Why Microsoft will buy Facebook and keep it closed - <AUTHOR> http://scobleizer.com/2008/05/19/why-microsoft-will-buy-facebook-and-keep-it-closed/

<comment><USER2> Why panic? AOL tried 'fenced garden' approach in its days and it did not work. Why should Microsoft/Facebook be any different? And AOL then had much larger relative market share than Facebook has today.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apparently it did not bother people before that Facebook is not crawlable. If someone chooses to publish his stuff on Facebook, fine by me. One more thing to safely ignore.

<comment><USER4> As shown in the upcoming vs. facebook example in the article, ignoring Facebook is hard to do if you want to organize an event and get lots of people to come.

<comment><USER3> Is "Le Web 08" organized solely via Upcoming.org and Facebook, or do they have their own registration service? Many people might have seen the announcement on Upcoming, but might not have added their avatar to the listing.

I think random Google searches are also not the most common way to attract people to such conferences.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. Random Google searches _aren't_ the way to attract people to such conferences. But an invitation from a friend with similar interests also attending the conference is! facebook 1, Google 0.

If you think about it, what _is_ Google the way to do? Anything involving people, and facebook wins. Flickr is Google-searchable. Facebook Photos is not. But facebook Photos wins, at least among young adults.

<comment><USER3> If that's what people want... Email also isn't searchable, yet people managed to inform each other about conferences via email for years.

No doubt Facebook is a certain power on the internet. I still cling to the "social networks are like nightclubs" theory, though, and expect people to move on. I simply can't imagine Facebook dominating everything, because I personally don't like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good thing most of the value on the web is not contained within Facebook.

From Google's perspective, it's just one more pile of crap to route around, and it's your own incompetence at SEO if you put your valuable content behind a walled garden that can't be indexed.

This is how Google has the Blagowebosphere by the balls: it's very much in your interest for Google to be able to access all your content robotically at any time in any way it pleases.

This is _serious business_ , people.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why does anyone care what Scoble thinks? His prediction record is somewhat less than stunning.

Isn't it obvious by now that Scoble & A-list bloggers are just as clueless and hype-prone as mainstream media? Or are we still waiting for Silverlight to reboot the Web?

<comment><USER8> Scoble faces some of the same pressures and and incentives as the mainstream media; a need to be relevant, timely and first. It is what defines the 'A-list'; they are the bloggers who most resemble the establishment media.

That said, on this issue I think I agree with him, but my response is different; as a facebook refusenik and Crotchety Old Guy (Tm) I'm all for Microsoft borging Facebook and sinking into a giant quagmire of Suck; I just hope they don't take Flickr and the better parts of Yahoo! with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pairing Facebook's closed data with a general search engine is probably a good idea, but what's missing from Scoble's post is why MS would need to buy Yahoo's search engine in order to do this. MS has their own search engine, which isn't as technically advanced as Google's but is probably on par with Yahoo's, despite it's much lower marketshare.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't agree with Robert on this one. Google has billion of pages and data to crawl and index. Facebook data might still be worth; nevertheless it's not that big of deal for Google to worry about. Microsoft already has an ad deal on facebook; I don't see a rationale behind buying facebook for search

</comment><comment><USER11> That XKCD comic was actually funny. I now have to rethink everything I thought I knew about the world.

</comment><comment><USER12> It makes my brain hurt how dumb Scoble is. I've never done any heroin in my life, but every time I read Scoble it makes me want to find the fattest, rustiest needle I can, load it with heroin mixed with whatever mystery powders I can find, and jam the whole works as far as it will go right through my eyeball into an artery deep in my brain. Because feeling my brain dying from an intraventricular brain injection of way too much heroin, comet bleach, and flea powder would be better than how I feel after reading Scoble.

In this case, I want to replace my cerebrospinal fluid with dangerous narcotics and harsh industrial chemicals because of two particular stupid as fuck comments.

"We will never get an open Web back if these two deals happen."

Um. No. We will. Because microo!softbook will be a monstrous nightmare that will be plagued by a Vista-like level of incompetence of creating applications that are pleasant to use. Meanwhile, cool young people, who all have macs anyway, having realized that while their parents had to use shitty computers, they don't, will have already eschewed microsoft before it became the sterile chimera microo!softbook, will stop using facebook, because, hey, it's 2009 or 2010 and facebook was so 2003. Besides, it turns out that Ning in better and closer to the maclike good experience they expect anyway.

"This has created HUGE value for Microsoft and has handed Steve Ballmer an Internet strategy which brings Microsoft from last place to first in less than a week."

Um...this hasn't created any value. It certainly doesn't bring them into first place in a week. How do I know? Because I'm not a moron like scoble. In order for this to work, steve ballmer would have to successfully execute this strategy. Steve Ballmer is too disconnected from the experience of the end user to do this. He is not able to be the visionary and he's also not able to correctly recognize either this flaw, or the person who he should delegate the job too, as evidenced by the massive failures in Vista and the X-Box production problems. I don't mean to be trashing Ballmer, he's done extremely well for himself, but he can't lead this battle, and hasn't been great at delegating to people who can. God is in the details. Ballmer can't make them work.

That a guy who basically got his start licking microsoft's asshole with his tongue in public thinks it might work doesn't mean much.</comment>


Banks turning your purchasing habits into ads - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/16/AR2011011604437.html

<comment><USER2> WOAH. I think it was just yesterday I said on HN that I'd flip out if any bank ever did this. And here we are...This is why cash is great to carry around!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2140095>

<comment><USER3> You should not be surprised. Credit reporting companies sell your score data to credit card and mortgage lenders. Retailers pool your shopping habits into "co-ops" which are used for direct mail and online ads. It goes on and on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Citi has been doing this for years on their credit card statements. Checking/saving accounts was the next logical step.

With the easy money (credit card interest, late fees, debit card interchange fees, etc) drying up, banks will explore every possible alternative to generate revenue and cut costs. Anything short of stealing money right from your account won't surprise me going forward.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not surprised to see this happen.

My question is the following: When every company has rewards systems and 70% discounts on coupon sites, coupled with credit card rewards, discounted gift cards, manufacturer coupons and the new ability to get more discounts by adjusting my shopping patterns, how do I know what a product is actually worth?

Companies like Scvngr are trying to insert game mechanics into the offline world, but it feels like the retail sector is already way ahead in making us play their discount game.

<comment><USER6> You know what a product is actually worth by thinking hard about what use or pleasure you'll get from it. If you're currently trying to deduce what things are worth from their prices, you're already getting very wrong answers -- price-setting is a complicated business involving lots of psychological trickery. Sometimes you can sell more units of a product by increasing the price, precisely because lots of people use the "what it costs is what it's worth" heuristic; you can often sell more of product X at $P without changing either X or P, just by introducing a new super-expensive premium version of X that costs $(10*P); etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Next step is "pay per buy" with conversion tracking that these companies can clearly track.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this similar to blippys model?</comment>


How statically linked programs run on Linux - <AUTHOR> http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2012/08/13/how-statically-linked-programs-run-on-linux/

<comment><USER2> The interesting contrast here is how things are done on Windows.

The reason most C++ programs ran on all Windows computers (and with such a tiny file size) is Windows shipped with the common libraries (C++ runtime) required to run the programs.

When Borland came out with Delphi they wanted Microsoft to include some of their own common libraries to reduce the footprint of the executable -- but Microsoft said no, meaning Delphi's executables had to have everything linked into it statically, resulting in files that were an order of magnitude bigger. Aside from the stigma from larger file sizes in an era (the 90s) when this mattered, they arguably came out ahead in this department as Delphi by default avoided "DLL hell" (until MS solved it more or less definitively with Windows 2000) and would run anywhere, on anything, with no additional dependencies.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it actually practical to statically compile & link large parts of a modern C / C++ based software environment? The last time I tried to do that with a nontrivial C program and GCC it felt like an ultimately unsuccessful snipe hunt.

Incidentally, cross-compiling static binaries is a hugely productive feature of Go.

<comment><USER4> Please see:

[http://www.akkadia.org/drepper/no_static_linking.html](http://www.akkadia.org/drepper/no_static_linking.html)

<comment><USER5> There's only one minor problem; DLL hell. As long as none of your applications break when you update their shared dependencies, everything's fine. The package management system generally takes care of this in modern distributions, and the package maintainers usually do enough coordination to avoid (much) breakage.

But if you're trying to produce commercial shippable software (what used to be called shrinkwrap), you're not going to fit in as easily with a package management system. Your binaries will probably need updating when the shared libraries update; that's a major headache. And this is one of the reasons why there hasn't been much of a commercial market in software for Linux. Everything generally works much more smoothly if your only dependencies are glibc and a handful of other bits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The suckless.org people (creators of dwm) are working on a fully static Linux distro[1]. I'm quite interested to see how it turns out, but at this point it's starting to look like vaporware.

[1]: [http://sta.li](http://sta.li)

</comment><comment><USER7> TL;DR: Good luck! At least until recently it was virtually impossible to actually do this - Autopackage used to have a list of things that prevented making decently portable binary packages for Linux. I believe they resorted to shipping a modified linker to get things to work.

Unfortunately there is a lot of hostility to making binary distribution easier on Linux because of the "you should be using shared libraries and why would you ever want to distribute binaries when you can just distribute the source code?" attitude that prevails.

Having said that, GCC did finally add a _real_ option to link statically (i.e. not `-static`) a few years ago. And I believe the linker finally supports symbol versioning.</comment>


Wirelessly Powered LED illuminated wedding ring - <AUTHOR> http://www.kokes.net/projectlonghaul/projectlonghaul.htm <comment><USER2> Very nice write-up on the project. Good to see some machining on here.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use more than one browser? - <AUTHOR> Do you use more than one browser on your desktop or laptop?
If so, which ones, and why?
I use Safari for my main browsing and Chrome for development or sites that need WebRTC. <comment><USER2> I use two browsers, Chrome and Safari.

Reason #1: I have an ad blocker enabled on Chrome and sometimes I copy/paste a URL that won't open with the ad blocker enabled and paste it to Safari (my secondary browser).

Reason #2: To use a site where I have two accounts e.g., personal and public/professional account on Reddit.

Reason #3 (rare use case): To occasionally get through errors e.g., a site has a bug that only shows up on Chrome. I'd try using Safari before giving up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes. Firefox as primary and for general development/debugging. Safari for must-use web apps that peg the CPU on Firefox. Chrome as infrequently as possible for Postman, browser-specific debugging, and "is this only broken because the shop that developed it is a Chrome monoculture?"

</comment><comment><USER4> At work, yes. Internet Explorer for things on the corporate intranet and SharePoint, Chrome for any other kind of web browsing.

At home, no. Safari for everything.

</comment><comment> jude- I use Chromium 99% of the time, and Firefox 1% of the time (only when I need to use a plugin that doesn't exist for Chromium).

</comment><comment><USER5> I use 2 browsers. Chrome as my default and Safari as my secondary browser when requiring a secondary window

</comment><comment><USER6> Chrome for main browsing, Firefox for testing and developing sites.

I also have Opera and IE but only use them very occasionally

</comment><comment><USER7> Chrome - main Firefox - Security testing</comment>


Berkshire and 3G Capital to Buy Heinz for $23 Billion - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/berkshire-and-3g-capital-to-buy-heinz-for-23-billion/

<comment><USER2> Over the last few months I've been noticing a lot of adverts for Heinz products on the radio. They go like this:

"When I was younger dad would take us out for fish and chips. We'd walk along the canal and feed the ducks, even in the rain. Then I'd unwrap the bag, with the steam rising, and squirt on a dollop of ketchup. And, like always, it has to be Heinz."

I'm always amazed at the ability of brands to sell £0.20 products for £2.00, and the supermarkets who then sell £0.16 products for £1.00 and claim it's _value_.

I worked for Lucozade (UK Gatorade) for a while. Our total cost, delivered to retailer, of a bottle was 12p. We sold it to them for min 50p and they sold it for at least £1.

Ultimately this is a bet on the longevity of consumer brands, which I think is probably a wise one.

<comment><USER3> You're looking at the cost of production, and then the price and assuming that all of the space between the two is profit, and seem to be implying that somehow it is a ripoff.

What you're not considering is the value to the customer.

The incremental cost of a copy of Microsoft Office (with electronic delivery they cut out virtually all of their manufacturing cost) is close to zero. Probably 12p as well.

Yet Microsoft sells that Office Suite for $99 or much much more.

If the value of one copy of that office suite to a company is $10,000 in improved efficiency (eg: salaries saved by not having to pay overtime or hire as many people-- remember when spreadsheets were physical sheets of paper and companies had staffs of dozens of women whose sole job was to type up correspondence on typewriters?) then they are "profiting" even more than Microsoft is because the spread is wider.

Further, manufacturing costs are only one part of the costs of a product. Yes there's marketing, and advertising which you may hate, but there's also the offices that house the workers that run the company, the royalties paid to people who generate formulations, the taxes paid to the government, the manifold fees, costs, and expenses involved in running a business. All of these raise the actual "cost" from above the 12p manufacturing (and delivery costs I assume you included.)

For me, the value of buying a brand that has reliable quality control is often pretty high.

If a high quality bottle of ketchup elevates the satisfaction of an inexpensive meal (say fish & chips) to the point where it is on par with a much more expensive meal, like those workers using office, I may be getting more "profit" out of the transaction than the company.

This is how I use ketchup. It means I eat out less, and spend less on food and have a higher quality of life.

<comment><USER2> Ketchup is a physical product with raw material costs which requires physical storage and delivery, and must be distributed through intermediaries. It also has a shelf life, and ingredients that fluctuate in price seasonally. Your comparison is about as sensical as me complaining I can't type an essay using 100 bottles of ketchup.

However, my points are that a) we routinely pay 10x the 'value' of food products, and b) supermarkets piggy back off our conditioning by brands to offer us 'value' products which still cost 8x what they are worth without any of the advertising/marketing overhead.

The parallel would be if Macbook Airs were being made and delivered to Apple stores for $100, or cars were delivered to dealers at a cost of $2,000 and then sold to you for $20,000.

<comment><USER4> You keep talking about the 'value' of products and what they're 'worth'.

Things are worth what people will pay for them. As nirvana pointed out, looking at only the marginal production cost of something is highly misleading. Heinz makes about 36% gross margins [1], which is certainly good, but it's not as if they're seeing the 'value' of that '10x' markup. And lest you think the rest of their cost is advertising to fool people into spending too much on ketchup, their total marketing (not just ads) budget is only a few hundred million[2] (at least as of 2006) vs total revenue of over $10B.

[1] <http://ycharts.com/companies/HNZ/gross_profit_margin>

[2] [http://adage.com/article/news/heinz-ceo-boost-ad-spend- proxy...](http://adage.com/article/news/heinz-ceo-boost-ad-spend-proxy-fight- forces-hand/110939/)

<comment><USER5>
      | Things are worth what people will pay for them.

If I pay $50 million for a forged Mona Lisa, does that mean that forgeries of the Mona Lisa are all worth $50 million?

<comment><USER6> It means, at the time you bought, you thought the painting was worth $50 million. Later, when you discover it's not, you'll be less likely to buy anything else from that art dealer. Same as anything else in life. People keep buying ketchup because ketchup remains valuable to them, even at $2 a bottle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Check out the call options yesterday. Either Buffet's traders were implementing some hedge strategy, or someone made a fat insider trade. Zero hedge covered it: [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-02-14/so-who-leaked- heinz...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-02-14/so-who-leaked-heinz-deal)

</comment><comment><USER8> I've heard stories that Heinz is so defensive of their brand that they send out "Ketchup Inspectors" to make sure restaurants aren't refilling Heinz bottles with lesser ketchup. This is the only somewhat legitimate source that I could find: <http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1067133/posts>

<comment><USER9> I'm sure there was a reddit where someone said they'd worked in a restaurant and they'd seen the ketchup checks happening.

<comment><USER10> What's the penalty if you get caught? Restaurants usually just say it's "ketchup" without mentioning that it's Heinz. What can Heinz actually do to you if you buy a bottle of their stuff and fill it with something else?

<comment><USER11> That's a really clear-cut trademark issue. If you're using Heinz' trademark to sell a different product they can sue you easy.

<comment><USER12> > If you're using Heinz' trademark to sell a different product they can sue > you easy.

No. If you're using the Heinz trademark in such a way as to confuse and mislead the public, then they can sue you. Otherwise probably not.

Consider the example of Apple Computer and Apple Music (once owned by the Beatles). Two businesses, no conflict, so no lawsuit.

Once Sun Computer threatened to sue me because I had a Web page named "Sun Computer" (the page computed the position of the sun: <http://www.arachnoid.com/lutusp/sunrise/>). My argument was that I wasn't trying to confuse the public, and my use of the word "sun" was legitimate because it referred to the astronomical object by that name. Their objection was that my use of "Sun Computer" as a page name caused my page to appear above theirs in the Google search listings.

I decided their position had merit, and I renamed the page. My point is that it is all about the degree to which use of a trademark or trademarked name would confuse the public and hurt someone's business, not use of a trademark _per se_.

<comment><USER13> The different product the parent mentioned is still ketchup. The scenario is replacing the ketchup in a Heinz bottle with ketchup from another brand, not selling "Heinz Cola" or something.

<comment><USER12> My post showed that the OP was wrong -- it showed that using a trademarked name is not in and of itself actionable. There has to be a basis for action apart from the simple fact that the names are the same.

<comment><USER13> Taken out of context, you're completely right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great article about Buffet and his strategy in the economist a while back: <http://www.economist.com/node/21563735>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_57> has the list of the 57 varieties

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Every dev needs Ketchup ...

<comment><USER15> Well, he's not a developer, but I see your point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Business development ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The fundamentals of this transaction will be outside the scope of understanding of the HN crowd.

<comment><USER17> What are the fundamentals of this transaction?

<comment><USER18> Heinz is a 100 year brand and generates about $1.3B a year in after tax cash.

<comment><USER19> 1.3 / 23 is less than 6 percent ROI, and buffet thinks this is a good investment. Granted, they may think the business can be streamlined, but I still think this says a lot about the capital glut that's driving down returns.

Ps: Most of this deal is financed with debt, so there buying 6% ROI with debt.

<comment><USER20> as long as the debt costs them less than 6% then free money

<comment><USER21> Berkshire Hathaway's biggest problem is finding productive investments on the scale of the cash they generate. There insurance float provides them with what is essentially interest free loans if they estimates losses well.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Researchers Predict Material with Record-Setting Melting Point - <AUTHOR> https://news.brown.edu/articles/2015/07/melting <comment></comment>


Google's look, evolved - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/09/google-update.html <comment><USER4> 2008 HN discussion from when the outgoing "little blue g" favicon was introduced: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=211518](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=211518)

In it, Dustin Curtis criticizes Google (rather rightly, in my hindsight- enhanced opinion) for a Marissa-Mayeresque design process of "Make 300 logo variants with pseudorandom permutations, and then pick your favorite." Looking at those permutations now ([http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_7ZYqYi4xigk/SEnK37orPGI/AAAAAAAAAp...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_7ZYqYi4xigk/SEnK37orPGI/AAAAAAAAAp4/gR3gdZ6sgbU/s1600-h/favicon_iterations.jpg)) it's obvious (again, with the benefit of hindsight) that they were all very inside-the-box. Apparently nobody even considered trying a different font.

This pg comment from that thread turned out to be particularly insightful, given today's news: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=211649](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=211649)

<comment><USER5> The reason they did that was so that they could build up data on the effect of each factor independently. That way, when the bigwigs get into a meeting and discuss alternative designs, they can predict "Ok, this will have $X effect on revenue but will decrease search latency by Y ms, which itself will have +$X effect on revenue."

I was the first engineer on the first visual redesign that tried to change _everything_ about the page [1]. One of our biggest problems was that since we tried to change everything at once, the metrics went haywire, and we couldn't know if a change was because we introduced a left-nav (okay, actually we kinda could, because we'd experimented with a left-nav on its own beforehand) or because we changed the line spacing or because we cleaned up the logo or because we added icons. There was effectively no way of "debugging" the user; when user behavior varied from expected, we didn't know why.

I've got plenty of other stories from that era, but they aren't really fit for a public forum. Happy to discuss privately. (Kinda ironic when the non-Googler says that to the Googler...)

[1] [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/spring- metamorphosis-...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/spring- metamorphosis-googles-new-look.html)

<comment><USER6> I understand the urge to try to maximize on stuff like this, but in the end it loses sight of what's most important: the quality of the results. And sometimes I feel that a lot of valuable engineering time and effort is wasted on making things prettier and better monetizing in the short term when in the longer term the better search results are what would really move the needle.

And most A/B testing focuses on the very short time effects of the change (and change all by itself, even change for the worse can have a short term positive effect just because something is new). On another note: A/B testing has another limitation, which is that you're optimizing for the bulk, please one person more and you more or less automatically annoy another.

<comment><USER5> There are plenty of talented people working on ranking and webspam too.

There's a limit to how parallelizable those problems are. At some point, more people working on an algorithm doesn't make it faster or better, it just makes it more confusing and worse. Mythical Man Month applies as much to Google as it did to IBM. And so you might as well put people onto optimizing the rest of the page as well, because they'll do more good there than having yet another cook in the ranking algorithm kitchen. (I'd argue that there are too many people working at Google in general...I left, so I'm no longer contributing to that problem. But then, there were probably too many people when I joined, so I contributed to it for 5 years.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love it. Quite often logo redesign processes gets completely out of hand, but this was a significant improvement over the older version: Cleaner, more modern and beautiful in all its simplicity. Bravo!

<comment><USER8> I don't like it. It seems more juvenile in the same way comic sans gets criticized for. The loss of character on the lower case g is especially unfortunate.

 _Non est disputandum_ I guess.

<comment><USER9> I really like this new look, but really hated Facebook's move away from Klavika earlier this year. This to me feels more friendly, fun, and still has personality whereas I feel Facebook's new logo is dull and lifeless.

<comment><USER10> To me, Facebook's logo is far better than Google. Facebook is much less childish.

<comment><USER9> I absolutely love Facebook's brand, with the Klavika logo. I just don't like the new typemark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google's userinterface, in gmail.com, at least, has gotten progressively worse, and worse, and worse, and worse since its inception in my experience and everyone I've asked about this.

... don't know what else to say. I question if their designers use their own products.

Latest bugs worth mentioning: Chrome still has an issue that can cause microphone to not work in Hangouts. Gmail.com has added a "Your plug-in google talk will no longer be supported soon" ...

<comment><USER12> Google maps is _incredibly frustrating_ to use. I can't understand what user testing they do.

<comment><USER13> What changes would you make to Google Maps, with a basic set of assumptions? (let's say, you can't dramatically increase the cost, you can't hurt Google revenue sources, and you have a team of ~20 engineers to work on the changes).

<comment><USER14> I'd change it back to the way it was prior to the redesigns.

It used to work fine. The big problem with the current version is the almost complete absence of legible affordances.

There are all kinds of buttons with logos on them that do stuff. But until you learn what they do, their functions are mysterious.

Basic things like Traffic used to be obvious, one-click features. Now they're hidden in the burger menu, so at best they're two clicks away, and at worst a non-trivial percentage of users has no idea they exist. (Etc.)

<comment><USER15> Sticking the UI over top of the map really is silly. The 10 pixels of map I can still see between the search box and the border of the screen are completely useless, but make the page considerably noisier (more edges/transitions).

<comment><USER16> I too enjoyed the side bar. It's mysterious but it made me feel like there was more real estate. The map wasn't covered with boxes, whereas in the new design the 40% left handside of the map is unusable. Also, when searching a place, it resets the zoom, it zooms until I see the inside of that place (such as, the city center), whereas I generally want to see where the city is located with a bit more context. Same for a path: it puts the origin and destination on the viewport edges, whereas I generally want to locate the route, therefore see slightly more context. Slightly enough that it's painful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's a bit more info on the design process:

[https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google- ident...](https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-identity/)

<comment><USER18> > including building a special variant of our full-color logo that is only 305 > bytes, compared to our existing logo at ~14,000 bytes.

That's _huge_ for low-bandwidth users.

<comment><USER19> Why? This is one of the most cacheable resources. Also, it's displayed reasonably often, so I'd expect it to be rarely evicted from the device-local cache.

<comment><USER20> Even if it isn't evicted very often, the first time it is loaded, it will be ~3 times faster, it will take up less storage thus better for others and (probably) easier to render.

<comment><USER21> And on the scale Google operates on it'll save quite a bit for them as well to serve it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's most interesting to me is not so much the logotype itself (which is nice; the tilted 'e' is the perfect sans reference to the angled stroke in Catull), but that one of the top-tier identity components is a unified loading spinner.

While Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft all have their own branded spinners, Google has probably had both the most visually adventuresome and the most inconsistent spinners across all its products. Beyond unifying these, though, one can see this as a step past mere unification, and an attempt to take ownership of an unavoidable part of the cloud paradigm, latency. It's a pretty interesting move in terms of branding-UX coordination.

<comment><USER23> Maybe they're backing the spinner with latency data collection across all their apps...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'll be the first one to say it: I liked the older better. There was literally nothing wrong with it, it did not look dated at all.

<comment><USER4> We've been using the new logo internally for a week. Give it a day, and then go back and look at the old logo, and _then_ tell me how dated it looks.

<comment><USER25> My series of responses within the span of 30 minutes:

* "It looks like fridge magnets for kids! I don't like it; the iconic lower case g is gone cause of designers obsession of san-serif == modern."

* "Glad that they continue to embrace their playful culture tho."

* "You know what, it's growing on me."

* "Haha, they tilted the e, how cute. Oh god what is happening to me!?"

* "Geeze, how old is Google books? They haven't even updated the logo!"

<comment><USER26> Same here. Amazingly, the first inflection point was after about 60 seconds of pure disgust.

Not into that G yet. I think I'll call them oogle from now on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Oddly, I _prefer_ the "crayon-grained" version of it that appears at the end of their home page's scribbling animation just before it turns into solid colors.

The solid colors seem too "loud" to me; they should probably be pastel. I think they are more noticeable now because the letters are so thick.

Also, the capital "G" looks wrong; I think the part that looks most strange is the upper curl, which doesn't seem to go far enough.

<comment><USER28> You're totally right, the solid color version hurts my eyes looking at it because it's so bright and loud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This makes me sad, much like how Microsoft's logo change made me sad.

Microsoft's italic bold lettering was iconic. It was the logo the company had used for the longest time, the logo that adorned their best (and their worst) products. It was a logo that everyone had seen, everyone knew, that was incredibly recognisable.

And then they threw that all away, and created intentional brand confusion by swapping their logo for the _Windows_ logo, then completely replacing Windows' logo with a grayscale tilted pane of glass.

Why? Why fix what's not broken? Why replace the well-known with the unrecognisable?

Google's logo, the one they used from 1999-2010, was also iconic. It was easily readable: it had a typeface made for legibility and style, not made to be mathematically simple. It contrasted well with any background. It was the logo that everyone knew.

And while this particular change isn't quite so drastic as Microsoft's was, it's still strange to me. Why is it necessary? People surely won't think less of Google for sticking with the one they've used for so long. It doesn't make them look dated: they had already tweaked the hues and the drop-shadow slightly so it fits in. And the company's not headed in some radical new direction that they need to symbolically gesture about.

I don't get it. I probably never will.

<comment><USER30> People felt the same way when Microsoft got rid of their old 80s logo. There was a 'Save the Blibbet' campaign to bring it back.

<comment><USER29> Huh, so they did: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2005/07/14/438...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2005/07/14/438777.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The favicon still hasn't changed: [https://www.google.com/favicon.ico](https://www.google.com/favicon.ico)

I can't imagine the nightmare it must updating the logo for a company like Google. There must be so many forgotten places that will be missed.

<comment><USER32> I visited Google Dublin last year and found that they still used the old beveled Google-logo for e.g. letters and papers. Not the slightly beveled logo from 2010-2013, but the old one from 1999-2010.

<comment><USER33> The Google app engine also still uses the beveled logo with the shadow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Just when I thought we might be starting to pivot away from flat design - <USER2> anyone know of a different design paradigm that is being used by smaller/fringe designers who are tired of flat/minimal UX/UI?

<comment><USER35> Flat design is easy to accomplish for designers who never learned how to draw, or do computer modeling.

Unfortunately, most design programs don't actually teach these foundational skills. That means there are a lot of designers out there who are forced to work in an oversimplified print-design style to hide their incompetence.

As someone who hires for this stuff, finding skilled designers is unimaginably hard.

I hear designers constantly complaining about the lack of jobs. They're full of it. The problem is the lack of skilled applicants. Design has become filled with lazy people, while being arguably one of the hardest fields to be good at. I've had ads out in a major US city for months for a very good paying design job, and have yet to see a portfolio that looked even moderately professional.

That's really where this all comes from, flat design hides designer incompetence.

<comment><USER36> Do you have an email where I could forward you a resume for a designer?

<comment><USER35> I assume by resume you mean portfolio?

richard [|)07] laborde [@7] gmale

<comment><USER36> Yes, portfolio. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Doesn't really do anything for me one way or the other. It's fine, but so was the previous design. It's just... meh.

I find myself reminded of an xkcd strip: [https://xkcd.com/915/](https://xkcd.com/915/)

</comment><comment><USER38> So how far can Google take the "kid friendly" aesthetic?

Anyone remember Colorforms? [http://www.liveandlearn.com/shop/images/Original_Colorforms....](http://www.liveandlearn.com/shop/images/Original_Colorforms.jpg)

<comment><USER39> I was always a Lite-Brite man myself...

[http://i.imgur.com/8efMGD0.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/8efMGD0.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I understand _why_ Google needed to update their identity, but it feels like this logo has gone through endless committee after committee.

It doesn't actually convey any brand to me, just a very safe interpretation of Material Design. That seems short-sighted to me, since an identity typically lasts much longer than a design language.

<comment><USER41> The animation on google.com even implies it was designed by committee, as apparently separate hands reach up to place each letter. I thought that was funny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Not only the logo, they have changed the size of search box: [http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-more-height-to- their...](http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-more-height-to-their-search- box-229474)

<comment><USER29> And not for the first time! I remember when the buttons and search field had your OS's default button height and styling. Those days are sadly long-gone.

<comment><USER43> Fear not! You can have the 1999 logo and search experience again right now! [http://www.google.com/custom](http://www.google.com/custom)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I expected more attention to detail for a project this big. They are using the new logos in a few places now. All suffer from various problems. The one on the Google Official Blog ([http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/google- update.html](http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/google-update.html)) has hinting problems most noticeably on "l" symbol (zoomed version – [http://i.imgur.com/1kRZB5o.png](http://i.imgur.com/1kRZB5o.png)). The same with the logo on the Google Translate ([https://translate.google.com/](https://translate.google.com/)) and with the presented Google Logotype on the Google Design blog ([https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google- ident...](https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-identity/), [https://g-design.storage.googleapis.com/production/v5/assets...](https://email@example.com)). The black SVG logo at the bottom of the last page has some unkempt figures and a leftover line.

On a positive note, the logo image ([http://googleblog.blogspot.ru/2015/09/google- update.html](http://googleblog.blogspot.ru/2015/09/google-update.html)) is well optimized with Zopfli ([https://github.com/google/zopfli](https://github.com/google/zopfli)). However, I don't see why the new logo is smaller (from here – [https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google- ident...](https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-identity/)). I could bring down the size of the previous one ([http://i.imgur.com/lfmoqgP.png](http://i.imgur.com/lfmoqgP.png)) to 8 174 bytes (originally 14 022 bytes) vs 13 804 bytes for the new one. Of course, SVG versions are both much smaller.

<comment><USER29> This reminds me of how Microsoft, when they changed their logo to a squared off Windows flag, didn't even _try_ to hint it and it was a blurry mess everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Great design, but it's funny how you can infer what a company actually _is_ by contrast to what it's trying too hard to be. Google has a very childish logo (the doodle even emphasis that) to have the company look like a fun and happy company, whereas people fear it's going to become the next big brother.

When you see it that way, it's almost an admission of guilt. No company would put so much emphasis on child imageries if it weren't fearing so much. Google is accused of controlling your life, so it's using the symbol of the exact opposite of "in control", aka small children.

<comment><USER46> I think you're trying a bit too hard here. Google has had this sort of branding for a long time, including pre-snowden.

<comment><USER45> They went from "lively and fun" with bright colors to "childish" with the font on this latest iteration ( once again, the doodle says it all). Given the company's bank account, and the fact that we're talking about the company's main logo, i don't think this kind of evolution is only due to one designer's decision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I like it except I wish they had kept the old kind of lower case g (TIL it's called a "double story g": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G#/media/File:LowercaseG.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G#/media/File:LowercaseG.svg)), there's something pleasantly unnecessary about that kind of g.

<comment><USER48> Yeah I like it too. And thanks for the "double story g"... I always referred to it as "those scissor handles g": [http://www.ekal.pk/barber-scissors/fancy- scissors-070s.jpg](http://www.ekal.pk/barber-scissors/fancy-scissors-070s.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> This font fits in perfectly with the Alphabet theme. Straight out of a kids book.

<comment><USER50> In hindsight, the Alphabet page has had the uppercase G from the new Google logo all along.

[https://abc.xyz/](https://abc.xyz/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Wait, what. At roughly the 1:34 mark, the voice pulls up photos of her kid with a pumpkin. Do you have to tag your photos with "pumpkin" first or is the recent "Choose the picture of waffles" in Recaptcha fueling that?

<comment><USER52> No, they are automatically classifying photos. If you have photos in Google Photos, you can try it out with words such as "forest", or "dog", or "grill". It's pretty cool and scary at the same time :-)

<comment><USER51> I did not know they were doing anything other than identifying faces that you've already tagged. Grabbing the pumpkin, whatever out of the photo is just wonderful.

<comment><USER53> It's even better than that. It can recognize landmarks. I can ask it "Show me pictures of myself in Paris" and it finds 25-year-old scans that I uploaded that haven't got any kind of geographic data in the EXIF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> From the video: "Think about how far Google has evolved from the ten blue links."

I do, and it's not always a good thing.

Also, I don't think I'm a fan of that new typeface. The cutesiness with the rotated 'e' on the end is sort of teeth-grating to me: it breaks up the rhythm of the rest of the wordmark.

<comment><USER55> The slanted e is a callback to the previous Google logo, which also had a slanted e.

<comment><USER56> The O's were slightly tilted too, no?

<comment><USER57> They still are in the new logo. They're perfect circles, but they've been rotated to the exact same angle as the old "o"s.

<comment><USER24> how do you rotate a perfect circle

<comment><USER58> that's... the joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I ran a survey to gauge the reaction toward the logo change and shared the results at [http://blog.zmxv.com/2015/09/crowds-reaction-to-googles- new-...](http://blog.zmxv.com/2015/09/crowds-reaction-to-googles-new- logo.html)

HN discussion thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10161043](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10161043)

</comment><comment><USER60> Not an improvement in the multicolor "G" icon - the weakest color (yellow) effectively bisects the G vertically at a hot point along the horizontal axis - hot because it's the very leftmost spot that most eyes will encounter first.

</comment><comment><USER61> I'm really glad they have finally left the serif font behind. No matter how much I read about the benefits of serifs, I can't fight the immediate association: serif = old, sans-serif = modern.

<comment> iso8859-1 That's too simplistic, don't you agree? This is exactly why I prefer serif.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Many tech companies seem to be rolling out new designs at an increasing rate rate.

A bit of a side note, but I've recently been pondering for how long material design will stay with us. I'd guess when the developer for that last Jelly Beanish app in my phone has finally made the switch, Google releases their new design guidelines and the process begins again...

<comment><USER63> Material Design is more of a living standard. It's constantly being updated, clarified and expanded. They even have changelogs. I'd guess that it's extremely likely to be replaced anytime soon, but will evolve over time.

<comment><USER41> This reads like fashion discussion. "Skinny jeans just look better aesthetically, they'll never go out of style." Give it a few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Wow, Gruber's not a fan [1]. Can't say I'm surprised, but this seems harsh even coming from him.

[1] [http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/09/01/google- logo](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/09/01/google-logo)

</comment><comment> mh-cx I'm using an original Google Nexus 7 (2012 with latest Android) and try to view this page using an original Google browser (Chrome) and this is one of the few pages that make chrome crash. Same on my motorola razr i.

I love it when pages that talk about "cross platform" behave this way.

<comment><USER65> Same on Vanilla Android/Chrome on Motorola G2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I only noticed this when I saw it on LinkedIn side-by-side.

The Microsoft logo and the Google logo are very similar in style: [http://i.imgur.com/s7kR6jJ.png](http://i.imgur.com/s7kR6jJ.png)

The blocks in the middle are the colors from both the logos.

<comment><USER67> I found it hard to compare colors using your blocks, so I remade your image: [http://i.imgur.com/auB75fj.png](http://i.imgur.com/auB75fj.png)

The yellow is very, very similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Seems very similar to the new lenovo logo

<comment><USER69> And in style to the 'new' eBay logo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> That looks like Bauhaus font, that used to be so common for all things Atari.

Here is an example:

[http://www.atarimania.com/2600/boxes/hi_res/yars_revenge_col...](http://www.atarimania.com/2600/boxes/hi_res/yars_revenge_color_cart_6.jpg)

(look at the first line, with its slanted e -- like the last e in Google.)

More observations on Atari Abahaus here:

[http://atariage.com/forums/topic/164954-deans-foods-using- at...](http://atariage.com/forums/topic/164954-deans-foods-using-atari-font- to-market-to-our-generation/)

<comment><USER71> I love Atari, and I can see some small similarities (the capital 'G' and the lowercase 'e'). But overall, I can't say that I agree. For what it's worth, I like the Bauhaus font a bit more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I'm sure Groupon will be just thrilled to see all the Google app icons updating to contain a bold, sans-serif letter G.

[http://www.androidpolice.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/09/nexu...](http://www.androidpolice.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/09/nexus2cee_Gs-728x392.jpg)

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.groupon](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.groupon)

</comment><comment><USER73> The logo they used from 1999 - 2010 [1] was the best. It was clear, distinctive, and pleasing to the eye. The one they used after that until 2013 was a step backwards, but not too much worse. Those two are better than the rest by a huge margin.

This latest logo is... I don't have the right words. Looks daycare copy. Welcome to Google. We're not useful, we're safe.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_logo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_logo)

</comment><comment><USER74> Do not like the "Sans Serif" trend. Serifs can be good and Google looked awesome with serifs.

</comment><comment><USER75> None of Google's logos seem particularly good or interesting to me. From a business standpoint, pre-school style design is probably the image they want to portray; that Google is very simple and easy to use. If you're going to criticize the logo, criticize it on it's merits as a logo: giving the first impression you want to foster in it's users. Not just whether or not you think it looks prettier.

</comment><comment><USER66> Some weird alignment with the "l" in Google. It's 2 pixels off the baseline: [http://i.imgur.com/BeSYG3a.png](http://i.imgur.com/BeSYG3a.png)

It also does not work with the country subtitle. These are touching the letter "e", perhaps showing they forgot to test this with different country names and x-height.

</comment><comment><USER76> For a company with so much money I find it amazing how often they turn out products with ugly/unfriendly user interfaces.

<comment><USER77> Google is putting a much greater emphasis on design, and their recent products show.

What recent products are you thinking of?

<comment><USER78> I don't usually find their interfaces ugly per se; if anything I find they've made sacrifices in the user experience for the sake of making things prettier.

I can't count the times Google Maps inexplicably zooms out to show me my directions to a coffee shop 10 minutes from me at the level of the entire state. Or when I type in "home" (which I have set), it suggesting I travel to a place in London called "Home Sweet Home" (I'm from the US). Or sometimes just zooming all the way out to show me my location at the global scale when I want to know what's near me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> The video reminds me of [EPIC 2014]([http://idorosen.com/mirrors/robinsloan.com/epic/](http://idorosen.com/mirrors/robinsloan.com/epic/)).

</comment><comment><USER80> Nice design, but dynamic logos for two days in a row... I don't know...

If anyone needs that, to disable these logos just add this URL:

       https://www.google.com/logos/doodles/*

To your ad-block list...

</comment><comment><USER81> I'm going to miss Catull.

<comment><USER82> First I thought you meant Catmull, as in Catmull curves, then I've found out that there is a font called Catull :) Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I didn't think they could make it look any more as if it were aimed at 5-year- olds, but they've done it.

Seriously, though, it's probably a better logo. It's simpler and has a more weight while the old one was kind of overly light and spindly. I wouldn't be surprised if the next step in the logo's evolution would ditch the candy colors and go with a single color, in which the new logo would look just fine. That might strike some as sacrilege but it would work much better as a logo and look less like a set of plastic toys for preschoolers.

</comment><comment><USER84> I first noticed the new logo in Google Mail, where I use the light grey theme, so the logo is grey as well, and small. My first impression was: bad, very bad. Too bold, and unbalanced. It's better on Google Search, but still somewhat unbalanced. I'll get used to it, I'm sure.

I'm curious how Brand New will rate it.

[http://underconsideration.com/brandnew/](http://underconsideration.com/brandnew/)

</comment><comment><USER85> Hmm... the spacing between the letters in "Goo" seems optically wider than the spacing between "gle". But it might be just me.

<comment><USER86> Quite the opposite, actually. [http://i.imgur.com/bKBcIyX.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/bKBcIyX.jpg) [1]

[1] [https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google- ident...](https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google- identity/#understanding-the-system)

<comment><USER85> Yes, I said "optical" spacing. Not real spacing.

The link you provide is interesting. However, any technical explanation doesn't solve the optical illusion that the last three letters appear to be closer together than the first three letters.

<comment><USER43> Yes – that's why normally you use serif fonts and modify the width of the strokes dynamically. Also the reason why the old 'o's were tilted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> It seems they didn't update [http://www.google.com/press/images.html](http://www.google.com/press/images.html) yet, but the doodle is available here: [https://www.google.com/doodles/googles-new- logo](https://www.google.com/doodles/googles-new-logo)

</comment><comment><USER88> A critique, "Google's new look is tragic sans": [https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2015/09/01/g...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2015/09/01/googles- new-look-is-tragic-sans/)

</comment><comment><USER89> I don't know why "news" like that are always considered so important. That logo is ugly, but so was the previous one. It doesn't seem like it terribly hurt their business. Not that I don't care about style — I admire good style. But it is secondary, at least for google. They do well with whatever logo there is.

</comment><comment><USER90> they have a Doodle of the change its live now [https://www.google.com.au/logos/doodles/2015/september-1st-d...](https://www.google.com.au/logos/doodles/2015/september-1st- doodle-do-not-translate-5078286822539264-hp.gif)

</comment><comment><USER91> In case the link is not working: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/09/google- update.html)

</comment><comment><USER92> Interesting to me is that in the video they use "you can Google it" and "let's Google it". In the past they - apparently - have made pains to avoid using Google as a verb as that's a type of genericisation of the trademark in to a term for internet searching in general.

<comment><USER93> They've always been fine with people using it as a verb, as long as it's only used to mean searching with Google, not searching in general. That's what would risk genericisation.

<comment><USER43> Well, in German dictionaries are already listing "to google, searching in the internet for something, more specific, searching in the internet with a search engine, usually Google™."

That pretty much means the trademark is essentially gone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> Completely off topic,but can anyone point me to any google-related post which has not crossed 500 pts?

<comment><USER95> [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=google&sort=byDate&prefix&page...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=google&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> The animation crashed my android stock browser (and reset other running apps). It ran fine in firefox.

</comment><comment><USER97> I feel like we-don't-care-about-design is kind of Googles thing. The new logo seems terrible, but that's appropriate. It could be a picture of pretty much anything, or there could be no logo. Regardless, I plan to continue using Google to search the WWW.

</comment><comment><USER98> > "Google has changed a lot over the past 17 years—from the range of our > products to the evolution of their look and feel. And today we're changing > things up once again"

My first thought, wait who's talking to me here?

<comment><USER99> "evolution of [product's] look and feel"

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> ignoring all mandatory marketing gobbledygook, this change makes most sense to me in the light of google's recent involvement in the NSA scandal, and their general shift from being a search only service, to being a true conglomerate, especially spanning the futuristic fields of robotics and AI research. They don't want to be like the dystopian AI from the recent movie Ex Machina, they don't want to be seen as the omnipresent creepy spy company. Therefore this naive, happy and care free logo. Vulgar in my eyes. Most people in this thread seem to miss this?

<comment><USER101> Yep. It immediately reminded me of this video: [https://ind.ie/the-camera- panopticon/](https://ind.ie/the-camera-panopticon/)

Right in the first minute:

> What if surveillance didn't look this scary? What if it actually looked > pretty friendly? Could we still identify it as a threat?

<comment><USER100> Interesting video. The presenter is pretty good. At 24.35 he talks about Michael Novak, Facebooks engineer manager that states:

"Privacy is a set of experiences that help people feel comfortable", HAH, i love this corporate-speak.

It reminds me of the way the new PR field of Content Creation, which defines itself like:

[http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content- marketi...](http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content-marketing/)

"Content marketing's purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior. Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. It is non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent"

Lets enhance make our buyers more intelligent. Intelligent in this context meaning, the customer buys our product. Lets give the user privacy. Privacy meaning a thin veneer of privacy on top of complete data mining.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> A turning point in a company's history has to come with rebranding. Otherwise the message won't be as strong. The emotional attachment will fade away with time I am sure. I will miss the logo as well.

</comment><comment><USER103> As much as I want to hate this for being change just for the sake of change...I really don't. So I guess that's a point in its favor.

The amount of marketing-speak in the blog post does make me a little queasy though.

</comment><comment><USER66> I used this new logo and turned (rotated) it into a new Google Scholar logo: [http://i.imgur.com/j7L0goJ.png](http://i.imgur.com/j7L0goJ.png)

</comment><comment><USER104> In some places the favicon is not completely updated, as of this writing: [http://google.co.in/favicon.ico](http://google.co.in/favicon.ico)

</comment><comment><USER105> What I still like about google is it (mostly) still works without javascript and even without cookies.

Only groups is unreadable without javascript.

But they recently killed the old style google maps, the new one is horrid.

</comment><comment><USER106> It took me a bit to find the word I wanted to use to describe what Google's old logo had vs. the new one. I think the old logo was classier. This new one is sort of uninspiring.

</comment><comment><USER107> I can almost feel the awkward vibe that went into not directly comparing search results over the years. It would have made the demise of real organic search too obvious.

</comment><comment><USER108> Nice changes today, google! Really classy retro look! [0]. lol

[0]: [http://i.imgur.com/ni6pCdb.png](http://i.imgur.com/ni6pCdb.png)

</comment><comment><USER109> Have they used polymer for buttons in google main page? It is interesting, it kinda shows polymer will become one of google's main project's.(If i am correct)

</comment><comment><USER110> I love it, especially the singular "G". Wonderfully clean and modern - <USER3> though I didn't think the old "Google" was dated at all.

</comment><comment><USER111> Would any of the font-aficionados call this a slab-serif? There's a slight serif on the second g but other than that it looks kind of like comic sans.

<comment><USER112> I'd say it falls into "geometric sans-serif" because of its adherence to primitive shapes and near-lack of adornment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> Im almost sure that they are trying to eventually, replace the G with the E as their primary brand identifier. Its a longer strategy and probably smarter.

<comment><USER114> What's the advantage of the e?

</comment></comment><comment><USER115> It's a very similar move that Facebook recently did. Move to a rounded sans serif. Facebook said it was to look more "friendly".

</comment><comment><USER116> I can understand the reasons and like the dots/G but the whole word looks childish to me. Liked the old one and its longevity as well.

</comment><comment><USER117> The l in the new logo is shorter than the G and it's driving me bonkers! Also the spacing doesn't seem quite right.

</comment><comment><USER118> Looks like [http://www.partycity.com/](http://www.partycity.com/)

</comment><comment><USER119> It reminds me of a coloured arrow rotating backwards in time. Sort of like OSX's beachball but going the wrong way.

</comment><comment><USER120> Rarely it happens a design change looks good on first sight. This is that instance. Well done GOOG / abc.xyz

</comment><comment><USER121> The tilted 'e' immediately reminds me of Enron.

You know: "Even the 'E' was crooked."

<comment><USER41> Internet Explorer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER122> Yellow type on white is always bad design no matter how much the rest of the logo improves.

</comment><comment><USER123> The new favicon resembles some sort of gay pride logo. It's a bit off-putting.

</comment><comment><USER124> I ha-- I'm used to it.

</comment><comment><USER125> The new Web UI for Google Play Music is horrendous. Sure, it _looks_ nice, but the older interface was much simpler and easier to use (not to mention more responsive).

On the new logo... just went to google.com for the first time today. Ugh, no. I winced when I saw it.

</comment><comment><USER126> Anyone else feel the need to do a parody video demonstrating how the ads have encroached on the organic link space over the years?

Not hating, I actually like the new look, it was just the first thing I thought of when they mentioned the original "ten blue links".

</comment><comment><USER127> I like the 'e'; looks like it's laughing.

</comment><comment><USER128> Folks really seem to care a lot about a silly logo.

</comment><comment><USER129> Urgh preferred the original 2013 flat serif font.

</comment><comment><USER130> It feels kiddish and playful (in a positive way)!

</comment><comment><USER131> Who ever actually goes directly to google.com? The only way I noticed this insignificant change was in my interactions with the results page. Why does this non-news have 375 points?

<comment><USER132> As you point out yourself, the Google logo exists in many places besides their homepage. (Plus many people still visit the homepage, even if you and I don't.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER133> I like the "Dots in Motion" language.

</comment><comment><USER134> The G looks very similar to the G in the GuldenCoin logo ([https://guldencoin.com/](https://guldencoin.com/))

</comment><comment><USER135> THIS IS HUGE! Totally worth the points, not.

</comment><comment><USER136> Google will own RGB(Y) and sue and buy ebay.

</comment><comment><USER137> First one to guess what effect this will have on $GOOGL? I mean, after all Google does things for a profit...

</comment><comment><USER138> This is definitely good :)

</comment><comment><USER69> New CEO, new logo. Nothing new there. Probably changed the carpet too. They always do.

</comment><comment><USER69> Looks like the change that eBay did to it's logo last (?) year.

</comment><comment><USER139> The G looks like a power button. Quick, someone critique that.

</comment><comment><USER140> gay

</comment><comment><USER141> I don't know why someone changing the font in their logo should ever be HN's top news item. There is definitely more interesting stuff going on in tech this week.

<comment><USER142> Yeah, this is stupid. Who gives a fuck?

</comment></comment><comment><USER143> Wow, this is an very bold and risky move. The familiarity with the Google search prompt plays a significant role in user retention. Is this a sign of Google worrying about their current situation?

<comment><USER66> If they are worrying about this, they may have just alienated their old users. I think it is simply the result of a more design-oriented culture at Google. After Google+ tool unification, now a design unification.

I myself do not like this redesign, but I also did not like the old one. I am basically very averse to changes like this (probably a mental issue). I also do not like how Chrome hijacks the window style, or how Android automatically updates to a new Youtube app with a drastically new UI. I am probably a minority though, and still capable to use custom styles to change the logo back to the old "Backrub" logo, but I wonder if there are more who see these major redesigns as an invasion of sorts into their daily routines. Just as you created a mental map of the application, they change the location of the buttons, or show a different favicon.

If it is not too much to ask (or risky to maintain), think of keeping an "old.*.com" domain. There are users who will gladly make use of that. Being able to use your own design, or turn off "with this new logo we save 9999 bytes on mobile" distractions is also UX. And it would be good UX for me.

With this new logo, for me, the counter now starts at zero for Google. A clean slate. For all I care they may be the Facebook they so desperately desire to mimic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER144> I don't know about the logo, but I'll do know about Google's voice recognition. Yesterday, on my commute home I came across an accident that blocked the road. I pulled out my iPhone, loaded the Google app, and asked "give me directions home" and Google gave me directions home. Siri wouldn't have been able to do that. Siri can schedule my timers... and not much else, I don't trust it to take me home. I followed the Google directions and came across a road that had a lot of traffic. I glanced at my phone and saw another road (Google Maps) and followed it and enjoyed a lovely drive down a dirt road and saved myself some time (and other waiting for me on a backed up road). I got home only a few minutes later than normal.

Blah blah... I don't care about Google's logo, but I use my iPhone like a commodity and use Google's apps and services for the most important things. There are iPhone only apps I like, but when it comes to my mobile needs it's all about making calls (phone, a commodity), getting on the web (Chrome), and directions (Google Maps) dominates 2 of those 3.</comment>


Ballmer: Windows Azure ready for release by end of year - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/09/02/24/Ballmer_Azure_ready_for_release_by_end_of_year_1.html

<comment><USER2> "I've got four words for you:

I LOVE THIS [PLATFORM]!"</comment>


Ask HN: API for ACH debits now that Balanced is gone? - <AUTHOR>

Is there an API for ACH debits? Looks like Stripe does not support them, and Balanced shut down. <comment><USER2> Stripe has a beta program supporting ACH and if you were a balanced customer using it you can join their beta IIRC. The FAQ talks a little about it. Just drop Stripe an email they are easy to work with.

[https://www.balancedpayments.com/stripe/faq](https://www.balancedpayments.com/stripe/faq)</comment>


Why Online Abuse Matters - <AUTHOR> http://www.sanspoint.com/archives/2015/10/28/why-online-abuse-matters/ <comment><USER2> Of course it's real and it does matter. But having the same old anti- harassment discussions is pointless in my opinion.

We have to focus on new solutions which create an environment where such behavior is not encouraged.

The "Shots" mobile app by John Shahidi is a great example for this and I hope there'll be many more!</comment>


Going to the root of the gender gap in tech – and fixing it for good - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/imagilabs/imagicharm-the-accessory-every-girl-will-love-to-program?ref=cupimv <comment><USER2> Regardless of the user's gender, this product simply makes technology less intimidating and it's just brilliant. The notion that coding is hard or complicated is often too common and deters young people from engaging with it. This product teaches logic. I think the focus shouldn't be on making it "simple" for girls. It is making it simple for all young people while making it appealing to young girls in particular because WHY THE HELL NOT! For the bitter boys out there who feel left out, get over it. It is time we make technology inclusive!! Because as it stands today, it is not.

</comment><comment><USER3> A pretty neat project. Programming used to have more physicality whereas now it mostly revolves around screens and touchscreens. Writing code is cool, but building things by writing code is even cooler, and that for young folks just starting off, that does make a difference.

</comment><comment><USER4> Coding is fast becoming the single-most important skill in the modern workplace. The lack of a pathway to increase interest for half the world's young population in this field needs to change. This project has my support.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've worked as a computer science tutor for teenagers and I know they love when they can see the results of their work!

I hope that schools or other educational NGOs will soon adopt this for both girls and boys!

</comment><comment><USER6> This is really great, I love that it inspires you to get better at code and create even cooler designs and integrations.

</comment><comment><USER7> As a woman in tech, but a non-coder, this is what I would have wanted as a girl. I backed for one of those gadgets!

</comment><comment><USER8> This is such a great way to get girls into programming. I'm a proud supporter!

</comment><comment><USER9> This project is such a cool way to convince young people that coding is something that is fun to do! Keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER10> We talk about wanting gender equality and wanting to hire female developers - and this is finally a tangible solution!

<comment><USER11> Don't oversell it. It's more likely to reinforce gender biases than address them - as it makes it appear that girls need "simplistic" aids like this to be able to learn programming, whereas boys wouldn't.

The goal is noble, but a "solution" it is not.

<comment><USER8> Claiming that it is a simplistic aid is _exactly_ what reinforces such stereotypes. It's a cool way to break the barrier and gender-neutralise programming. Gender bias or not, a lot of girls simply like cool and pretty gadgets (I was one of them - not ashamed ;). Reducing inequality in any area is not denying the girls cool and pretty things if this is what some of them might want - it's allowing everyone to engage and do so in any way that lets them express themselves. BTW - if there ever is a gadget like that for boys, I'll happily support it too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love this product! Proud backer!</comment>


Derby: JS MVC framework aims to unite client- and server-side code - <AUTHOR> http://derbyjs.com/

<comment><USER2> This seems to have been missed. Should be up voted and discussed. Sounds like a fantastic framework and I'm really looking forward to hearing what other HNers have to say about it.

How far off from production ready do you think it is?</comment>


"The China Study" and Longevity - <AUTHOR> https://steemit.com/health/@engineerdiet/the-china-study-and-longevity <comment><USER2> >"The above analysis is trivially simple. Just data preprocessing simple correlations and filtering, using the most high-level overview the data allows for regarding food intake and health. The possible effect of different foods on longevity. No massaging of the data, no exposure to birthday paradox spuriousness, no statistical tricks, questionable adjustments for, etc"

There is also no controlling for anything! It seems a no-brainer that higher "Saturated Fat" and "Animal Protein" intakes correlate with higher income/access to modern health care infrastructure. Which means the author is really measuring an underlying latent "prosperity" variable. The author almost groks it with:

>"The correlations speak for themselves, the top X correlations for longevity are relatively strongly correlated amongst themselves. It is likely that multiple of these columns are indeed major contributors to longevity, yet given the inter-food correlations, it is quite impossible to isolate these from the variables that are just along for the ride."

Once the author controls for the prosperity that is the causal for all the correlated "dependent" variables, it might turn out that a Vegan diet is better than a non-Vegan diet. Or it might not. But this piece adds no value to the conversation, IMHO.

*As lspears points out, even worse is the wrong endpoint. Prob of making it to 80 != lower chance of death from Western diseases (heart attack/cancer).

<comment><USER3> Certainly true, but I don't think anyone will draw the opposite conclusion that poverty contributes to longevity...

<comment><USER4> There were a few studies showing that rats fed less than their normal assumed calorie intake urged to live longer. I can't speak for the effect pathway, but similar things could also be true in humans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could someone quote from the book the claim on longevity or "All Cause Mortality" that this post is refuting?

The book is primarily about correlating the Western diet and animal protein with some western diseases.

There is no data here about the central claims of the book.

I read the book and don't remember the specific claims about longevity. I wouldn't be surprised if he found a correlation with longevity, though.

The US NIH found that Seventh-Day Adventists tend to live 4-10 years longer than the general population on a primarily vegetarian diet.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh- day_Adventist_Church#H...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh- day_Adventist_Church#Health_and_diet)

The large scale "Nurses Study" and the "Health Professionals Follow-up Study" also correlated plant-based diets with decreased risk of death.

[https://www.mygenefood.com/plant-based-diet- longevity/](https://www.mygenefood.com/plant-based-diet-longevity/)

Also important, plant-rich diets are one of the top solutions for climate change ( [https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by- rank](https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank) ). That's another great reason to scale back animal protein consumption.

</comment><comment><USER6> Denise Minger thoroughly critiques T. Colin Campbell's (seemingly incompetent) interpretation of the data in this study.

[https://deniseminger.com/the-china-study/](https://deniseminger.com/the- china-study/)

EDIT: TCC's reply: [http://www.vegsource.com/news/2010/07/china-study-author- col...](http://www.vegsource.com/news/2010/07/china-study-author-colin- campbell-slaps-down-critic-denise-minger.html)

<comment><USER7> Why should I trust Denise Minger over Colin Campbell?

I read Capbell's China Study and I'm definitely interested in counter points to his findings, but it seems like Minger is a food blogger (and recent book author) while the other is a biochemist with a long history in their field.

<comment><USER8> You shouldn't. Denise Minger does not know what she's analysing. And it's visible from the response.

TCC said multiple times that his study should have been a starting point for new research. Not as a definitive statement on what the optimal diet is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The author is missing an important point: dietary sources of cholesterol are from animal byproducts only.

> Cholesterol comes from two sources. Your liver makes all the cholesterol you > need. The remainder of the cholesterol in your body comes from foods derived > from animals. For example, meat, poultry and full-fat dairy products all > contain cholesterol, called dietary cholesterol.

> Those same foods are high in saturated and trans fats.

from the American Heart Association: [https://www.heart.org/en/health- topics/cholesterol/about-cho...](https://www.heart.org/en/health- topics/cholesterol/about-cholesterol)

<comment><USER10> > trans fats.

I'm no expert but this is the first time I hear about this. I thought trans fats are mainly found in industrially processed (mostly vegetable) fats!

Ah, according to Wikipedia:

> _Animal-based fats were once the only trans fats consumed, but by far the > largest amount of trans fat consumed today is created by the processed food > industry as a side effect of partially hydrogenating unsaturated plant fats > (generally vegetable oils). These partially hydrogenated fats have displaced > natural solid fats and liquid oils in many areas, the most notable ones > being in the fast food, snack food, fried food, and baked goods industries._

So eating no fast food, no margarine _and also_ no animals might even further reduce consumption of trans fats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think this analysis is incomplete. It's important to separate out longevity from cause of death. "The China Study"'s central premiss is that a vegan diet reduces the likelihood of dying of the "Western" diseases such as heart disease and cancer. A simple correlation between a vegan diet and longevity doesn't address this and also wouldn't take into account the high correlation between not being able to afford animal products and a lack of access to medical care. If you actually read the book the author goes into all this detail.

<comment><USER12> "Western" disease is caused by high intake of processed foods, soda, etc. It isn't the vegan diet that helps. It's removing processed food, soda, etc. You can be an omnivore or a carnivore and remove processed junk food and reduce "Western" disease. And you can be a vegan and eat a ton of processed vegan junk food and succumb to "Western" disease.

Processed foods and overeating is the true problem in the western diet.

<comment><USER13> This is so true...I believe this wholeheartedly, had to find my long-last hn login to upvote this. I've read a lot of stories where people start a diet such as one meal a day, or all potatoes...heck I even heard of a guy who was "curing" patients with only rice and sugar back in the day. The common thread among these stories is that they've stopped eating a lot of what they used to (presumably mostly junk food), and so their body can recover. It's not what you put in so much as what you've stopped putting in.

<comment><USER4> Just to stress that the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'. It may be true - or not. But it's important not to assume it's true just because a few stories say so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems the author is already kind of biased when he set out to analyse the data.. use of the term 'overzealous vegans' in the first paragraph sets of a few alarms for me.

I think it would be interesting to look at other long term studies (like the 7th adventist study someone else mentioned here) as well as studies that look at plant based eating as a cure/preventative method for more specific/acute diseases (like Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn's WFPBN solution for cardiovascular disease, or Dr. Greger's 'How Not to Die' which compiles and summarizes research in the WFPB space [https://nutritionfacts.org/book/](https://nutritionfacts.org/book/))

</comment><comment><USER15> Here is a debate between the author of _The China Study_ and another scientist in the field who disagrees with his findings:

[http://www.catalystathletics.com/articles/downloads/proteinD...](http://www.catalystathletics.com/articles/downloads/proteinDebate.pdf) (I have no idea why Campbell chose not to cite any sources.)

and here is a simplified take by the excellent skeptic Harriet Hall:

[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/385/](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/385/)

As Hall notes:

>He criticizes conventional recommendations for a diet with 45-65% of calories from carbohydrates, 20-35% from fat and 10-35% from protein, showing how the following menu satisfies those requirements:

>[example of an obviously unhealthy diet]

>But that's a bit of a straw man argument. In reality, most current nutritional advice makes very much the same recommendations Campbell does except for his strict prohibition of animal protein. For instance, for cancer prevention the American Cancer Society recommends ([http://www.cancer.org/docroot/MED/content/MED_2_1X_American_...](http://www.cancer.org/docroot/MED/content/MED_2_1X_American_Cancer_Society_guidelines_on_diet_and_cancer_prevention.asp)) a diet high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes and low in red meat and alcohol, along with regular exercise and weight control.

In these (and other) debates, Campbell repeatedly shows, IMO, an unwillingness to take his critics seriously, instead always resorting to the broadside of "reductionist!". At first he seems to have a point, but when you read more of his responses to more people, you just find yourself hearing "reductionist! reductionist! reductionist!". This is particularly concerning since all atomistic theories (i.e. physicalist theories, i.e. the modern scientific view of reality) are ultimately reductionist in some way. Furthermore, his attack on the standard recommendations is _extremely_ reductionist, as seen above (and a similar diet can easily be constructed with less protein and no animal foods!). I'm particularly glad to link the critique from Science-Based Medicine as they're equally critical (if not more) of the paleo milieu.

<comment><USER16> Campbell does not advocate strict prohibition of animal protein. He observes, merely, that it's probably easier to avoid it altogether than to reduce the intake to safe levels.

The argument is as follows, albeit simplified: When you eat an animal-based diet you are likely to eat a lot more protein than you should, say 20-40% of calories. Recommenced is 10% which is nowadays very close to what authorities generally recommend regardless of source. Campbell argues that it is very challenging to achieve that 10% on a traditional western animal based diet, therefore suggests avoiding animal based protein. He does not say that an occasional meal with meat is harmful.

A varied Whole Foods plant based diet just happens to average out at around 10% protein of calories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Projects like Jupyter have so much potential to empower individuals to understand data and verify claims. But not in their current form. Immediately after the introduction, the author starts diving in to Python and different interpreters and dependencies and then a wall of code. Anyone who's never seen code, much less heard of Python, would be immediately turned-off. Just a tiny bit of extra work on top of projects like this could exponentially increase their target audience and turn thousands into amateur fact-checkers.

</comment><comment><USER18> I read that book a few years ago, but I remember several researches that proved the correlation between casein (milk proteins) and the cancer development. Which doesn't mean that casein causes cancer, but that casein speeds up cancer development. SO if you have a little cancer, with animal protein it will develop faster. The article skips this relevant topic.

<comment><USER19> Casein != animal protein.

<comment><USER20> not sure what point you are trying to make here. Casein is a protein. Sources in our diet come exclusively from mammalian milk. A protein from animal sources = animal protein does it not?</comment></comment></comment>


Kongregate: the science behind the massive profits of F2P games - <AUTHOR> http://www.kongregate.com/forums/2468-general/topics/431337-emily-greer-ceo-of-kongregate-on-the-science-behind-the-massive-profits-of-tyrant-unleashed-and-other-f2p-games <comment><USER3> Emily Greer (CEO of Kongregate) has a very good presentation, not to my knowledge already linked in this discussion, about F2P whales: [http://www.slideshare.net/emily_greer/dont-call-them- whales-...](http://www.slideshare.net/emily_greer/dont-call-them-whales- freetoplay-spenders-virtual-value-gdc-2015) Partially it's an apologia for the business model, but it is dripping with useful facts and commentary.

<comment><USER4> I used to be a moderator on Kongregate and had a decent amount on interaction with multiple of the administrators. I also was somewhat involved in the flash game market (just casually as a hobby). When I found out how Kongregate specifically worked with developers to help make games that target the 'whale' spenders, I was pretty shocked. Making games that are not enjoyable, just addictive, in order to take in thousands of dollars from single individuals just seemed so unethical.

I just glanced over that link of Emily's ethical rationale for this, and it didn't convince me. But I'll have to go back through it more carefully before I can decide for sure.

<comment><USER4> A few more thoughts on the matter of whales:

On Kongregate, 2.1% of users buy virtual goods. Of these, about 4% (the whales) have spent over $500 and bring in about half of Kongregate's revenue. Top spenders often spend $50K-$80K.

Emily's premise is this: that people who spend lots of money on games (whales) are people who healthily enjoy the games as hobbyists.

Her most interesting points, in my opinion are as follows:

We think whales are bad (but shouldn't) because they spend their money on virtual goods: "Spending $5-$10k on specialized PC Gaming rigs that improve your skills and enhance your competitiveness is not really that different from spending money for in-game items that do the same. But I bet you all find it a lot easier to contemplate."

We think whales are bad (but shouldn't) because we don't think games are a legitimate hobby: "The bias against games is so insidious that even within the industry we've internalized it enough that we question someone with means spending tens of thousands of $s on a game, especially when you combine it with the low value we place on mobile and PC games and especially virtual goods. And so people jump to explanations like "mental illness" or "evil games manipulating players" when the real explanation is that they are rational, wealthy people who are dedicated fans investing in a particular game."

I personally don't agree with her though. We would have no problem with a person spending $10K on software. The issue isn't virtual vs. physical goods. The issue comes down to if games are a legitimate, healthy hobby or not. I would argue that they are not, at least for most of those who are whales. I don't have time to flesh this argument out tonight though.

<comment><USER3> Yep. In particular, if demographically whales are (as subtextually claimed on slide 12) functioning upper-middle-class professionals like business owners, engineers, doctors, and CPAs, then there doesn't seem to be any meaningful harm in it.

My unease about F2P monetization is that my sense of the demographics is that it tilts more towards "people with undiagnosed depression" or "the Vegas slots demographic."

<comment><USER4> Slide 12 isn't a convincing argument that these people are okay, but of course it doesn't indicate the latter either. But even if these people are upper- middle-class professionals, there's still a chance that their action stem from things like depression/addiction. My hunch would be that the cause of the big spending leans more towards addiction than well-reasoned spending on a health hobby, but without data or evidence that's purely a guess.

It would also be interesting to look at the group of whales in general. Perhaps the very top 20 spenders are all well-balanced, healthy individuals with large incomes. But what about the rest of people who are spending large amounts of money? This might be where struggling individuals are more likely to be found.

<comment><USER5> I think in the absence of data, people see what they want to see such that it agrees with their worldview. Nobody likes to endure cognitive dissonance. Even in the presence of data people see what they want to see. Me? Well, some of the time the people spending money are sorely addicted; some of the time they have a mental illness like depression / mania / psychosis / schizophrenia / OCD / whatever; some of the time it's credit card fraud; some of the time it's kids spending their parents' money; some of the time it's just some person with access to a lot of cash that decides to throw money at the problem of becoming good at the game. It would be really neat to see some numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Eventually, the pendulum will swing the other way. People will get sick of freemium games, and go back to games where you pay $1-$10 once.

Some people made a lot of money with freemium, so everyone is copying them.

I can't stand wait timers, energy systems, and all the other tricks they use to balance freemium games.

Many freemium games require an Internet connection to play, which is bad for me because my prime gaming time is on the subway while commuting.

Another bad part about freemium is that, when they someday shut down the servers, you won't be able to play the game AT ALL anymore. I can still play Super Mario Bros. even if Nintendo goes bankrupt and decides they don't care about the game anymore.

<comment><USER7> I make my living off of mobile freemium games. We don't do anything with replay timers or the like - we advertise, mostly, and have fun in-app purchases.

For a couple years we offered two versions of our apps - paid and free, free being ad supported. In a bid to simplify things and encourage more conversions, we switched to in-app purchase to get rid of ads. (Also, app stores had been optimized to push down app results for non-free games - <USER2> of reading out there about the causes and effects.)

To date, just under 5% of our revenue is paid. Despite playing for years, many people don't believe our games are worth $1.99. If you believe the race to the bottom will reverse itself, I'm here to tell you it won't. It's guided by the walled gardens and they like it this way.

We have had millions of downloads and on our most popular game, have abnormally long retention. Even some of our most die-hard players will not spend $1.99.

Maybe - MAYBE console gaming will one day return from F2P, but I doubt it. At least not in the _near_ future - the industry is still moving _towards_ it.

But in mobile gaming, success is a volume play. And the volumes won't part with $.99 in the traditional way. If they did, F2P wouldn't be a thing. And maybe gamers will pay for games, but the masses? Not so much.

<comment><USER8> I'm not what I would ever describe as a gamer. Well, I was massively when I was much younger in the arcade, 8 and 16 bit days but now, not so much/at all.

The problem I have with many freemium games is for me they have absolutely no lasting appeal. I would estimate that 75% of freemium games I've installed, I may have played a sum total of half an hour and then got annoyed/fed up/bored and removed it. Adverts, replay timers etc. are certainly to blame but what mostly is a turn off for games of these types is there is no soul in a lot of these games.

Take Triple Jump, Don't Step On The White Tile, Avoid The Blocks etc. for example(s). They're like Christmas cracker toys. You play them once or twice, discover how lame they are and throw them away.

While I realise those games aren't meant to be much more than that (and an SEO exercise), there are so many like these on the various app stores and few games that have any kind of depth to them. I would more than happily, and have happily, paid $1, $2 or more for a game that held my interest for longer than half an hour. The biggest problem I have is these throw-away games have been so cleverly marketed or SE-optimised that they make up the bulk of "featured", "highlighted" or "best selling" games and any game with a modicum of depth disappear into the ether, undiscovered. It's frustrating for someone who wants to play a fun, entertaining game, not an annoying, repetitive and uninspiring christmas cracker game.

<comment><USER9> This is exactly the problem I'm trying to solve with Curated[1]. The Play Store is filled with low-think, one-tap junk these days... Finding a good game on the Play Store is almost as hard as finding a science show on the Discovery Channel. It's optimised for the unthinking masses, which makes sense for Google from a monetary perspective, but for anyone interested in a deep game, then either Google's algorithm needs to get waaaay smarter or we have to do it ourselves.

[1][https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.curated.an...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.curated.android)

<comment><USER10> really good, I like how you've done this: clear layout, shows the sort of stuff I'm interested in. Good job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm watching "Newbie to Big Spender: Understanding the Player Lifecycle", by Kongregate's CEO.[1] That's from 2012. This was made before they felt a need to apologize for the business model. It's openly about to hook players and turn them into big spenders. There's a 4-stage process to hook them. Few players start out as big spenders in a game. Heavy spending comes later. Game levels are designed accordingly. The user shouldn't be pressured to pay until they have 50 plays or so. By Stage 4 (Committed Players), players are no- longer price sensitive and will buy cosmetic items.

68% of revenue comes from players who spend over $500 in a single game. Their biggest whale back then had spent $30,000 on one game. All those people who spend $5 don't matter. That's the free-to-play business.

[1] [http://developers.kongregate.com/blog/newbie-to-big- spender-...](http://developers.kongregate.com/blog/newbie-to-big-spender- understanding-the-player-lifecycle)

</comment><comment><USER12> That's a lot of raw data and not a whole lot of specifics. Here's a dissection of how one particular massively popular F2P game (Clash of Clans) gets people to pay up:

[http://gyrovague.com/2013/06/05/time-is-money-how-clash- of-c...](http://gyrovague.com/2013/06/05/time-is-money-how-clash-of-clans- earns-500000-a-day-with-in-app-purchases/)

HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5825158](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5825158)

That's two years old now, but it's interesting to see some of the points in there validated by Kongregate's research: eg. how guilds primarily serve to exert social pressure, and how UAE and Kuwait have ridiculous whales ( _average_ spend per playing user $500!).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the best source of numbers I have found in the industry. Especially the CPI numbers and 6 months of buying installs before it paid off.

</comment><comment><USER13> There is an interesting article on how F2P monetisation works:

[http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/1949...](http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/194933/The_Top_F2P_Monetization_Tricks.php)

</comment><comment><USER14> South Park had an excellent episode explaining freemium games: [http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e06-freemium- isnt-f...](http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e06-freemium-isnt-free)</comment>