They also kinda build the web though
What exactly did they built? AFAIK, even search engines already existed when they entered the game(they just did it better). The fundamental protocols that makes the web work weren't invented by them. What made you think "they built the web"?
They do somewhat control the fundamental elements that make the web work. Blink/V8 is obviously more powerful than Webkit, Gecko, as far as the market is concerned.
If Blink and Google both implement a feature it becomes a defacto web standard.
too bad you cant talk to Berners-lee and the original DARPA crew about this
I think this is backwards, like saying that a road paving company built cars. The need exists because the Web took off and became huge, and maybe Google can take credit for helping it scale, but Google was only successful because other people were creating content people wanted to find at a massive rate. If the web was tiny we could use hand curated indices. If Google was never founded, and the web got bigger, one of the other dozens of search companies would have helped the web scale instead.
You have no idea how furious your comment made me.
The day "don't be evil" came off their motto is the day they conceded they are evil. At least as evil as any publicly trading company has to be.
And despite the frequent misinformation, "Don't be evil" has never once left their code of conduct.
How?? For who??
The web in 2010: type something into Google, click first result, enjoy life
The web in 2020: type something into Google, try to figure out which results are ads, click several results before anything is useful, click through cookie disclaimer, refuse to allow notifications, decline to download the mobile app, attempt to dismiss surprise autoplay video that pops up once you scroll, except one of 30 scripts didn't load right or something so the popup's background stays covering up the page, disable javascript in frustration. Oops, now Cloudflare thinks you're a bot and all you're allowed to do on the web any more is teach Google's AI what traffic lights and crosswalks look like.
The web has turned into a nightmare for end users. I hope there will be a popular uprising of some sort, people saying that enough is enough, but I doubt it'll happen. Everyone seems happy about downloading gazillions of individual apps that are little more than wrappers for the web sites, just so the companies can get a better platform for poking around people's phones.
I disagree wholeheartedly. I think the web is much worse than it was ten years ago, and the trendline indicates that it will continue on that trajectory.
and also much worse as a developer (wow wtf javascript frameworks)
As a web user, though, it's substantially worse for me. Websites tend to have less substance and useful information, they tend to be flashier and harder to use, the ubiquitous tracking is completely unacceptable, and the web is becoming increasingly opaque and dangerous as more and more of it requires client-side scripting and the like in order to function.
As the web gets smaller and smaller for me every day, I honestly think that I'll see the day when the web is something that I will largely stop using altogether.
Is it really? I only see small marginal improvements in the technical side, and lots of losses in the freedom, privacy, quality of treatment as a customer or user, etc, side, a lot of them because of Google.
>And despite the frequent misinformation, "Don't be evil" has never once left their code of conduct.
Yes, it just left their actual conduct.
Of course I have. I used Ask Jeeves before Google even existed, and navigated via those awful web directory services before that.
I never claimed that Google "built the web", but that they've contributed to it. You're putting words in my mouth.
Without the web, there would be no Google, but without Google, there'd still be plenty of web.
Heck, if you want to talk inventions, it was Microsoft who came up with doing XMLRPC inside the browser and actually made a decent web port of Outlook using it. That alone is a pretty massive cornerstone of the modern web.
Google once did a great search engine, which they're well on their way to ruining. The only other thing they've accomplished is privacy-invading copies of already existing services, which has become popular because they figured out how to offer them for "free" (I.E. monetize other people's personal data to sell ads).
Not creating an interactive map of the entire globe? Or upgrading email into a tag-based, nearly-infinite inbox? Or transforming the browser's security model into a multi-process, sandboxed application?
It's easy to forget all the things we now take for granted.
There were plenty of webmail systems before GMail - Google just had the financial capacity to offer more storage. Saying they "upgraded email" is more than a little bit steep. You might as well say they downgraded it, considering GMail's repeated and spurious blacklistings of completely legitimate domains.
As for Chrome, there existed several browsers before it. Sandboxed tabs is a good idea, yes.
Of course they've improved upon stuff. They've had a lot of money and great minds to throw at their products. There was even a time when I believed in and appreciated their "Don't be evil" motto.
But, as with any technology, it's mostly work done standing on the shoulders of the giants that came before them. For a long time, they've been acting very carelessly with both that legacy and the one they themselves create.
Shillcusations aren't very nice by the way. You seemed earnest about it, but usually they're used to lazily discredit somebody without any proof.
I imagine there probably are a lot of FAANG employees on HN. Though in my opinion, just sharing their view isn't inherently a bad thing. It only becomes a problem when they're encouraged to share from their employers. That would be propaganda.
If anything though, hearing from insiders may actually be more informative, or offer a new context that we can't see from the outside.
You have to be aware of bias, but that's just as true for other comments too.
Why do you feel they built the web?
Alos, it may not be true anymore these days, but google was one of the most efficient and yet least "commercial" (i.e. ads were not that bad) back in the days..
the funniest is that the people who disagree with me saying google built the web are the one criticizing google for "destroying the web" when they are only destroying their website. the conginitive dissonance is off the chart.