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I feel like Google generally takes the right side of things. Defensive patents, tight security, easy to use, friendly products. Their stuff is mostly open source and free. TBH Google are relative angels. Microsoft before them had shitty products and strongarmed other corps to get what they wanted. Actively sued based on dumb patents. And Apple only turned "privacy" into a thing they supposedly cared about when people started being concerned about Google's powers. They're not actually sincere about it, it's marketing like everything else.

Sometimes I think people forget the history of how and why Google got where it is. They've had some snafus, but for the most part just been a freaking awesome company from the start who puts out amazing, free things, and push OS and CS research forward.

No, I have no guilt using anything they make.

> push OS and CS research forward.

I think you have mistaken Google for Microsoft Research, in what concerns pushing OS research forward.

I think he meant open source

I did, thanks, should've been more clear

Perhaps it is you that are mistaken. In terms of OS research, I'm aware of Singularity and Midori, but these were all flawed projects that were subsequently discontinued.

No, they were projects killed by management, they were only flawed on the eyes of MS haters.

They had a huge impact on .NET AOT compiler for Windows 8, .NET Native for UWP, Linux subsystem, Windows containers and secure kernel. Including asynch/await, .NET TPL, concepts now spread to other languages.

You are missing Drawbdrige, Singularity's sucessor, where pico-processes where researched and are the basis of the Linux subsystem.

Or the P language, a type dependent language, used to write the new USB stack.

And many other findings, easy to track down at their website.

Well, of course they were killed my management. And they were killed because their performance was so bad that it wasn't worth investing additional time, resources and money into. As for the impact of their research on AOT compilers in their runtimes, what exactly did they revolutionize in AOT compiler design or technology that wasn't already known?

> They're not actually sincere about it, it's marketing like everything else.

Really? How do you explain Secure Enclave, end-to-end iMessage encryption and lots more? Not to mention the tough stance they publicly took against FBI wanting special OS version to crack terrorist phones?

To play the devil's advocate:

> Secure Enclave

ARM TrustZone. My 2005-era low-end devices have that. Hardly Apple's idea.

Microsoft did ground work in that space for ~2 decades by now. It's called TPM and has a bunch of advantages by being a discrete component. It's also an industry-wide initiative and open to all.

> end-to-end iMessage encryption

Perfect for locking down the ecosystem.

> tough stance they publicly took against FBI

Posturing (on both sides: The FBI knows that they're SoL on getting such favors, with or without writing whiny op-eds on how they're incompetent).

You'd have already seen leaked versions of the "special OS versions to crack" had the other vendors budged to such demands. They might just discuss matters with the Feds without inviting the press.

The Secure Enclave is not ARM TrustZone. The SEP is a discrete component.

You seem to be easily deceived.

Their stuff is not mostly open source.

> Does anyone feel a tinge of guilt using the amazing technology that Google provides?

I do and the same with a few other big company technologies and frameworks. It's not so much the support but more the fact that in the past a single person / small team could make a technology that became a staple of the industry. I always liked that it was one of the few things left that big corporations didn't have a strangle hold upon. Now however it seems that it is no longer the case and all the new frameworks, libraries and other such things are coming out of the big corporations - I guess I just enjoyed supporting the little guys.

Well I'd argue that the little guys are still plenty powerful in this space. Some of the largest JavaScript libraries we're only a few people (some we're hired by big companies, but they were alone for a long time).

The platform they run on (web browser) is written by Apple, Microsoft, and Google.

And Mozilla.

But the platform the other tools that the GP is talking about would probably run on an OS, of which I don't think there are many which are written and maintained by small independent teams of a few developers.

Still, I was just pointing out that there are still areas that the major player is an independent developer without any backing. I'd bet that with the ease of publishing in something like NPM it's easier than ever for someone to make a good piece of software and become a dominating force in a niche area than ever before.

>some we're hired by big companies, but they were alone for a long time

I would imagine they would've been happy with staying alone rather than being managed by a boss, but sadly no one bothers to donate to most projects.

I'm not talking about your average software developer, but large companies that save hundreds of man hours that would've gone into creating and maintaining the projects they use.

> Does anyone feel a tinge of guilt using the amazing technology that Google provides?

Why?

> I think Google is overall a pretty "evil" (I use quotes because the term is loaded, and the reasoning is too long to easily state) company.

I disagree, but even if I didn't why would that make me guilty about using libre technology from them?

> Does anyone feel a tinge of guilt using the amazing technology that Google provides?

I certainly do. I asked this question before, but I get the feeling that most people here just want to take what's good from Google, and still question all their evil doings. I think that's hypocritical.

Disclaimer: I work at Google.

I don't see that as hypocritical. I just want the 'good parts' of my relationship with my wife while still being able to criticize her sometimes. I want the useful parts of government while still being allowed to criticize them frequently. It's not that unusual a state, really.

Personally I think it's great that people who use Google's products are still willing to take us to task. User/civic feedback is an important mechanism to keep big companies like Google in line.

> I just want the 'good parts' of my relationship with my wife while still being able to criticize her sometimes.

But I hope you don't take it as an offense when I say that I wouldn't want to be married to the devil, no matter how good looking she is ;)

Also, I'm curious: how do you feel about banking with a financial institution that has a favorable interest rate but trades in weapons of war?

> User/civic feedback is an important mechanism to keep big companies like Google in line.

Sadly, all too often communication with Google is a one way street, from user support questions to ethical issues.

> how do you feel about banking with a financial institution that has a favorable interest rate but trades in weapons of war?

Depends, who are they trading with? Our democratic allies? Fine. North Korea? I'd have a problem with that.

That said, I'm not as hostile to big tech companies in general as your average HN commenter, as I see a bunch of advantages in having them around, and things like companies using anonymized user data for ads don't bother me as long as they're handled competently.

No dilemmas on my side.

My approaches are C++ using a MVVM architecture with native views, Xamarin, or just focus on a single platform.

Depending on what I want to implement.

>Does anyone feel a tinge of guilt using the amazing technology that Google provides

How's TypeScript working out?

Xamarin?

Qt?

Only if you want to have fun writing your own bindings for the majority of OS APIs.

Qt for mobile devices requires the use of QML (not C++ widgets) and many APIs aren't wrapped, or even fit into the OS application lifecycle.

It is easier to use standard C++ and do your own bindings to Java and Objective-C, than QML (one version for each device) + Qt/C++ + wrappers into not support APIs.

Xamarin teams take the effort to create .NET bindings for all new iOS and Android APIs, on each OS release.

Not sure what you are referring to here. The benefit of Qt for me is that it wraps more APIs on more OS's than anything else I have come across. You can run your app on Qnx even Windows CE. It's incredible. You write your view in QML and logic in C++ with libraries that are so much saner than e.g. Boost. Then communicate between the two with signals and slots which integrate seamlessly with the dataflow property system. It couldn't be neater from my point of view and I have used a lot of gui frameworks.

From your answer I take you never tried to use Qt across iOS, Android and UWP.

Hint, the overall experience isn't like on the desktop.

I like Qt, especially the desktop part. I haven't used QML at all, but started using Flutter. Killer feature in Flutter is sub-second update times preserving the same state app was running as before. Is this doable with QML?

(Juce, a C++ ui framework, has also been a contender, and to a degree Lispworks, possibly others, but these are the ones I'm a bit familiar).

Regardless of which route you take, you’re gonna need to learn the ins and outs of the platforms you’re running on.