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Comment by beaner | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

> 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?

Their stuff is not mostly open source.

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