somehow, this quote leaps to mind after reading that article. In a field where the primary means of keeping score is how much money you have, it seems to me quite impossible for there to be success without avarice.</comment>


I asked a hacker to spy on me via my Amazon account - <AUTHOR> https://www.kuow.org/stories/primed-season-3-episode-8 <comment><USER2> I would say it is freaking stupid post... But in the end it is important. Security is about people who have credentials and don't disclose those. Two factor auth with app would prevent that, but maybe someone who reads this article will also start using 2FA.

Pity that author did not mentioned 2FA.

<comment><USER3> The author gave them his username and password. The research team could also ask for the 2FA token. 2FA doesn't prevent this kind of attack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Author asked hacker to spy on him. Author received phishing email, knew it was a phishing email, and took the bait anyway. "Hacker" logged into Alexa using authors phished credentials and controlled his smart devices.

Not an interesting article at all. Not sure how this is front page content but okay.

</comment><comment><USER5> I didn't get the point of the article. Is it to point out that many can't tell whether they're getting phished? Or is it that Amazon's APIs aren't secure?

Not really sure what the point of this is.

Regardless, how would that white-hack hacker get so much access? Can you do this with Amazon's APIs? I don't really use Amazon APIs to know.

</comment><comment><USER6> As a family with approximately two hundred of these devices, I had a conversation with my wife that went along the lines of "and spell out precisely what the dangers are"

I think being able to do this - to hack oneself, is a useful indicator as to what doors one is leaving open. I would love to try and turn Alexa into a always on microphone - and love to know how to detect it even more !

</comment><comment><USER7> Most useless cringe thing I've seen read in a long time. What a wast of time.</comment>


We Invite Everyone at Etsy to Do an Engineering Rotation - <AUTHOR> https://codeascraft.com/2014/12/22/engineering-rotation/ <comment><USER2> I'm a huge fan of cross disciplinary rotations of all types. A startup company, or any organization, should act as a unified whole. "It's not my problem" is not an option, especially when the company is small and the stakes are high. Sales depends on engineering which depends on support and management, an interconnected web. Rotations build empathy, lead to innovative thinking from outside perspectives and give people greater context. I've proposed them at several of my past jobs only to be shot down each time. It says a lot about the management of Etsy that they encourage designers and product managers to do a rotation on the coding side, when I wasn't able to convince my team leaders to let php developers from one project rotate to work on another.

"Human resources" has come to mean paperwork and discipline, but the real value of the term is much closer to its literal meaning. Developing peoples' innate capability is very important. Any company can compete to hire the "best people", but the really smart companies put that effort into increasing the value of the people that they have. The capacity of the human mind is one of the broadest and most versatile things in the universe, but most of us quickly settle into limiting patterns of thought. Just a few days of seeing things from a new perspective can make all the difference in the world. Etsy's engineering rotations seem like fun, but I think they will pay off in a big way. It's hard to put a number on increasing teamwork and understanding. Programs like this are a great way to maximize that value.

</comment><comment><USER3> I loved everything about this article. At my company, we've also found that providing spaces where people are able to work in a cross-disciplinary fashion gives the opportunity for innovative ideas. Every Thursday, a team member is paired with another from somewhere else in the company. While say, a marketing person can get to learn tech – it's also very rewarding to an engineer to be able to work with a marketer or a sales person to see that side of the business. Exposing a marketer to engineering may help her have epiphanies like, "i might be able to track how effective my last campaign was by doing X" and an engineer might think about things that could be added to a feature to maximize user growth. We wrote a blog post about our intra-company pairing here: [http://blog.scholasticahq.com/post/91759651948/pairing- thurs...](http://blog.scholasticahq.com/post/91759651948/pairing-thursdays- how-we-keep-our-team-sharp-by#.VJhVvsABA)

</comment><comment><USER4> That is just the coolest idea ever. For non-engineers, software can be a sort of black box filled with "code," whatever that means. This knowledge gap frequently leads to conflicts when engineers take longer to build a feature than non-engineers would like, or when things break that just seem so simple. Getting everybody involved in the deliberate, painstaking process of writing quality software is a fantastic way to ensure the everybody is on-board with the way code is written and minimizes interdepartmental friction. Kudos to Etsy!

</comment><comment><USER5> Great idea. I'd love to see a writeup about a rotation in the other direction, ie give engineers a taste of the business side of the house. As a data scientist I speak a lot with Sales and Engineering and sometimes the two teams seem worlds apart...

<comment><USER6> A customer service rotation for everyone in the company is more important.

<comment><USER7> Zappos does this and their customer service is some of the best in the business:

"Each new employee goes through a rigorous month-long training that focuses on nothing but customer service. They spend 40 hours on the phones helping our customers because regardless of the specific department they were hired for, customer service is the priority. Each holiday season when call volume goes up, everyone in the company pitches in and jumps on the phones because we want to maintain the same level of service no matter how busy it gets."

[http://www.zapposinsights.com/blog/item/zappos-insights- anno...](http://www.zapposinsights.com/blog/item/zappos-insights-announces- its-latest-offering-in-culture-and-customer-service-training-the-school-of- wow)

<comment><USER8> So instead of temporary staff, they take people off of their current projects to work in customer service?? This doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

Especially since I've been in positions where I have been on tight deadlines. The most likely outcome in this scenario is that the employee will not only have to get their customer service rotations done, but also get their tight- deadline project done. With me, it's difficult to move from customer service right back to software development/engineering.

<comment><USER9> > So instead of temporary staff, they take people off of their current > projects to work in customer service?? This doesn't sound like a good idea > to me.

Why not? It improves solidarity. Actually when I worked at Microsoft doing tech support, I got pulled _off_ the phones to help with sudden mandatory tech support rotations due to virus outbreaks. It was great to see marketing managers have to help people assess whether their systems were infected and apply appropriate tools. I would take escallations but generally people did a good job. (Oh and these people showed up with very little training on customer service or tech support so that was fun).

But I think one thing that Microsoft got out of it (this was in 2002-2003) was a stronger sense by everyone why it was important to focus more on system security. I think this improved the company and lead to better software.

> Especially since I've been in positions where I have been on tight > deadlines.

If management know of the rotation, they will have to adjust the deadlines. How many deadlines are really necessary beyond a simple measurement rationale? Management can usually adjust as needed, or reschedule the rotation to a better point.

> With me, it's difficult to move from customer service right back to software > development/engineering.

Isn't the point though to ensure that people are engineering and developing software with customer service in mind?

<comment><USER8> "Why not? It improves solidarity."

There are plenty of better ways to do this.

"I got pulled off the phones to help with sudden mandatory tech support rotations due to virus outbreaks."

It doesn't sound like you are in any kind of engineering role. When you are on the phones, you don't have one large project to work on with deadlines and due dates. It's easy for you to be shifted over to another position.

"If management know of the rotation, they will have to adjust the deadlines. How many deadlines are really necessary beyond a simple measurement rationale? Management can usually adjust as needed, or reschedule the rotation to a better point."

This sounds like a nightmare to deal with. In addition to tight deadlines as a manager, I now have to deal with customer service rotations?? It's hard enough to get projects completed with upper management changing scope (which has happened at pretty much any place I've worked over the last 15 years).

"Isn't the point though to ensure that people are engineering and developing software with customer service in mind?"

I'm fine with this as long as management realizes that deadlines will need to change and it might take a couple of days (or even a week) to get back into the flow of a project that an engineer/developer has been taken off for customer support. In my experience, management doesn't know or care about either of these things and thinks you can just move people around when needed.

I'm glad I run my own company now, so I don't have to deal with this bullshit any longer. I would never implement something like this.

<comment><USER10> I think the better way to put it is: it improves empathy.

More often than not, in large teams or organisations there is often a culture of blame or lack of accountability. I believe these exercises do help to foster greater teamwork and a sense of ownership (of the business).

I would assume from the fact that you run your own business, surely in the early stages you would have to take on multiple roles / responsibilities?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like the rotation idea, but I can't say I see much logic in the desire to have new engineers deploy to production on their first day mentioned/linked in the opening. At VMware (or at least on my team) we try to have new engineers commit code their first week (this doesn't always work out, and when it does it's usually the 4th or 5th day) and I almost feel that's too soon...first day just seems nuts.

You don't see this in other professions, e.g. I doubt doctors are performing surgery or lawyers are going to court on their first day at a new hospital or firm. I'm just not seeing the value in having someone commit code before they're possibly familiar with the codebase and [unless it's a product they used before getting hired] may be equally unfamiliar with what the product even does.

<comment><USER12> In my experience, I think it has more to do with getting an engineer acquainted with the pipeline from writing code to getting it live on production. Once he/she is familiar with this, it takes a huge barrier out of the way for the person to be productive whenever they are ready to write some non trivial code in the codebase.

<comment><USER13> That's exactly right. It's not about pushing meaningful or complex code to production, it's about pushing a small change so that a new engineer can see the whole process from end-to-end.

We do have people push on their first day here at Gridium and I think it's really beneficial. The new engineer sees how we work, and the rest of the team sees that new name in the git logs, on chat, and everywhere else. It sends a strong message that there is a new _member_ of the team who is going to be contributing from now on. It helps to establish cultural norms (everyone makes a big deal out of that first commit which is fun).

I really like the effect it has on our team. Even changing two characters in a string feels like a big deal and that's awesome.

<comment><USER11> > it's about pushing a small change so that a new engineer can see the whole > process from end-to-end

Is that really an accurate portrayal of the process though? Most changes aren't small and take days of development, not minutes or hours. Not to mention code reviews and QA.

<comment><USER14> Yes, it really is an accurate portrayal of the process. Etsy isn't pushing days of development out in a deploy. That would be considered poor practice at Etsy.

To make a sizable feature live, you use a bunch of methods in cooperation:

* Only mutate a bare minimum number of executed lines as code deploys.

* Turn features on and off quickly with (much faster) config deploys.

* Release and test features for internal users first (in production).

* Ramp features up to small amounts of production traffic at a time.

* Deploy new code paths and queries so that they're executed, but aren't visible to end users. (You can use this to detect performance problems early.)

But what you never do is sit on days of sizable code changes that you don't deploy. If you try to deploy a massive diff people in your push will generally suggest that you not do it.

<comment><USER11> > But what you never do is sit on days of sizable code changes that you don't > deploy.

That's certainly sensible but I wasn't suggesting sitting on "days of sizable code changes" \- just that it takes days to make the code changes (particularly once you factor in code review and QA).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's a great idea, but I'm having difficulty understanding the specific task non-coding employees are doing: adding their own photo to Staff page. Shouldn't there be a nice user-friendly back-end interface that would let them do that in about 10 seconds without any code knowledge?

<comment><USER16> We actively resist automating this process. Because of the way Etsy development is structured this gap gets fixed periodically and then we have to go back and un-automate it.

It's a key part of our 1st day push program: [https://codeascraft.com/2012/03/13/making-it-virtually- easy-...](https://codeascraft.com/2012/03/13/making-it-virtually-easy-to- deploy-on-day-one/)

Also it would violate my first rule of engineering which is: "Never build a CMS"

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the explanation. Totally agree with "Never build a CMS" rule. But why not use a pre-built CMS in the first place? Either use Wordpress, or a CMS plugin for your framework if you're using something like ROR. If you're not using a CMS, how are you updating the copy on pages like About? Does that process require a developer each time?

<comment><USER17> The Etsy blogs use Wordpress, so we do use existing third-party tools where is makes sense.

Kellan might have a rule to not build a CMS but we certainly have built one to manage help page content and other knowledge base pages. That content is largely managed by our support staff.

I wrote the current tool but it is actively being replaced. We chose to to roll our own since we'd have to do some work to integrate a third party tool into our database architecture and authentication system. The tool is heavily integrated into other internal tooling and has specific workflows that also make using an existing tool challenging.

The About page content is largely static, aside from the staff photos mentioned in the above post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Kudos to Etsy for doing this. I think there's great value in learning basic programming skills even if not everyone has the inclination to become a software designer. Kind of like how taking music lessons has all kinds of tangential value even if the student doesn't turn out to be another Van Cliburn.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm continually impressed by Etsy Engineering's descriptions of their practices and process.

Rotations are a wonderful idea and, IMO, should be done more regularly.

<comment><USER20> Their descriptions of their practices and processes are the best part about their practices and processes. For all of Etsy's talk about how wonderful they and the enlightened philosophies that drive them are, it's very hard to see evidence of this working with them as a customer or developer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> From a UI perspective, I don't love Etsy but I think they really have a world class engineering team. This not the first time I've heard of good things from that outfit.

</comment><comment><USER22> As much as the rotation idea is interesting, and can be beneficial on the surface, I'm not sure if doing so on a recurring basis provides more value than interruption and the setup/teardown costs of context switching.

Sure, a non engineer could learn a thing or two about how code works, and an engineer as well on handling support, but I'd be cautious about these sessions leading to a false sense of understanding how things actually work, which might eventually lead to, for example, a support person making wrong assumptions about an issue a customer is having just because he/she paired on the relevant code base.

IMO cross disciplinary 'rotations' should happen naturally, instead of making it explicit on a certain day in the quarter. Engineers should have exposure on a day to day basis on what customers want as well as have exposure to the product and business side of things in the planning stage of a sprint, understanding why a story or task is prioritized the way they are, etc. Same goes for non engineers like product managers or support personnel who often deal with engineers on an ongoing basis, and the sharing of technical knowledge should come naturally with each discussion.

</comment><comment><USER23> Wish my employer had that. I'd kill for an engineering / IT dev rotation...since those we're close 2nd & 3rd on my choice of career.

<comment><USER24> What's your current career?

<comment><USER23> Finance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder how to do this with engineering that requires deep knowledge. At my work we have SoC designers, layout, analog designers, board layout and firmware among the engineering departments. I don't think we can even rotate within the engineering departments as everything is so specialized.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's not just tech companies doing this. At Volvo we did it as part of our continuous integration process. It was great fun, it really helped you to understand the business better.

<comment><USER27> Many academic departments do this as well, to give people exposure to lots of different projects in their first few years of graduate school.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This should be also applied to within engineering teams as well. Employees when encouraged to move from team to team after certain intervals (such as 3-4 years). There has been argument that this doesn't allow people to specialize but I feel 3-4 years is long time after which returns are probably diminishing in developing specialization. This keeps life interesting and you get insights on how other teams work, their process and tools etc.

</comment><comment><USER29> Thank you for not putting "Why" at the beginning of the article title.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is really cool. What would be awesome is a design rotation for engineers. The way some of the top designers work is a joy to experience. Even their scratch book looks so well organized.

</comment><comment><USER31> So many parallels to other industries. The greatest chefs often describe how they'd held every job in a restaurant before becoming chefs.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is like an opera company inviting everyone - altos, contraltos, baritone and bass male singers, the conductor, the symphony orchestra - to do a rotation as a soprano singer.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER34> It is true, i used to clean the bathrooms there and i went on code rotation, or as we called it "stink patrol". I thought the stalls were bad, but man, that codebase was far worse!</comment>


Beyond Usability - User Experience - <AUTHOR> http://ruidlopes.posterous.com/beyond-usability-user-experience

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the reference to the CHI2009 paper, very interesting.

Seems like an interesting series, looking forward to the rest of it. Will you be including accessibilty metrics?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads-up. Yap, I'll probably discuss some issues/ideas on accessibility metrics (beyond WCAG's A/AA/AAA).</comment></comment>