Google's Decline Really Bugs Me - <AUTHOR> http://blackhole12.blogspot.com/2013/11/googles-decline-really-bugs-me.html <comment><USER2> If you ask me, one of Google's biggest strategic successes was their ability to convince an entire generation of engineers that they were something other than a company. The way many (otherwise intelligent) people talk about it, you'd think it was a religion.

What you're seeing here is not the shattering of a dream, but of an illusion -- Google hasn't been a scrappy, idealistic startup for many years. It's a fine company, but it's a _big company_ \-- a collection of tens of thousands of people, all motivated by different hopes and dreams. No institution of that size behaves consistently, let alone consistently _benevolently_.

In other words: stop setting up false idols, and your reality won't be shattered when they disappoint you.

<comment><USER3> While eating my second dinner plate of something delicious on the campus I looked around and saw how many children and families were around.

The company provides, so much, for you, for your family. You wouldn't to ever lose what you have now gotten used to, for yourself, for your family.

So now you become a company man. What's good for the company must be good for you.

What's good about knowing more people, how they think, how they behave, what they want, must be good for the company, which turn must be good for you, good for your family.

It's just a series of intricate goodness being passed around from group to group, people to people.

No one inherently is evil, but the system can end up be directed towards evil inevitably.

Either way, it just was damn good pork chops with quinoa.

We didn't get this kind of chow in the Marine Corps, and I would have killed for it.

<comment><USER4> I don't know if you served or if you were just alluding to it but your last point got me thinking:

In the Army, I lived the most barebones kind of lifestyle and did a job that often put my family through hell but was buoyed by the feeling that I was part of the most noble of professions. In this industry, I've provided incredible privilege, comfort, and stability for my family but have always felt that this industry principally serves those who are a part of it.

<comment><USER5> Is this sarcasm? Do you really consider being in the Army a noble profession? And do you think that the software industry serves humanity in general less than military industry?

<comment><USER6> It's sad that the Armed Forces are now looked upon with disdain by hackers mere decades after the West wrested the world from Germany's grasp.

Say what you want about the military industrial complex, but lets not forget that should any of our countries be invaded, we will be very grateful that those guns pointing at the invaders.

<comment><USER7> Disdain is inappropriate, but so is automatic praise. The media wants to paint this picture that members of the military choose to serve for altruistic reasons and that we need to celebrate them all. This may be true for some, but I think the majority are in the military more-so because they think it's their best option for starting a career.

Additionally, the justness of military conflicts these days is far more questionable than in the past. Doesn't this make it reasonable to be more critical of the military as a whole?

<comment><USER6> I agree. I served 4+ years in the Army and was deployed as part of OEF. I'm uncomfortable with the automatic praise; it's definitely not why I signed up.

However, given a choice I'd prefer that the scale remain tipped towards praise instead of neglect or ignorance.

It's true, not all Soldiers serve altruistically, but they serve nonetheless. It's fine to question the intent of our government, military, and its officers, but try to remember that for the most part, Soldiers are forced to follow orders or face jail time, and they are constantly reminded of this.

The recruitment pitch is vastly different from the reality. I remember many Tuesdays where we'd spend the day sweeping the motor pool, wondering if we really deserved the praise bestowed upon us. Rest assured, most Soldiers wrestle with this at some point during their career.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's with the sudden outpouring of Google-hate of late?

I totally get that Google is changing, and has been doing so for a while. But I don't see that as "evil," and I'm struggling to see why anybody would.

Google around maybe five or six years ago was a wasteland of shoddy, broken, unintegrated products, many with half-assed, confusing interfaces. That's been tightened up - many of their products are now substantially better; there's a coherent account and profile system in place; the weak products have been culled. Their focus is a lot better.

I'm probably using Google resources less than I used to - GMail's interface pisses me off, the new Maps layout is infuriating, and search is broadly speaking totally broken for me in places. I'm also acutely aware that Google's audience has changed - it's no longer tech-savvy early adopters, but almost everybody who has an Internet connection. Unfortunately, the interests of the minority groups of users are going to fall by the wayside as the business evolves.

To some extent, that's great - it opens up gaps in the market where other products can get a look-in. If Google's search sucks, I'm sure a competitor will pop up. Same with Gmail, or Docs, or Hangouts… etc.

There are unsurprisingly some areas in which Google's record is not 100% clean - they stopped supporting RSS, removed XMPP federation, require profile verification (apparently) - but in most cases, I can certainly see how the business or technical case for these could legitimately be made. These are not evil actions - they're just ones that you (and I) don't agree with. Fair enough - we're under no obligation to use Google's services. In the meantime, they continue to develop a huge diversity of open-source software and protocols, and I hear it's still a great place to work.

I guess at the end of the day you could be right - Google has declined from your perspective. But I doubt that's true from the perspective of their wider user base.

<comment><USER9> People don't like change. People like what they had. People hate that Google is deciding to move forward. Now forcing the changes on their user base so that Google doesn't have an unlimited number of different things to maintain.

<comment><USER10> I think it's more than a dislike of change. It's not clear to me that Google is moving forward. I might characterize it more as "upward" in the sense that they're solidifying their dominant position. Moving forward is precisely what I fear them losing.

Of course, it's easy to move forward when you're new and have nothing to lose. Moving forward is much harder when you're the dominant player, because moving forward puts you at risk.

<comment><USER9> I feel that I've been waiting for them to do something with youtube for a long time. Making it and Google plus the same thing is probably the right move. Youtube in general needs a lot of renovation.

The structure of Google plus suits content aggregation really well, it was designed for it. So I think it's a really good fit and I can't really wait for the transition to be finished.

My hesitation used to be something along the lines of I don't want Youtube users on Google plus. But I've come to remember, since it has started. I still have complete control over who shows up in my streams.

<comment><USER11> Indeed, why not enforce people use social network if they want to watch a video?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They are the new Microsoft but they're trying to avoid the same fate of companies like Yahoo and Microsoft; i.e viewed as stodgy old companies that aren't great places to work. The perception about Google needs to be "innovative" which is why there is lots of PR about their X Labs initiatives. But if you think about all of the high profile ones, they aren't really attractive businesses.

Driverless cars? It's technology that all the major car companies have been working on for years and is close to market. This means they aren't going to create a business of licensing that tech to them. Are they going to get into the high capex business of car manufacturing?

Google Fiber? Same story. Capex heavy business with lower margins than being an ad company. It also takes a lot of time to scale it up and roll it out to cities.

Most of these things are for PR rather than real businesses that will be successful and change Google's revenue mix from 90%+ advertising to anything else. Even in their core business, Cost Per Clicks continue to trend down. This is a deterioration in pricing power largely being driven by the shift to computing on mobile devices. Their latest quarterly results were good because they are essentially "making it up in volume", but there is a limit to how much ad inventory you can squeeze out of all your properties to keep driving aggregate clicks up without pissing off users or trashing your products.

<comment><USER13> _" Companies like Yahoo and Microsoft; i.e viewed as stodgy old companies that aren't great places to work."_

For what reasons is Microsoft not a great place to work? I may be biased because my brother works there full-time and a friend is interning there but both of them very much enjoy it.

<comment><USER12> My comment about them is how they're perceived in the industry, in reality they may be great places to work.

<comment><USER14> Other than stack-ranking thing/general office politics, I don't really have a negative preception of Microsoft. Is this a supposed-perception, or an actual perception?

I don't know anything about Yahoo!, but my perceptions of them are still positive. If you have an awful work environment, people will just go elsewhere. _especially_ if you're qualified to work at either company.

<comment><USER15> I think they were referring to the 1990s when MS was a lot worse than the Google of today. MS did a lot of unethical attacks against competitors during that period (my favorite is the MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here are 3 pertinent facts related to your post:

1) When I worked there, long before Larry Page was CEO, 20% time barely existed and Google cared a heck of a lot about making money.

2) The share price going up makes employees, former employees, and all sorts of non-"wall street investors" very happy.

3) Your hacker news about section links to your Google+ page

<comment><USER17> 1) 20% time still exists. I used it to write an HTML parser [1] that's had some modest success, and I have coworkers that have 20%ed on robotics, quantum computation, elementary school education, Project Loon, Flu Trends, and a variety of other interesting things. Google Now came out of a 20% project. It _is_ something that you have to take a lot of initiative on to pull off successfully, but the opportunity is still available.

[1] [https://github.com/google/gumbo-parser](https://github.com/google/gumbo- parser)

<comment><USER18> Does 20% realistically come between 80 and 100%, 100 and 120, or 120 and 140%?

<comment><USER19> What does that even mean?

edit: Yes, let's downmod the guy who doesn't understand an obtusely-worded question. Well done.

<comment><USER20> He's asking if the 20% time is exclusively:

1\. genuinely 20% of one's full-time schedule;

2\. 20% beyond one's full-time schedule; or

3\. 20% beyond one's over-time schedule.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The paragraph involving Steve Jobs is a misquote at best or a completely wrong at worst. If you read the article that paragraph links, it doesn't mention "maximizing profit" or money at all.

I think this paragraphs reflects badly on the entire article – it makes the article appear to be a struggle to create a connect-the-dots conspiracy behind Google's actions (evil Steve Jobs told Larry Page to be evil and now Google is evil).

Steve Jobs told Larry Page to gave a strong focus on key products. You could certainly argue that Google are too strongly focussed on AdWords and Google+ but that's not the point that McClure argues.

<comment><USER22> After reading the Steve Jobs book, the biggest emphasis was focus on making a great product. He was never in it for the money; He was making $1 a year at one point.

<comment><USER23> $1 a year and a _massive_ pile of stock. That's a big show of faith in your abilities and your company, but that's hardly "Never in it for the money".

<comment><USER24> _That 's a big show of faith in your abilities and your company_

It's a tax dodge if the company's share price is at least level.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One- dollar_salary#Instances_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One- dollar_salary#Instances_of_alternative_compensation)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Now it's just another large company - only concerned about maximizing > profit.

> Google was a company that, for a time, I loved. To me, they represented the > antithesis of Microsoft, a rebellion against a poisonous corporate culture > dominated by profiteering that had no regard for its users.

 _Maybe You 're Just Not Their Target Demographic Anymore™_

Google had better ideals, sure. But I'd say their current actions are actually making Google's products better for more people. Unfortunately, as their products improve for the majority of people, they become less accommodating[1] of early users and people who actually care about privacy, restraint in advertising, and domain-specific needs.

However, OP doesn't provide specific examples of what Google did that made him worry, just a general discomfort with Google that's been voiced countless times since their IPO.

I hate their general attitude about privacy, their gradual shoving of ads everywhere, and the usual we-are-open stuff used to divert questioning, but maybe it's time to admit that Google is just getting better at things that don't matter to you.

[1]: It's a false choice, yes: they could keep honoring their initial principles and still grow and profit, but has any behemoth corporation ever done that?

<comment><USER26> > _But I 'd say their current actions are actually making Google's products > better for more people._

Can you explain how forcing people to use their real names (or something that passes as such) is making Google's products better for more people? How about the inbox spam in Gmail, or the large ads they have been testing on Google itself apparently ([http://www.seroundtable.com/google-adwords-huge-image- ad-175...](http://www.seroundtable.com/google-adwords-huge-image- ad-17568.html)) while they penalize large ads above the fold on indexed pages ([http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.at/2012/01/page- la...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.at/2012/01/page-layout- algorithm-improvement.html)), or, like someone else pointed out here, killing Reader?

Frankly, I may not be their target demographic either, but for most of the recent changes they got flak over I simply have to shake my head and wonder what they were thinking and how they could actually claim to make things better for anyone but themselves. Perhaps I'm too stupid to understand ...

<comment><USER25> Maybe I'm just jaded and never really saw Google as a a nice company with good intentions, but I just can't be sad about Google's new directions.

My suggestion to everyone who's worried about Google: other companies would be really happy to service your needs. There are other companies offering e-mail services, ad services, internet search (the one thing there's no absolute replacement for yet[1], but with your patronage, a new competitor could get there), internet messaging, website analytics, maps, mobile operating systems... and new companies could appear in these areas.

> Can you explain how forcing people to use their real names (or something > that passes as such) is making Google's products better for more people?

I dislike their new real names policy, but: human faces. Humans are drawn to other humans' faces. That's why they're pushing to use Google+ photos on ads. Also, people are drawn to names of people they know. That's why they nudged website owners to associate their domains with their personal Google+ accounts. They're essentially trying to make their services more like a social network so people discover YouTube videos while browsing YouTube, not Twitter or Facebook, for instance.

A simpler explanation: Google is trying to remain relevant and grow even more using the same magic that made Facebook big: your friends.

[1]: In my experience, DDG is good at searches related to programming, mediocre at searches related to non-tech stuff, and terrible at searches in languages other than English. It's getting better, though.

<comment><USER27> I think what it boils down to is that Google, for its users, used to be all about giving the Internet neat things. But now they're all "more wood behind fewer arrows" and shutting down things (Google Reader, real estate search, whatever) and are little more than an advertising company.

The magic is gone, and that's a special kind of disappointment.

<comment><USER28> Don't forget Eric Schmidt's crazy thoughts on privacy:

* During an interview aired on December 3, 2009, on the CNBC documentary "Inside the Mind of Google," Schmidt was asked, "People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be?" He replied: "I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that information could be made available to the authorities."

* At the Techonomy conference on August 4, 2010, Schmidt expressed that technology is good. And he said that the only way to manage the challenges is "much greater transparency and no anonymity." Schmidt also stated that in an era of asymmetric threats, "true anonymity is too dangerous."

* In 2005 Google blacklisted CNET reporters from talking to Google employees for one year, until July 2006, after CNET published personal information on Schmidt, including his politician donations, hobbies, salary, and neighborhood, that had been obtained through Google searches.

* In 2010 in an interview with the WSJ Schmidt stated that he thinks teenagers should be entitled to change their names upon reaching adulthood in order to separate themselves from the Google record of their youthful indiscretions.

* In 2010 he also stated that "people aren't ready for the technology revolution that's going to happen to them" and that absolute privacy would prove too-unsafe in the future

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The main argument in the article is that as Google has gotten bigger, its profit motive has become more important to the company, which is negatively impacting new and old products. While Google may have to continue to generate more revenue growth from AdWords and AdSense and YouTube in order to keep the stock going up and generate more cash, the majority of Google products aren't at all impacted by profit motive. In fact, most of the product initiatives at Google sap profit.

Android is a multi-billion dollar bet on mobile OS Calico is a billion dollar bet on extending life ChromeOS is a multi-billion dollar bet on laptop/TV ChromeBrowser is a hundred-million dollar bet on browsing Google Glass is a multi-billion dollar bet on next gen devices Self driving cars are a multi- billion dollar bet on, well, self driving cars.

None of these, save perhaps Android, has any chance of driving material revenue to the business in the next five years. Most of the hardware bets Google makes are money losers because they routinely subsidize hardware.

When I was there, I launched two product features that each cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars and were visible on the earnings-per-share number in the quarterly revenues we reported to Wall Street.

The argument might stand on Google.com, where the number of ads has increased. But for the majority of products (Gmail, Drive, Spreadsheets, Docs, Keep, Maps, Calendar, Books, Finance, Music, etc), it's hard to justify a profit motive argument.

<comment><USER30> I think people are seeing the products that Google has to maximize profit on (Youtube, AdSense, G+, etc...) and using those as the basis for the entire ecosystem that is Google. Google, as you pointed out, is much more than just the products that make money. I find it incredibly shortsighted to fault a company that tries to make money in order to pay for these great research projects.

I really don't mind ads. Its a free service to use, I can live with some ads, I still get my search that I like, I still get the experience that I like, and I patronize the company that provides this without any dime out of my pocket. Plus, Google is using these funds to research these multi-billion dollar initiatives like self-driving cars that I couldn't fathom to undertake on my own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Google has always had a massive weakness: feedback.

Feedback on products is atrocious -Google Now on my iPhone shows me a route home that would send me the wrong way up a freeway, and I don't know where to report it. Years ago, I ran into a serious issue with Google Desktop, and the bug was poorly documented.

Their maps data in Johannesburg has some annoying data issues, and is rewriting the geography of the city, because it is relied on by third party sites. They do respond to some Maps reports, and other problems can be fixed in Map Maker, but some are too big.

The common thread in these problems is that Google has very poor feedback mechanisms - a problem that has existed for years. Given their success in organising data, you'd think there would be a way for them to handle feedback efficiently, and in a standardised way across products. But feedback doesn't seem to be a priority. A few months ago, HN became an unofficial support board, with various tales of woe posted here, and then fixed by Googlers

If they get their feedback and bug reporting right, I'd be willing to cut them some slack: as a company, they aren't particularly abusive. Wanting to clean up YouTube comments is commendable and overdue, and their search engine remains very useful. It's easy enough to lock down a Google+ profile if you want, and to tweak Gmail to be less annoying.

<comment><USER32> And their open source projects like Chrome do have public bug trackers, but in my experience I've either been ignored or treated with what I felt was contempt. The first is probably the same feedback problem as everywhere, the second is because the Chrome developers don't want the same kind of internet I do...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > Larry Page worshiped Steve Jobs, who gave him a bunch of bad advice centered > around maximizing profit.

What is so bad about maximizing profit? If you make a profit, it means people are willingly giving you money for the service you provide. You make more profit when people feel they benefit more from your service. People can complain about Google until the end of time, but as long as the cash keeps flowing then Google is getting the signal that everything they are doing is in the interest of the consumer.

Now, I don't know if the "decline" of Google, as asserted by the OP, has actually affected their bottom line, because I'm not on the board at Google. I just think it's silly to throw around the word "profit" as if it's some sort of evil goal. Profit is the foundation of a monetary-based economy, and therefore modern human civilization. There is no signal available that is as efficient as profit as a proxy for the wants of the consumer, and how to most efficiently allocate scarce resources.

<comment><USER34> > _You make more profit when people feel they benefit more from your service._ > //

That's clearly not the only way to make more profit. If for example one has entrenched users and cuts the level of service markedly, or increases the cost, then profit increases. There is no need for anyone to benefit more other than the shareholders.

You can also improve a service without charging more. Again profit and benefit will not be directly correlated.

For me Google's search has been doing down-hill for a year or so, to my recollection. I've been using them for about 15 years. It's my primary point of contact despite using webmaster tools and a couple of other offerings.

Usually I try alternate SE about once every year to see if I can find something that works better for me. I just changed my primary SE to duckduckgo. Being so used to Google's interface it's proving hard but not impossible (as it was a last year for me); still not sure I'll settle on it but continually convinced Google isn't working any more.

<comment><USER35> "You can also improve a service without charging more. Again profit and benefit will not be directly correlated."

In your example, profit and benefit would in fact be directly correlated.

If you improve your service, without charging more, then more customers will want your product accordingly, and you will earn more profit all things being equal. In fact, this is one the most basic of all methods of earning more profit from an existing service or product: give customers a better service or product without raising prices, increasing the value proposition of your offering.

<comment><USER34> In the phrase "profit and benefit" it is implicit that the benefit is per customer. In your addendum it is profit and customer base that is correlated. As you imply, increased benefit (per customer) is also likely to lead to more customers, but not necessarily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I agree that Google is becoming a lot more intrusive towards her end users and the incentive behind it is probably profit. But at lease for software developers, from my experience, we as a group benefit from Google MORE than 5 years ago.

Chrome

AngularJS

Go

Selenium Webdriver

dart

Even Google Hangout with screen share helped our distributed team a lot.

5 years ago, what did Google offer? GWT?

And, of course, the search engine, we developers probably use it more than many other groups users. I hardly heard anyone use alternative search engine for day-to-day software development related search.

All these are of zero cost to us.

<comment><USER37> arguably half the stuff you listed would be seen as useless or even bad from another point of view.

heck 5years ago at least google results weren't a bunch of advertisements and i'm not talking of the first 5 "sponsored results". That alone, was a huge bonus to humanity in general. Nothing less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I am not sure decline is the correct word.

Google's choice of direction really bugs me.

Scrapping the 20% developer time is fine. Cutting down projects to focus the company on a handful of products is cool. I never used Reader anyway.

What is worrying is the way Google is becoming more and more creepy. They have so much information about you and with the increasing rollout of Google+ I feel more and more like I am being stalked.

Even when I am not on Google sites their ad's follow me around. It used to be relevant ad's. That was ok. Now I visit the Alienware website and all I see are Alienware banners everywhere I go for the next week. Its freaky.

Now Google+ wants to do away with your alias and force you to use your real identity. Why would you ever want to do that? For a while there was a warning "be careful what you put on Facebook, it could get you fired." Google are trying to make that "be careful what you put on the Internet."

Perhaps some people will improve the quality of their comments.. I think a far better chance is that someone looking for me will find a 4 year old opinion or me playing devils advocate in an arguement and think I am a bigot, ill- imformed, stupid, whatever as a result..

The fact is that I want my email and my documents to be linked to me and my name. Anything else I would like to be attached to a throwaway name like the one I have on HN. Something I can abandon without worry that my opinions in 2013 will survive as "internet fact" for years to come.

<comment><USER39> 20% time has not been scrapped.

This is a recurrent rumour that pops up over and over again. It is not true.

There have always been people who felt like they were unable to take it, or it was really 120% time or whatever. I've had a variety of 20% projects for years, and I've never worked 120%.

You have to be able to manage your teams and managers expectations, and if you commit to a deadline and fall behind then you're obviously going to have to "bank" that time. If you are in a team or get yourself into a position where you're constantly committing to unrealistic deadlines that have no slack time in them, of course you'll feel like you can't take 20%. But that's not the companies fault.

20% is a great policy. I don't know what else the company could do to make it easier to take really: managers aren't allowed to deny it to you, and you're allowed to bank it up to a reasonable cap if you have to focus on a main project for a while. At that point it's really up to you and your own time management.

<comment><USER38> Thanks for the clarification. I thought I read a while ago it was being scaled back and you needed approval to get cracking on a 20% project. Either I remember incorrectly or the story was untrue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Yeah, I had many of the same sentiments that I wrote up around the time the death of Reader was announced ([http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/17/god-damn-it- google/](http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/17/god-damn-it-google/)). I can't really look to them for inspiration any more, which is a greater loss than I would have admitted a year or two ago when I finally admitted Google was no longer Google. Oh well. Next!

</comment><comment><USER41> Steve jobs didn't say to maximise profits. He said make great products, rather than simply adequate products.

</comment><comment><USER42> I loved the early Google. A lot. But it's dead now. What's left is just the name and a dusty plaque in the corner that reads: don't be evil.

It will still attract smart people, but they will be of other kind to match the new company culture. The kind that joins Microsoft and Oracle. Those who follow the protocol, happy in their bubble, with the prime goal of _maximization of profit_. At all costs.

</comment><comment><USER43> Back when I was showing off my Google T-shirt, this is what they were (archive.org): [https://web.archive.org/web/20001203022500/http://www.google...](https://web.archive.org/web/20001203022500/http://www.google.com)

A lot more's changed than just a CEO.

<comment><USER44> Tried and was disappointed I couldn't search the 2000-era web.

<comment><USER45> The old school yahoo style categorization of links works. I was pretty surprised, I used google back then and didn't remember them having that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Steve Jobs' advice was not (only) to maximize profits, but to consolidate the products, reduce the number of products "because Google was all over the place". That's from the Steve Jobs autobiography by Walter Isaacson. So far, it looks like Larry Page took Steve Jobs advice to his heart and executes precisely on that vision: all products get integrated together (including through the Google+), innovation rate is still high and growing, company is super successful in post PC world.

</comment><comment><USER47> Reports of Google's decline are greatly exaggerated :) G+ is annoying, but these days no large company can make all their users happy, with all their products/features/changes, all the time. The so-called erosion of 'Don't be evil' has just become more apparent now, but as long as I have known google, they always made money from ads - and ads are fundamentally evil (IMHO). Search, maps, email etc are quite nice and I use those everyday. Fast, reliable, solid products - vastly improved since I first used them (many years ago). Where is the decline?

<comment><USER48> Ads are _fundamentally_ evil? What mechanism do you propose for bringing new products to the attention of customers, then? Or are new products and/or customers also fundamentally evil, IYHO?

<comment><USER49> Most ads are designed to resonate on an emotional level, rather than being purely informative.

It's the sophistication of their design in order to pierce our emotional 'firewall' that makes them 'evil'; they're basically exploits against the human mind.

<comment><USER50> Such poetic diction. I agree completely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> _> They founded the company with the motto "Don't Be Evil", and the unspoken question was, how long would this last? The answer, oddly enough, was "until Larry Page took over"._

This is probably very to the point. "Don't be evil" was Sergey Brin's push, and Larry Page doesn't seem to share it.

<comment><USER17> "Don't be evil" was Amit Patel & Paul Buchheit's push. Sergey, according to them, is the arbiter of what is "evil". Separation of powers and all that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Turns out adult supervision wasn't all bad.

I remember some time ago, probably 2002-2003 (?) when Bill Gates said something along the lines of "every tech company goes through a period of love at the beginning, and then that love turns to resentment; Google is in the middle of their "love" period and Microsoft is way past it; but that will change".

And, like a newly wed, I remember thinking: nah, that can't change. My love of Google will never fade.

Yet here we are; today no company annoys me more than Google; every decision they make seems bad. Like most people I still use their products, but every time I do I wish I didn't, like when I was driving a Renault.

<comment><USER53> Haha driving a Renault

Made me laugh, thanks!

<comment><USER54> I think (s)he meant, "Praying to god it doesn't break down on me again" while driving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Search engines have zero switching costs, so _mainstream_ PR is a key competitive advantage for Google (not engineer PR). Their massive capital investment in server farms (esp. for google suggest) is another.

20% time was a long-term strategy to lead new technologies instead of being disrupted by them. Google+ is a short-term strategy to avoid being disrupted by facebook. Long-term self-interest is often close to "good" (so close it may be _why_ it's good).

 _oblig snark:_ Instead of turning evil, Google be like Sun - die, and be reanimated by evil piecemeal.

</comment><comment><USER56> This article would have been much more persuasive had it specified the actual decisions made by Google that illustrate exactly how that company has "lost its way" (i.e., chosen profit over solving important problems).

</comment><comment><USER57> I really wish people would shut up about Google's "ideals". They're a company, not a messiah. Companies operate on a midpoint between what they _want_ to do and what they _need_ to do, and Google (like every company) has slid towards their "evil" neccessities over time.

Don't like it? That's fine, neither do I. But stop preaching about a morality that was never there.

</comment><comment><USER58> Yeah, I noticed Google interviewers are no longer showing enthusiasm during the interview, it's a very worrying sign.

<comment><USER59> It took a while for me to be able to articulate it, but that was what bothered me about my interview. The recruiter was all positivity, but the first real person who interviewed me seemed like he hated his job. It was the biggest turn-off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> The stock market thinks differently. GOOG is above 1,000 for a while now.

Of course you may dismiss my point rapidly since the Market is more interested in Financial profit than any other thing. But the same thing can be said about Hacker News.

What bothers HN readers/writers will not, necessarily, bother the average consumer, the same way what really boost the Stocks may don't matter to average HN reader.

Despite the fact that HN hates the new Gmail Compose, and the new Youtube comment system these are still the most compelling offers in their fields for the average consumer.

HN seems to have the urge to not only discuss their opinion but try to flush down everyone's throat and then generalize broadly.

Google's Decline here could be better written as "Google Decline, among hacker news readers."

<comment><USER61> The problem with Wall street is they're only focused on short term profits. Google creeping everyone the fuck out for a few years will eventually take a toll on the bottom lines even if it helps them this quarter. (I'm not just talking about devs either, everyone I know thinks they're a little creepy - from my grandma to my nieces.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I admire the guys who can pull off something great with just 20%. I could not do that. When I have something that excites me, it soon grabs 100% of me.

<comment><USER63> 20% time is the idea that it's OK to put "only" 32 hours (or, in practice, 25-30) on your assigned project, but there is certainly not an 8-hour maximum on the side project.

If you want a promotion, you'll have to put in more time than 25-32 hpw; but you won't get in trouble at that effort level. Of course, this is true in most companies-- a 25-hour effort on your assigned work is not low enough to get you fired, almost anywhere; it means that you're not outrunning the bear but you're outrunning someone-- but the difference is that you don't have to hide side projects. That makes a pretty substantial difference.

It's a good idea, not because the number means anything, but because it means that (under most managers, although there are exceptions) you don't have to deny or hide working on other things ("skunk works") that might prove useful. You can talk about them openly. In companies without 20%T projects, people still do those types of projects, but are afraid to share their work, which means those projects go nowhere. Google doesn't seem to have that problem. If you build a demo and share it, that's encouraged.

Google is still better than many companies (yes, I'll say it; it is, if you land in the right place, a great place to work) but an incredible amount depends on your manager. The biggest moral failing of Google probably is how easily a manager can become a SPOF for your career. That's not different from most companies, but any firm that wants to call itself progressive ought to solve that problem. You'd think it would be a first order of business.

<comment><USER62> Still, a certain mental makeup is necessary to be able to switch between projects like that. When I work on a project that interests me, I go to bed thinking about it, and in the morning I want to continue where I left it. Often I'll see things clearer after such a sleep break, and then I cannot just switch to another project instead of trying out an idea I had.

<comment><USER17> This is a learnable skill, and one that is IMHO very worth learning.

I also have a tendency to want to just load a whole problem into my head, Think Real Hard, and then write down the solution as quickly as I can. It's a great strategy, when it works. The problem is that it doesn't scale - it sets a limit on the complexity of problems you can attack directly, and it prevents you from working on more than one problem at once.

So what I've found, as I work on more complex problems, is that I really need to adopt all those tactics that back in college I thought were reserved for "lesser" minds. Things like breaking down a problem into chunks and then writing down all the intermediate steps. Adopting a bug database, spreadsheet, or task management software. Thinking about the external impact of a change, and communicating it to other parties. Showing off intermediate demos, and breaking the problem down into a form where intermediate demos are possible. Asking for help from other people.

These are _absolutely essential_ if you want to work on anything that takes more than a month, but the nice side effect is that you then get the ability to work on multiple projects for free. All the problem state is externalized, so if you need to work on something else, you can just drop it, switch contexts, and read your own documents or bug queue to figure out where to pick it up.

<comment><USER62> I agree that all of these measures help greatly, in particular with bigger problems. Nevertheless, I found that in the end, even when you've broken up a problem into chunks, keeping your focus on these connected chunks for an uninterrupted extended time period is invaluable. Often your realise that you should reorganise the chunk division etc. Of course you also benefit from breaks of looking at the problem, but these breaks tend to occur naturally for me, and are very different from a forced break of having to tend to another project.

Or let's put it another way: I don't multitask / switch contexts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> The rot was setting in long before Larry Page became CEO. For me, the first sign was GMail and their broken/perverted IMAP model.

<comment><USER41> I never understood why they didn't just expose their tags as imap keywords?

<comment><USER65> I think the argument is that no existing client that a user would actually have on their PC supported flags in any meaningful way: they weren't stored efficiently, they weren't presented in a way the user could effectively see, and in many cases they were limited to a random subset of flags (in the case of some clients, like Thunderbird, you could have exactly five flags with the names flag1 through flag5). The support in some clients has become more reasonable, but it is still not really usable. Even at the protocol level it is only recently that there is any effective way where flags could be efficiently resynchronized between the client and the server, and AFAIK there still isn't a standard to let flags have remap able high-level Unicode names. Sure, it would be interesting to push client developers to start maybe considering flags to be an interesting thing to support sufficiently to let a user work with Gmail, but frankly wouldn't we expect Google, as users, to build something actually usable?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the most salient facts to me is that Google was formed as a rebellion against the existing search companies and their business practices. I think "don't be evil" and "organizing the world's information" were entirely sincere, and I miss that spirit. Now I can't really distinguish them from any other company.

As hegemons go, I guess they're still better than average. And they're way better than Microsoft. But Google's decline makes me wonder where they're going to bottom out.

</comment><comment><USER66> I don't see Steve Jobs's "bad advice" having anything to do with maximizing profits but with maximizing excellence and surviving.

Apple in the late 80s and early 90s was an unfocused beacon of creativity that led to the company nearly going under (PowerPC, OpenDoc, Taligent, Kaleida, Dylan, Newton, QuickDraw GX, AV macs with video conferencing when QuickTime barely worked, Copland).

Was the advice bad? Quite possibly. But it was sincere and i don't think profit was the motive.

</comment><comment><USER26> Google was the antithesis of Microsoft as the author writes and is now doomed to become the same. It's a monopoly that has come to dictate its terms for maximum profit and resilience against competition. By becoming "evil", it is opening opportunities for a new antithesis of itself. Perhaps Twitter will take that spot, perhaps some entirely different company from the Far East? That's the way it goes ...

<comment><USER67> twitter are showing signs of going the same way. what it takes is someone prepared to take a low-prifit long-haul trust based approach rather than 'monetise now!'. this is a hard choice to make at the moment when its so easy to make money from investors who think they can both make big profits and keep users signing up.

<comment><USER68> e.g. Amazon

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Only reason to be disappointed is if you expected something else out of capitalists....

<comment><USER10> I expected them to retain some of their academic ethos. My problem isn't that I expected too much out of capitalists; I just expected them not to become pure capitalists.

And here by "capitalist" I mean the current American zeitgeist's version of that term, mainly as defined by MBAs. I think there are other versions of capitalism that are much more interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Unsurprisingly, companies (especially ones that are growing) do change and those changes impact their relationship with their customers/consumers. Tech is no different on that front, where it is different is that, unlike your department store, tech is something that you carry with you almost all the time. Understandably, people do get upset by this a lot more than what a similar change at a department store would result in.

I have been a fan of Google and have used a lot of its products over time. The company has been changing for a while now and a significant part of that change is that it is making the transition from being someone in the background (the advertising business), to someone who wants a front seat in everything digital. Consequently, its product line will also start to reflect that change.

And one of the obvious outcomes of such a change is that a lot of us who have used Google's products extensively from the early days are no longer the primary target group for the company. Early adopters rarely form the mass market and it is the same in the case of Google. Products like Gmail were never front line products. These happened to exist by leveraging existing tech within the company. With Glass, Android etc., these products are now moving to the front lines for the company.

I still use Gmail extensively, most of my video is consumed on Youtube, I still use search, Android and Drive (for online docs & Keep, not file sync). My main Google account does not have G+ on it and while things are not perfect, it is so far usable. I've rarely commented on YT, can't rate anything anymore on Play Store, but I can live with all that, at least for now.

I fully expect the situation to worsen for people like me in the years to come on Google, but that is OK. It will eventually lead to newer products coming into the market and that is always a good thing. Email will be the first thing I will switch and I think that will happen before the second half of 2014 swings around.

All said and done, I have been happy with Google being around -- they revolutionized search, made email an enabler than a pain (better storage & spam management) and every now and then I discover something awesome on YT that makes so grateful that it exists. It has given me much more than what it (and NSA ;-)) probably has taken from me.

Irony in all of this is that all this while everyone has criticized Google for being an ill-organized one-trick-pony! Maybe the OTP was a better company after all, eh?

</comment><comment><USER71> It is not a decline, it is just "maturation" or even "over-ripeness".

Speaking for a decline, it is rather a decline of interest in "internets" in general and especially social networks in particular. It is no longer a "shiny new thing".

So, Google, as FB, are trying to squeeze everything what is left from G+ and its flagship Gmail, just because everything switches to mobile and a chat is a new email.

That is why they are pushing Hangouts and FB pushes Messenger, which both wants to hijack your SMS app. But chat apps are too simple and it is not so easy to push ads here, because users will just switch to less annoying rival's service.

So, let's say that it is a decline of browser-based "internets", and email as a default way of communication, not just Google or FB.

</comment><comment><USER72> I don't think Google is "evil" but I do think it really all comes down to how Google makes their money. They are not like Microsoft or Apple, who actually sells things to end users.

I suspect we will see the same thing with Twitter too, as they seek to monetize their service.

</comment><comment><USER73> Google, and tech companies in general, should not be trying to innovate _despite_ the need to make money, they should be trying to innovate _because of_ the need to make money. If Google have lost that culture of innovation because of a short term need for operational efficiency then it will hurt them in the long run. People have observed how Microsoft failed to capitalise early on the internet, the smartphone explosion and the tablet explosion because of a poor culture. While that effect takes many years to hurt the bottom line, it is real and it hurts. If Google go down the same road then that is them failing at plain old capitalism, not the death of some alternative utopian dream.

</comment><comment><USER74> "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated" -Mark Twain/Google

</comment><comment><USER75> the funny thing is that Google itself played a huge role into making all of us raise the bar of what can be expected as a good behavior for a company. To get some open standards, get some open source stuff, get some free APIs, get some free services, get some interesting tools without costly subscriptions etc

All the things we didn't get from microsoft. If you were a student from a poor country you were cut off all the good things because you didn't have msdn subscription (and then blame pirating...).

I remember when I though "microsoft has to be stupid, they are walling off potential developers for their platform, if they only made stuff more developer friendly they would benefit greatly". I didn't mind that they were making money, I was concerned that they they got in the way, the didn't let you.

Google is certainly repeating some of these mistakes, but generally feels more friendly to users and developers for its platforms.

Other issues with Google about privacy etc, you cannot really compare it with a company that didn't recognize the value of "the internet" until too late. These are novel issues, and mixing profit with such sensible topics will certainly cause problems, whatever your business model is.

The interesting things is that we demand that from Google, because we know it's possible to do better, and the irony is that Google itself (among others) made us raise the bar of that acceptance.

</comment><comment><USER76> Correct me if I'm wrong but I haven't read anything about maximizing profit that Steve Jobs supposedly mentioned to Larry Page. Steve Jobs mentioned about a stronger focus and a plan on figuring out what Google wants to be when it grows up. Ultimately it was Larry's choice that Google is who they are now. I'm not a big fan of Steve Jobs but I don't think it's fair to say that Steve gave bad advice - unless it's written in the book, in which case, I apologize.

</comment><comment><USER77> I am sick of all this Google bashing here on HN; that's what is bugging me, really.

Come on, its a company, they don't _owe_ you anything; They sell your data, yes, but it's still the best search engine, by far; to me it's a tool, and yes, they also use their customers as tools to sell adds, that's what the internet is all about - pushing adds.

They could still do worse, they could push much more adds than they do now, but they don't; That's something that few people seem to notice.

</comment><comment><USER78> When Google Voice and free calls stop being free, I'm completely jumping off Google's bandwagon: gmail, google voice, google search, etc...

</comment><comment><USER79> I keep thinking of Ben Horowitz's article about Peacetime verse Wartime CEO ([http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/15/peacetime-ceowartime- ceo](http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/15/peacetime-ceowartime-ceo))

Larry Page took over when Google went to war with Facebook. A lot of stuff gets sacrificed during wartime.

</comment><comment><USER80> Not trying to be sadistic, but hasn't the backlash over Google+ integration into YouTube gone a bit far?

</comment><comment><USER81> > waiting until an investor accidentally makes the world a better place in the > process of trying to make as much money as possible

What the what?

I don't agree with the article. I feel the main issue with google is its laziness. No more legacy internet explorer support, imposing a bad google + whereas make it better...

</comment><comment><USER82> Article says "To me, they represented the antithesis of Microsoft"

IMHO all they are is following a similar trajectory around 20 years later than Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER83> Oh, poor Sergei and Larry, duped into taking bad advice from Steve Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER74> the WHHAAAmbulance needs to be called on these recent HackerNews anti-Google rants

</comment><comment><USER84> I still like Google.

</comment><comment><USER63> This is not worth getting "bugged" about. I say this as one who made that exact mistake. It's really traumatic to see those who are supposed to be leading fail, but it's an ahistorical truth not worth getting emotional about.

I don't care to speak about Google, but more generally, here's something everyone needs to know. Regarding the way we assess companies, it's probably the truest thing in the world. Here it is: _reputation is positively correlated with past moral decency and negatively correlated with_ future* moral decency.*

That might seem strange, but keep in mind that organizations change and, within 5 years, it will be a different set of people. Doing the right thing begets a good reputation (such as that held by Microsoft in 1997, Google in 2013, Silicon Valley until recently) but that reputation also admits complacency. If the same people were in charge, they'd possibly continue doing the right thing. But a new set of people inherit that favorable standing and use it as an excuse to get away with bad behavior. This is as old as dirt. It's why there is a centuries-old hatred of inherited wealth and position in all modernized cultures.

The same applies to "Silicon Valley". It's easy to look at its fall from grace with hatred and disgust; but the fact is that the people now on top are 50 years separated from the ones who built it; so why, exactly, is it a surprise that the ones on top now are so shitty? It shouldn't be. They inherited the reputations of their forebears (which is why they have favorable tax laws, a "cool" image not shared by more traditional companies, and their pick of top young talent) but not the values.

Preventing this kind of moral decay requires growing slowly: _very_ slowly. Look at Valve, weighing in around 330 people after 17 years. If they'd had VCs breathing down their necks to reach 2000 people at 5 years, there's no way they could have maintained that open allocation culture.

If something grows organically and sanely, then there is a chance for there to be enough stability that reputation carries a positive signal (because past good behavior is a likely sign of the future) but if it grows at a venture- capital pace, reputation almost always predicts _low_ moral decency in the future (especially since that reputation is usually bought from the tech press, not established organically over years).

<comment><USER85> >It's why there is a centuries-old hatred of inherited wealth and position in all modernized cultures.

Isn't the opposite true?

We can certainly point to famous examples of heirs/heiresses behaving badly, but that seems largely the exception rather than the rule-- by and large, the terms _nouveau riche_ and "new money" carry a negative connotation, while "old money" is associated with taste and sophistication (though certainly also snobbery).

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Here Here!

</comment><comment><USER87> I stopped reading at "I'm not female, so I don't have to worry about getting thousands of rape threats every month". Inserting unsubstantiated claims for shock value into an argument just detracts from any other points he is trying to make.

<comment><USER88> I read the damn thing three times and can't find a point to any of it. What I see is a bunch of rambling doom and gloom statements: "and then it all came tumbling down". What exactly has tumbled here? The fact they jacked with the YouTube comment system?

<comment><USER89> XMPP Syndication, (And with that interoperability), an increase of invasiveness of their ads (for those without adblock), the death of Google Reader, there's plenty more if you read up.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would you build an online business without Google? - <AUTHOR> This is not inflamatory, I am hoping for a pragmatic discussion.
I have noticed over my time working with online SaaS and ecommerce businesses that they are all at the behest of Google services, specifically their advertising and search apparatus. I have seen companies swing in revenue by huge margins when their ads get restricted or they fall put of favour of the search algorithms.
This strikes me as particularly fragile, and I am trying find ways to avoid or at least mitigate that reliance.
How are some of you seeing the risk assessed and mitigated in companies you are involved with? <comment><USER2> From the headline I thought you were referring to Google Cloud servers and services.

Whether you like it or not, Google search, AdWords, etc do capture a huge segment of the potential marketplace. Focusing on quality and relevance instead of trying to game SEO might mitigate some of the extreme swings.

Establishing a strong presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and even here on HN, etc, might reduce your reliance on the GoogleSphere. Have to wonder whether Bing and other lesser used search services might also be of value. Have never looked into those.

Can't help noticing the amount of advertising that some web sites invest in "traditional media". They probably only do it because it works for them.

</comment><comment><USER3> As someone who loves the indiweb and all the self-hosted-cloud deploying techniques, I would just run my own helpdesk/CRM if I had the urge to get money by advertising whitespace on my website.

I would be happy doing so because I would no allow my clients to spy on my visitors...</comment>


I have 227 browser tabs open, and my computer runs fine. Here's my secret - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2015/6/1/8695555/browser-tabs <comment><USER2> I think I'm missing something here. You want 100s of pages accessible from a vertical list, but are happy to wait for them to reload when you re-open one... aren't you just looking for a bookmarks list?

<comment><USER3> Yes, the author says that he doesn't like bookmarks because then they are hidden behind a menu but at this point he's basically recreated a list of bookmarks that is always open.

I also keep plenty of tabs open for things that I'm monitoring or want to get back to but appreciate that browser constraints force me to go through the tab backlog and either deal with the tab now or save it as a bookmark for later.

<comment><USER4> He doesn't even need the bookmarks, a 'history sorted by access date' would work just fine. IE 11 has the history explorer bar which you can choose 'today' and 'view by order visited today'.

In any case, he could use Sleipnir 6. It's got your hundreds of tabs open market cornered.

[http://www.fenrir-inc.com/us/sleipnir/](http://www.fenrir- inc.com/us/sleipnir/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > If you're a semi-professional web browser, you probably make heavy use of > tabs.

And if you are a professional one, you have less than 10 tabs opened because you are focused, and know what you are browsing.

<comment><USER6> I think the number of tabs has nothing to do with it, frankly; different people work in different ways. I've known great devs with either behaviour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've always had 150+ plus tabs open ever since the days of Firefox 3 and I've always run stock browsers + adblock. Both Firefox and Chrome seem to handle it fine, never noticed any performance issues running on fairly standard machines. The key is to max out the RAM of any machine you're on. Nowadays with fast SSDs though, even fast RAM doesn't matter very much.

</comment><comment><USER8> For tab groups, why not use Firefox's built-in system? The icon next to the "New Tab" button shows you tabs groups and lets you make new ones, drag tabs from one group to another, and name tab groups. Firefox also takes tabs out of memory when they're in a group you're not looking at.

</comment><comment><USER9> I disable JS. Makes the web much nicer. For the occasional broken site that requires it to render text, hit CTRL-SHIFT-s (using surf) to enable it until that tab (using tabbed) is closed.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have 227 browser tabs open, can open any of them instantly without even touching the network and my computer runs fine for _weeks_. Here's my secret:

Opera 12

Chrome and Firefox might have more dev time thrown at them, but when it comes to being well-engineered they have a LOOOOONG way to go yet.

<comment><USER11> I love Opera 12, but I believe it's no longer getting security updates -- I can't really recommend it because of that reason.

<comment><USER10> I don't recommend it to people, really. I know about the security updates and live with that risk, personally.

My main point was really that the article linked is a silly hacky workaround to a problem that would not exist in the first place if Chrome and Firefox were well written software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sometimes I feel like I open way too many tabs, when I really could reopen them anytime, by either using a bookmark or just googling the page (say python documentation). I can't imagine a use case where you needed that many open tabs.

<comment><USER13> well, the author seems to be using tabs as "bookmarks" ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Tab groups is one of the most underrated features in Firefox. I always have dozens of tabs open in various groups, and it mostly doesn't affect the performance.

</comment><comment><USER15> A workaround is not the solution, I am hoping the new Firefox might force Google to fix their browser rather than users relying on extensions.

</comment><comment><USER16> As a former multiple hundreds of tab users. I did t know I could write a hn article about it. :P But the way I solved was by not having all 100s+ tabs in 1 window frame. But by dragging out a few tabs into another windows frame. And sorting that way. Combined with multiple 27" 2560*1440 monitors. I never had any issues. Most the plug-ins are meh or add instability. Never had any slowness or issues with performance or crashes and I'm not doing anything special or different at all. Or at least I don't think I am.

However as of late I've been trying to keep total count under 20. Though it's often quite difficult.

<comment><USER17> This is how I use Conkeror (Firefox-based Emacs-like browser, for those who aren't familiar with it). Since each frame has its own unique buffer list, it's pretty easy to create new frames (C-x 5 2) and use them to segregate tabs/buffers based on tasks.</comment></comment>


Why Are the Beatles So Popular After 50 Years? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18449107 <comment><USER2> Are they "so popular"?</comment>


Wyze Alleged data breach 12-26-2019 - <AUTHOR> https://forums.wyzecam.com/t/alleged-data-breach-12-26-2019/79046 <comment><AUTHOR> As of December 29, 2019 Wyze has confirmed that two databases were "left unprotected" and while these were not production databases, they did contain some user data. The original link has been has been updated by the Wyze team, for those who wish an official explanation.

</comment><comment><USER2> Having a hard time seeing this as anything other than an attack on wyze with the guise of a helpful report. Similar things were reported against AMD after Intel's security issues that were rather dubious claims

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, I'm convinced this whole thing is a hoax. Wyze handling this under the assumption this was a real thing is a breath of fresh air, as they definitely seem to care a lot about this and shown that they are taking the accusation very seriously. ...but the source for this accusation, 12security, they look like a joke. The further you dig into "12security" the more sketchy it gets. The website domain name was purchased earlier this year from Google Domains (whois.net shows it was created 2019-08-19T22:06:20Z), but the only 3 "articles" on it are all from December of this year, and the other two from before this Wyze one are just ranty, and aren't anything to help 12security's credibility. Before today there isn't a single listing for this website in the internet archives, the only archives for this website are ones I generated today while researching the site. The website is powered by Ghost, ([http://ghost.io/](http://ghost.io/)) which isn't really an issue, lots of professional websites use Ghost, but it's not even been fully set up. The website has a lot of the default stuff still. There is no favicon for the site, the username for the blogposts is the default "ghost", the footer is still linked to the Ghost platform's social page and not their own, and the admin login url hasn't been changed like you'd expect a security expert to do to [https://blog.12security.com/ghost](https://blog.12security.com/ghost) which redirects to [https://12security.ghost.io/ghost/#/signin](https://12security.ghost.io/ghost/#/signin). The only social page that their footer points to that is their own is their twitter, [https://twitter.com/securitytwelve](https://twitter.com/securitytwelve) which again, does not look like a real security researcher's twitter, and instead looks like a generic anti-china conspiracy account. The website has a dedicated page for pricing of security consultation, and it's made in the most asshole way possible. "Twelve Security offers the following services. Prices are purposely posted here to intentionally antagonize any vendors/consultants who do not:" which is to me suspicious because it's the very same thing that people (John Wood) are pushing Wyze to pay for. Their phone number listed, 210-929-6268, is a google voice / google fi phone number that has been put on do not disturb mode. Or at the very least, they're using the EXACT same recorded messages that Google voice / google fi uses. And [https://freecarrierlookup.com/](https://freecarrierlookup.com/) verifies that both my google fi number, and their number show up as a T-Mobile number. Their website advertises their "services" but does it in a very unorthodox and aggressive way, [https://web.archive.org/web/20191227161612/https://blog.12se...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191227161612/https://blog.12security.com/services/) Their domain is a Google Domains domain, that was only registered this year. And the "article" that started this all, just read it for yourself. It doesn't follow the industry standard of first reporting the breach to the company to give them a chance to close the breach before making the public aware of it, that is done to protect users from the hackers who would go after Wyze's servers because of the alleged breach. [https://web.archive.org/save/https://blog.12security.com/wyz...](https://web.archive.org/save/https://blog.12security.com/wyze/) And that's just what I've been able to stumble across so far. Dov Chodoff (in the FB Wyze group) also pointed out that their address listed on their site doesn't appear to be a real address [https://goo.gl/maps/SFDHWeM1NHngBrr1A](https://goo.gl/maps/SFDHWeM1NHngBrr1A)

<comment><USER4> ^^Wyze PR spotted

For a major security incident, Wyze decided not to notify customers (it has been days and Wyze still hasn't sent out any communication and stopped twitter updates).

Instead Wyze launched a smear campaign with troll accounts like FocusForte (accounts created just to post the message above) across multiple forums. Shame on your Wyze, typical act of Chinese spying company.</comment></comment>


Jason Calacanis: We need to empower hollywood - not kill it - <AUTHOR> http://www.launch.is/blog/we-need-to-empower-hollywood-not-kill-hollywood.html

<comment><USER2> 'Can you imagine if Hollywood released a press releasing saying "Kill the internet?"'

I don't have to imagine it; the rights mafia has been trying exactly that since they found out about Napster. SOPA is just the latest "kill the internet" and it won't be the last. PG's making a good point: instead of fighting a purely defensive war, why not make them defend themselves against us for a change?

<comment><USER3> I actually prefer Jason's point: why fight them at all if we can conquer them? Focusing too much on the competition is counter-productive -- the focus should be on the end-users' needs.</comment></comment>


Being fat is bad for your brain - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/brain-damage/?ref=global-home

<comment><USER2> Correlation =/= causation. So many leaps are being made here.

> One study of 60 healthy young adults (in their 20s and 30s) found that the > fatter members of the group had significantly lower gray-matter densities in > several brain regions, including those involved in the perception of taste > and the regulation of eating behavior.

Maybe the lower gray-matter density, particularly in the "perception of taste and the regulation of eating behavior" areas, predisposes them to being overweight, rather than the extra weight causing brain shrinkage. You'd have to do a longitudinal study to be able to make a case for causation...

<comment><USER3> Yea, the conclusion is overly simplified here. I think it's safe to say not exercising and not eating well is generally bad for your entire well being, not just your brain and weight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Whatever the causes, the implications are grave. In the United States today, around one-third of adults are obese. At the same time, dementia is already one of the most costly and devastating health problems of old age. The possibility that obesity today will lead to higher rates of dementia in the future is, therefore, deeply alarming."

<comment><USER5> Don't worry _fat_ people die young...

Well, if you are fat enough for the average american to notice you can expect a reduced lifespan. If you are slightly overweight relative to BMI charts you actually have a longer life expenctancy. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WikiRRM.jpg>)

PS: I guess the truth hirts.

<comment><USER6> Not as much as you'd think. They are just more expensive to maintain as they age, thanks to the wonders of modern medicine.

<comment><USER5> It's still relative but when you tip 40+ BMI you still have a significantly shorter life expectancy.

 _On average, obesity reduces life expectancy by six to seven years:[2][27] a BMI of 30–35 reduces life expectancy by two to four years,[21] while severe obesity (BMI > 40) reduces life expectancy by 10 years.[21]_(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity>)

PS: I have a BMI of 34 so I want to know just how bad it can get if I let myself go any further. There is a lot of misinformation out there but being overweight has real negative effects on your heath.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fortunately, being fat is also likely to make you die before you get dementia.

No question that being fat isn't healthy, but I don't think there is much of a practical take-home from this. People already know that.

<comment><USER8> The article is not just saying fat != healthy. There are some good comments to takeaway about how fat affects the brain, e.g.:

" Fat cells also secrete substances that cause inflammation; chronic inflammation of the brain, which is often found in the obese, impairs learning and memory and is also a feature of Alzheimer's."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't like the causal relationship expressed in the title of this article. What the data they describe in the article suggests is that increased risks for dementia and obesity are linked. But the title has the typical, "If you're not working out you're HURTING YOUR BRAIN." That, it seems, is not yet researched enough to be conclusive (nor is it really germane to the article).

Yet another case of "Good Article, Bad Headline."

I hope this isn't another excuse for thin people to lord their genetic predispositions and life choices over thick people. That's very tiresome.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes, being morbidly obese isn't healthy, but I feel obligated to point out that being underweight is generally as bad medically as being obese, yet due to society's standard of beauty trending towards people who are practically skeletal, you don't see that mentioned nearly as much.

<comment><USER11> Sorry, but no way. Being underweight presents far less health consequences than being even just overweight.

Obesity health risks: Heart Disease, Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, Stroke, sleep apnea, Gout.

Underweight health risks: Osteoporosis, weakness, anemia, weaker immune system.

<comment><USER12> Do you have medical evidence to back that up?

Some problems associated with being underweight (I was very underweight when younger) I am aware of are:

\- susceptible to illness/disease

\- poor metabolism

\- bad blood flow

\- tiredness

The problems are different, definitely, but no less problematic.

I would argue the higher number of people dying of obesity is purely down to the higher number of obese people (compared to dangerously underweight people)

<comment><USER13> So if you are not tired not weak and almost never sick but technically underweight you don't have to worry? How can you determine poor metabolism and bad blood flow?

<comment><USER12> Not at all - those are just some of the things I suffered from.

Bad blood flow? If you have issues with feeling cold a lot (especially in your extremities), regular light headedness etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My brain really likes glucose.

<comment><USER15> And guess what? Food companies know that too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> _SIGH_ , _climbs back on bike_

</comment><comment><USER17> ha! That explains everything about the USA. Just kidding :P</comment>


Air India creates record by flying 15,300 kilometres in 14.5 hours non stop - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.in/Air-India-creates-record-byflying-15300-kilometres-in-14-5-hours-non-stop/articleshow/55008405.cms <comment><USER2> Earlier discussion (not on the record, but the route): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12738077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12738077)

Key takeaways:

\- This is a new route (started in Dec 2015)

\- AI recently got permissions to use the Chinese Air Space for the route

\- The jetstream optimisations are a service provided by Boeing, and AI just started subscribing to them.

</comment><comment><USER3> There used to be a nonstop Thai Airways 17 hour flight from NYC to Bangkok that I flew several times. And I found a list from 2007 of longhauls with it listed in the middle! I remember the flight would go over the Arctic, since the distance was shorter, and I could see ice instead of clouds on a clear day. The flight itself would have been unbearable were it not for the amazing Thai airways service. A quick Google shows the distance just under 14000 km.

[https://consumerist.com/2007/07/16/worlds-longest-non- stop-f...](https://consumerist.com/2007/07/16/worlds-longest-non-stop- flights/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Note that this is a record for passenger service. Boeing flew a 777 without passengers for 22:42 and a distance of 21,601 km.

[http://boeing.mediaroom.com/2005-11-10-Boeing-777-200LR- Sets...](http://boeing.mediaroom.com/2005-11-10-Boeing-777-200LR-Sets-New- World-Record-for-Distance)

<comment><USER5> So the speed on that flight would be 951 km/hr. Wikipedia article states the max speed for 777 is 950 km/hr. In this AI flight plan, the speed is 1055 km/hr. A new speed record in its own right.

<comment><USER6> 1055 km/h is far from a ground-speed record for airliners. North Pacific tailwinds can push them over 1200 .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sweet AI turning a profit ? I must've been a dove-eyed kid when that last happened.

Won't they have to fly back over the Atlantic from SFO, though ?

Also, if the AI boffins are listening:

\- "एअर् " -> "अय्र्" ( एचोऽयवायावः ). पदे नित्या संहिताम् करवामहै !

\- Please don't make us change over in Delhi! Not all of us wish to honor Herr Gandhi, nor step onto the land of the Mughal-British retainers.

\- Mumbai too sucks balls; one wrong call and a taxi man outside the airport steals $100!

\- More importantly: South India has all the software man!

      BLR-SFO flight would've made a lot more sense. Seriously, what was AI thinking ? That India's bureaucracy would transform Silicon Valley, by teaching them the dark arts ?

<comment><USER8> vAyubhArata: iti nAmam sundarataram |

<comment><USER7> अपि "हंसध्वज" वा "जटायु"।

परन्तु असम्भवम् आङ्लराज्ये परिवर्तनम् । :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pardon my naiveté, but, why didn't anyone do this before? Isn't it easier to fly if you take less time because you have tailwinds?

<comment><USER10> All sorts of faster distance opportunities exist.

one of the safety regulations relies on close landing strips within 300mi of any plane or something like that. God, wish I could find the article on that....

<comment><USER11> It's less about distance, and more about time (i.e. how long the plane can fly with an engine out).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What aircraft? Triple 7?

<comment><USER13> [http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AIC173/history/20161015/2...](http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AIC173/history/20161015/2200Z/VIDP/KSFO)

777-200LR, looks like.</comment></comment>


Lima – the cloud that respects your privacy - <AUTHOR> https://meetlima.com/index.php?lang=en <comment><USER2> What will the price be once it's available? Also, why not use something like OwnCloud on a cheap desktop box?</comment>


Fix It Already – EFF Campaign - <AUTHOR> https://fixitalready.eff.org/ <comment><USER2> Google play store should delist/ban apps that ask for permissions they dont need or with overwhelmingly negative reviews

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oceanwing....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oceanwing.smarthome&hl=en_US)

</comment><comment><USER3> Mozilla should let users install unsigned extensions in Firefox.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure they'll be willing to revisit this decision once they finish crippling the extension API.</comment></comment>