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Comment by keepper | Hacker News Reader

It’s really sad to see the anti-success rhetoric.

I was around during the “search wars”, and what’s usually forgotten is that well, they were by far the best behaved as a corporate entity.

This “romantization” of this ideal state, devoid of historical context or acknowledgement of the world we live in is extremwly counter productive.

Should google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple do better? Absofuckinglutely!!!

Regulate them, hold them to a higher standard!

But Will breaking them up do anything except destroy them and just empower the next competitor ( who will have to learn the same lessons?

Even worse, likely in a country that won’t match your same values of “freedom”

Are imbalances in power great? Nope

Are monopolies awesome? Most never

Are billionaires awesome? Nope

But this is the stage we are at due to an interconnect global economy. We built this.

Knee jerk solutions don’t and have never fixed anything

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> I was around during the “search wars”, and what’s usually forgotten is that well, they were by far the best behaved as a corporate entity.

They were well behaved when they had competition to worry about. Once they effectively achieved a monopoly, ethics slowly got relegated to the back seat. They started leveraging the search monopoly to take over other industries, to undermine the open web, to engage in political censorship (hello Project Dragonfly) and much more.

Everything you say here is an excellent argument why search should not be a monopoly. We need competition to keep the search engines honest. Regulation won’t help, since orgs like the FCC are vulnerable to regulatory capture, and there’s no other way to "hold them to a higher standard" than taking your business elsewhere. As long as you continue using their products and thus earning them money, they don’t have any reason to care what you think about their business practises.

Isn't "project dragonfly" the Google search engine version for China? Google was trying to comply with the law. It's a law you might not agree with, but come on. The reason all these governments want Google split up is more censorship, not less. From torrents to negative reporting on EU commissars. From everyone's interpretation of hate speech to pages pointing out that sometimes social services are the abusers in children's lives, not so much their savior. Scihub, Schwartz, Snowden, Yellow vest demonstrations, Hong Kong student injuries and disappearances, Twitter making some tax agency officer's abuse of power a big deal, ...

That's why they want Google and Facebook broken. And of course, they're unwilling to spend any money, change any law anywhere, accommodate anyone, or put in any kind of effort whatsoever.

Fundamentally they want the internet to disappear. They want the control of information out of the hands of these idiotic American nerds that refuse to control information !

How would breaking up a company help censorship? Surely it's easier to censor one entity than many.

Divide and conquer. They can push for one of the companies that is pro-censorship.

One the other hand, Google is so big that it could just ignore demands from smaller countries, especially when they are a small drop on the bucket in terms of revenue. Multiple small, regional companies can't afford to go against the government in their area and aren't present in other areas.

Right now the only country that could actually do anything about Google is the US, but they won't because we benefit from having the number one internet search company be American.

Also, the rank and file employees in Google are largely liberal and tend to make a big fuss over things like censorship. If Google is broken up a company that is more friendly to state interference could emerge and take it's place.

You've nailed it. Back when tech was the underdog, it was trying to make things more open, accessible, free-as-in-speech. I remember when the internet was very pro Ron Paul, and against government regulating technology (remember the losing battle against DMCA and DRM and the PATRIOT act?). Now that tech has become successful, the losers (those who want the control) are trying their hardest to create new narratives about tech companies' abuse / monopoly. Can tech be improved? Or course, but with small iterations, not complete overhauls.

> Google was trying to comply with the law.

Google was trying to gain the Chinese market by implementing political censorship. And once they knelt and swore allegiance to the Chinese regime, every other totalitarian regime around the world would be lining up with demands that they do the same in their countries.

Expecting Google to stand up to EU on anything is naïve. They already got massive fines, they don’t have the spine to risk more. They will do as the commisars dictates, whether they’re split up or not.

> Google was trying to gain the Chinese market by implementing political censorship. And once they knelt and swore allegiance to the Chinese regime, every other totalitarian regime around the world would be lining up with demands that they do the same in their countries.

I'm super glad that google didn't go through with dragonfly and it's really sad that they even went as far as they did. However, going through with it would have just made them the same as basically every other company.

Apple, microsoft, and basically every other company all operate in china, following chinese "law". Ironically, it's two of the worst/most hated companies (google, facebook) in the US, and most frequently demanded to be broken up here on HN, are two of the very, very few companies that haven't bent over for china.

I think it’s pretty clear that Google would have gone through with Dragonfly if it wasn’t for the protests against it, both from the public and Google employees.

In other words, their refraining from Dragonfly wasn’t because of moral courage or a principled stance. It was just to avoid a PR disaster.

And it was only because Dragonfly was leaked that that we ever heard of it. Imagine what other interesting programs they’ve got going on that we haven’t heard of yet.

> they were by far the best behaved as a corporate entity

Were. When though? The founders said in their original university paper that selling advertising was wrong and would inherently corrupt a search engine. Of course once they realised how much money was being made in search, that fundamental tenet of don't be evil lapsed before the phrase was even coined.

History and Google's progress of updates seems to have borne their claim out. Google is worse than it was, in good measure as they have twisted results to push more sales. It's a shopping search first and foremost, and frankly not a very good search any more. With an obscene overreach of data gathering that is almost impossible to evade. Every opportunity to gather data they gather more. Remember the Google war driving guy who "accidentally" gathered all that extra wifi info from streetview cars? Entirely by accident. How many believe in that "accident" who isn't on Google payroll?

So no, I don't see it as anti-success, more that they became far too large, far too greedy, and far too abusive - e.g. demanding everyone train the self-driving fleet to pass a captcha. Scanning the world's books was a far more appealing proposition.

Given they have the data, and the holy trinity of search, advertising and monitoring, regulation is not enough. Split off advertising or analytics and monitoring, or break it up some other way. That's to serve the public interest, not as some anti-success crusade.

> Scanning the world's books was a far more appealing proposition.

That proposition failed precisely because it was regarded - rightly or wrongly, it's not clear that it matters - as a "far too large, far too greedy, and far too abusive" endeavor.

I thought it was more that the necessary licensing fell through, or was agreed and then fell apart. Added to which the Google Books interface was and is dire.

> Even worse, likely in a country that won’t match your same values of “freedom”

For many people in the world, the US already is a country that matches this exact description - what with toothless antitrust laws, anti-union actions being tolerated, and what the ICE camps look like is something we don't even have to talk about.

Sure, China would be worse, but you should strive for more than just "the second worst developed country(tm)"

In fact, yours is the perfect argument why we in Europe should try to end the dominance of Google and break it up.

The US is far less restricted than europe for freedom of speech, the major principle that matters when you're talking about information technology.

In the case of search engine balkanisation (I'd be in favour of it), I'd think that eurosearch would, on average, be more censorious than amerifind.

Aside from Holocaust denial, hate speech and libel how does the US differ from "Europe" in terms of free speech?

The US has what we might call "better" libel and slander laws than some actors in the EU and with the UK being a popular example of the most ridiculously bad laws historically.

>> Aside from [...] libel

I didn't see your edit, sorry.

"Hate speech" is such a glaring flaw in "freedom of speech (EU version)" that it invalidates the concept. These laws differ by country, which makes it a nightmare to follow. Some of them have historically been quite silly. There was a case in 2008, where a protestor was fined because he wrote something along the lines of "get lost, jerk" on a sign directed at the president. This eventually got overruled, but it should never have been a case at all. Then there are also the obvious cases such as Count Dancula or whatever he's called.

Has Europe’s pro-union climate led to more competitive software companies, or better pay and benefits for its software engineers?

Every European engineer I talk to seems either amazed or resentful about American software engineers’ salaries and benefits. How have the unions helped you in this regard? How have they helped your tech companies be more competitive in the global economy?

> Has Europe’s pro-union climate led to more competitive software companies, or better pay and benefits for its software engineers?

E.g. we get health insurance even if we quit or switch jobs.

The thing about European software companies tho is that they are hardly unionized at all.

>Every European engineer I talk to seems either amazed or resentful about American software engineers’ salaries and benefits.

I am not, to be honest. Sure, at a first glance it might seem the US devs make tons of money. But once you account for cost of living (like the astronomical rents in every major tech hub city) things do not look that rosy anymore. I know US people who make twice or trice what I make, and yet they live in dumps that you can hardly call apartment and they say they cannot afford any better. That, combined with the at-will nature of US employment, really doesn't strike me as desirable.

I like living in a country where I have a pretty awesome standard of living, a nice apartment that I don't have to share (unless I want to) and a safety net that is (at least for now) able to catch me should I ever struggle or become sick, so I won't go homeless.

Those things are largely thanks to work the unions did in the past and keep doing.

Certainly, the salaries are a bit of an illusion when you take the insane housing costs of the Bay Area into account.

If breaking up the American tech companies helped disperse jobs outside of Silicon Valley, that would be a good thing.

Europe is really diverse in wealth and business climate. The wealth gap between different European nations is so large that the US probably seems like the pinnacle of equality. It's hard to talk about Europe in general in this sense. I've worked as a developer, where I made less than $600-800 a month. Although I was underpaid, but it probably wouldn't have been possible to make double that in my country. I think you might want to dial your question in slightly more than "Europe", perhaps "Western Europe".

I'm not sure applying antitrust laws (which have been in place for longer than anyone has been alive) to a monopoly (which has been acting monopolistic for years) qualifies as knee-jerk.

> It’s really sad to see the anti-success rhetoric.

The title may be, but the article was not. Was a reasoned statement for why those folks bothered to build another search engine.

> Are billionaires awesome? Nope

I disagree here. Billionaires are often pretty awesome. Once someone gets way more money than the could ever need, they tend to pursue other activities that they enjoy more than making money, which is frequently giving it away (Bill Gates, Warren Buffet) or starting moonshot space companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, or Virgin Galactic. Even Zuckerberg donates to projects like these.

Rich people take on projects that may not be viable yet, but are important nonetheless, essentially filling the role that government used to play in R&D.

Yeah. And even if their hobby is tearing up cash to mulch their back yard, I don't think it inherently harms anyone. There's a lot of talk about a wealth gap but it still feels like those caught on the wrong side are more prosperous than they used to be (eg they have smart phones and many other modern conveniences which didn't exist a few decades ago).

> It’s really sad to see the anti-success rhetoric

Oh, come on!

Google is not doing its job well, other could do parts of it much better, but Google is too big to allow others to enter its same space, so we need alternatives that can put pressure on Google more than we need Google.

The "people hate success" rhetoric is so sad it can't even be measured.

It's funny because Google had a very different perspective when MS was the Monopoly we were worried about.

i don't see anywhere in the linked article that talks about breaking up google, so it's hard to know what you're responding to. the article does make a central claim that google has an information monopoly, and that the search market needs competition (and oh, look at that, they made a new search engine!).

search isn't a naturally monopolistic market, because although there are some initial high fixed costs, much of those costs can be roughly scaled with size. there aren't really any other significant barriers to entry.

marginally but noticeably better search results (e.g., pagerank) did provide an early advantage for google, which is how it established its monopoly over time in the first place (combined with the ad auction model from overture, which gave it economic & political might), but that advantage has eroded with its lack of focus on search. google also has a giant suite of data gathering products but it's not clear that those provide a true competitive advantage in search (again, search results aren't much better than the competition).

the other interesting characteristic of search is that its competition isn't necessarily zero-sum. a user might do the same search on multiple search engines, providing each competitor with a full marginal revenue opportunity, rather than only one competitor winning the business (as in classic competition).

because of all this, i'm neutral on the breakup argument but am bullish on the "increasing competition" argument for search.

I was around too. The problem is you think the Google of 2000 is the Google of 2019.

It is not. Apparently some people are still fooled by the doodles and dinosaur jump game.

It’s easy to say MORE REGULATIONS... just as after any tragedy people claim “we just need one more law”! The truth is government has proven toothless in tax collection and regulation of these giants.

As Google has gotten bigger it seems to forgotten its motto of "Do No Evil," and done the total opposite for the sake of profits!

It was an inspirational company and story that many rooted for due to its culture and mission.

IIRC, they actually removed the "Don't be Evil" motto in may of 2018

They moved it to the end of the mission statement.

Are you reacting to the blog post, or something else? I didn't see any anti-success rhetoric, only anti-monopoly rhetoric. But for the record, success isn't sacred, especially if people succeed at something that sucks. I'd be decidedly anti-success where genocidal dictators were concerned, for example. I'd be explicitly against their ambition, their drive, and their personal fulfillment and growth journeys, sorry.

What behavior here is breaking anti trust laws? And please be specific. Amazing that you compare Google and genocidal dictators.

Did I mention anti-trust laws? And do you understand the concept of an example?

>Knee jerk solutions don’t and have never fixed anything

generalizations are false a lot of the times

It's not so much the "anti-success" wars as that Google's story is a microcosm of the "tendency towards monopolies" that ultimately plague the upper end of capitalism.

Even as a Google Employee I agree that the concentration of marketshare and infrastructure that Google has distorts the market. But without radical intervention either by normal humans collectively or by governments using legislative and military power to shape corporations into their vision (again, probably collectively to be effective) the problem can't go away.

At the very least, we need to stop pretending that pointing our the problems of rent economies and monopoly tendencies in capitalism is not "an anti-success rhetoric" but rather a candid and informed discussion. Markets do not function well (defined as delivering utility to the largest number of people, we could of course define this in other ways) when you need to render the player's assets on a log scale.

If Google were still as well behaved after success, I don't think posts like this would exist.

It is not anti success. Tons of us got good value and watched Google do great things.

Now that they have that success, lacking threats, the value is evaporating.

Lots of people do not care how much others make. If the value is there, world better, game on!

But, getting very large amounts of money and those things aren't really happening and lots of people will definitely express negatives about it.

As they should.

I see links are back in my search results now. But my trust is not back with those links. I have found all the other search tools I need and am using them, encouraging greater success.

These companies with almost impossible to think about type large amounts of money can be doing better by people. Expecting that makes great sense.

And where that is not effective, seeking various remedies does too.

Competition, use of the State, protest, all on the table.

Anyone concerned about the potential impact of those things is completely free to avoid them. Just make sure the value to people is there and they won't really care about the money.

Knee jerk, break them up helped create this net we are seeing consolidated and increasingly devoid of value.

People calling for that again is understandable.

Finally, breakups are super expensive. A real, material threat of that happening makes for a real, material cost and risk assessment, which can justify hedging all of that with better value to the people too.

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