Comment by brabel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brabel | Hacker News Reader

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This is great for Kotlin! But I need to make an observation about Google...

They're also co-founders of the Rust Foundation[1], the major member of the select group of companies at the table at WHATWG[2] (which amongst other things decide on the future of web technologies, including JavaScript) due to their browser's market share, and a "visionary sponsor" of the Python Foundation[3].

They also develop a few programming languages themselves, like Go and Dart (not to mention their polemic Java implementation), besides their own OS (Android, Fuchsia).

A company as large as Google is kind of expected to be using every technology in existence, but I still find it interesting how they're also making sure they also play a major role in the evoluation of such technologies by being part of any Foundation that might have any relevance whatsoever (if not via their own languages, at least by exerting influence on everything).

[1] https://foundation.rust-lang.org/posts/2021-02-08-hello-worl...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHATWG

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26121937

I think we have to understand that Google is a large company filled with people with technical skills. These people are rewarded for contributing to open source. So they do. That's it. It is entirely possible that maybe Google employees might want a feature that others don't, but I haven't seen that evidence.

In 10 years of developing Go, I know of only 2 things that the community has disagreed on with the Go team - package management and generics. One is already fixed and the other will be in a year. Nothing I can think of wrt their contributions to Rust, Kotlin, C++, Python etc.

No one has ever articulated why it's a bad thing that Google sponsors open source development. If someone could articulate specific reasons, that'd be great. But this kind of FUD comment ("hmm, they sponsor an awful lot don't they") doesn't add much.

This lacks nuance. You ignore the effect they have on the ecosystem as a whole. Mentioning the "Go community" and their "agreement" of Google's decisions without acknowledging this is disingenuous at best. They have already swayed and gatekept large swaths of the (web)development "community" by their decade-long dominance and no one can make an impactful, meaningful decision in that field without their implicit approval. Their dominance is felt best by the way they control the conversation i.e. what we don't talk about - i.e. the web among other things they touch sucks, continues to suck and it is going to get worse and less free and they are significant negative contributers. So yeah, I'd rather see them cut into pieces.

Your comment lacks any content. You make vague claims of "effect on the ecosystem" without mentioning what that is. Give an example. Can people not create web frameworks? Can people not create products hosted on the web? Can people not use AWS or Azure for all their computing needs?

You can't just claim "everything they touch sucks" without a single example or evidence to back it up. You look like a hater.

Whoa, please don't post in the flamewar style to HN and please don't cross into personal attack. Those things aren't allowed here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This does not warrant them giving them a board seat just because they have cash.

Go is moot point because they control that language anyway, people have no say on it except people who work at Google.

No surprise that you cannot donate any money there.

Foundation needs money (to hire employees) and resources (server time and bandwidth) to run. Sponsors of the foundation will fund this. It's as simple as that.

Point out where this arrangement hasn't worked well. Otherwise you're just spreading FUD.

Never said I was against sponsorship, just don't put them on the board of directors, a gold/plat sponsorship without votes will do.

Examples of foundations and centers that do this are R, OCaml, Zig and Ruby. All successful.

> Point out where this arrangement hasn't worked well. Otherwise you're just spreading FUD.

W3C and DRM, do you know who voted for this and who is on the board of directors of the W3C?

If you need some time I'll wait.

> A company as large as Google is kind of expected to be using every technology in existence

Moreover, as a public cloud provider, they are ultimately expected to be supporting virtually every technology in existence. Amazon (explicitly as AWS, usually) and Microsoft have pretty similar degree of foundation involvement

Sure, I do welcome the language getting support however, I can't help but think it may be to do with them being fined by Oracle in that lawsuit costing Google billions.

But who knows, we are not allowed to ask these questions, just like why DRM was allowed into the web standard and W3C kept the votes secret.

I don't like the route we are heading.

Google needs a real competitor, I feel like people don’t try to create search engines because it’s such a monolithic task and Google is so far ahead

I read an article in the FT recently saying that a new batch of startups is looking at competing with Google in the search-engine field [0].

[0] https://www.ft.com/content/24efc152-a65d-4c48-9032-ee349a2c8...

How many of these startups plan to actually compete instead of planning to be bought up by Google or Microsoft?

Sorry for the off-topic post:

Is there a good way to get non-paywalled access to this? It says I can read it if I register but today that's just one step too many for me ("_Another_ account? Really? sigh" :) )

I'm kinda curious to know why anyone is trying to start a new search engine(s), given both Google and Bing.

(But apparently not curious enough to give my email address to Yet Another Website :) )

Copy title, paste into search engine box and access from the search engine list. It seems FT wants to get the traffic and the indexing more than money from subscription.

Huh. That worked really well.

I feel like a goofball for not trying that myself, but appreciate the advice/tip. Thanks!

What's in it for them, though? Just being users of a language does mean they need to back them up financially or set up foundations or influence them in any way

What is your point? Maybe you need to make it more clear. Note:I am neither pro nor con Google, although I have both praised them and critized them in the past, for different things.

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