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Comment by chki | Hacker News Reader

>"We appreciate the opportunity to work with the European Commission on an approach that addresses consumers' expectations of their wearable devices"

I mean, there is "corporate talk" but this is on another level.

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It’s actually fairly straightforward for this kind of thing.

What it’s saying is that Google would desperately love to use the US‘ anti-trust standard of concentrated market power being a-OK as long as consumers aren’t obviously being hurt right that second rather than the (better) European standard of considering the prospects of competitors and potential competitors as well.

Competitors such as Apple, Samsung, Garmin, Coros, and Suunto are doing fine with wearable fitness tracker devices. Fitbit was on a path to failure when Google bought them. The industry was due for a shakeout and consolidation as the technology matured.

The concern is not with google dominating wearable market, but rather google solidifying it's stranglehold on ad market with more data.

Google holds ~55% share of the online ad market, and it's dropping an Amazon ramps up. Far from a "stranglehold".

But is dynamic of google buying up products and making them free or cheaper by subsidizing from search ads(with the goal of making search ads more profitable with additional data from free product) healthy for the market?

Especially when it is personal health data now at risk of being used to subsidize ads?

Advertising is already creepy enough trying to determine when, for instance, someone is pregnant via related purchases (and sometimes guessing correctly ahead of the person's own knowledge, per famous anecdata), just imagine how much more creepy it can get when it is data being sold to advertisers from your own wrist?

This acq focus is on devices, not ads.

Google already pledged not to use user health data for ads:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fitbit-m-a-alphabet-eu-ex...

The skills of a poet and the soul of.a weasel. I could do this job.

> The skills of a poet and the soul of.a weasel. I could do this job.

Not with that wild period ruining your grammar! Grammar is important to corporate doublespeak

hmm, so it is time to clean all these specks off the monitor again - if it were done before I would have noticed the error.

on edit: although, really, bad grammar is important to corporate doublespeak as it lends an element of plausible deniability when you get called in front of committee.

Eh, it was probably just auto-correct being "helpful."

System Preferences > Keyboard > Text > Add period with double-space (disable)

Thought it was for an informal dramatization effect.

  ... the soul of <pause> a weasel.

Is that ... bad?

It's just acknowledging the situation, beyond that it's not deceptive or anything IMO.

It's like a person saying:

"I'm happy that the IRS has selected me for audit. I am eager to assist them in their efforts to evaluate whether I have committed a wrongdoing. I love spending money on lawyers."

I think it's more just of an acknowledgment.

I don't know what folks want in a news bit about this 'OH WOE IS ME?!?!'

It is the "we appreciate" part that is disingenuous. The honest answer would be more along the lines of "We have done nothing wrong and are confident that any investigation with exonerate us of wrongdoing." That's the sort of thing a defendant's lawyer says on the courthouse steps.

That's communicating something different from what they intend. Your statement implies a default position of combativeness, while theirs states that they're open to some degree of regulation:

> on an approach that addresses consumers' expectations of their wearable devices

Seems kinda absurd to worry about what is a copy and paste acknowledgement that isn't going to give up any details on their approach anyhow....

Don't waste too much time expecting consistency or even coherence on this thread. HN collectively loses 30 IQ points when commenting on any post about Google.

Normally I'm hesitant to agree with such glib / all encompassing statements but I fear that I sort of agree with your assessment.

Parsing word by word generic corporate statements seems pretty silly at this point.

Yea, I may complain about HN's commentariat here and there, but it really is one of the higher-quality fora out there.

But for some reason, it's especially susceptible to specific triggering topics that cause complete forfeiture of critical thinking ability and intellectual honesty among a big chunk of the commenters (and voters).

There are plenty of valid criticisms of Google, but criticism is worthless if it isn't based in at least an attempt at intellectual honesty.

I agree, it's very much a work that is done together. If EU considers the deal hurt competition, then Google might still be able to buy Fitbit if they take measures that ensure competition is still healthy, so very good if one admits to that and are eager to find a way forward rather than the classic Uber-response "Everyone but us are stupid, it's our way or the highway"

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