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Comment by jeswin | Hacker News Reader

For a $1T org like Amazon, these are distractions. Even trying to transfer it is a distraction; it wouldn't move the revenue needle. It makes sense.

I mean, it makes a lot of sense when one doesn't value the importance of preserving culture. DP Review forums were the entire history of Digital Photography - millions of posts from the early days when everyone was skeptical of digital cameras, to the modern age when film is somewhat a niche hobby. The suits who made the decision to pull the plug probably never participated in communities.

It makes me sad to see a part of our shared culture destroyed like this. Reminds of me of the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban; this time because some people have no taste.

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> For a $1T org like Amazon, these are distractions.

Until it creates enough bad press that it does move the dial.

That might sound unlikely but it can be death by 1000 cuts. I believe the groundswell of dislike for Google among the tech literate had it's roots in the Reader shutdown.

The tech literate advise friends and family - so their influence is higher than the raw numbers suggest.

You can burn good will but it's very difficult to get it back. Amazon are being criticized from multiple angles and it all adds up.

> I believe the groundswell of dislike for Google among the tech literate had it's roots in the Reader shutdown.

I disagree. I believe it was the "SSL added and removed here" NSA slide that showed that nothing stored with cloud providers is safe from government snooping without a warrant. It's not so much directed at Google as it is everything that is big enough to be on the tip of the surveillance state's tongue.

Nothing we store non-e2ee in the big public cloud services is safe from illegal warrantless wiretapping. It's not strictly Google's fault per se.

I don't think people care that much about privacy. Google started to encrypt traffic between data centers in 2013. Nobody cared.

It’s not as if their network architecture or threat models were put on billboards prior to that..

It was on white hat conference in 2004. For 9 years nobody cared.

> I believe the groundswell of dislike for Google among the tech literate

You are in an echo-chamber.

There isn't much negative opinion of Google, Paypal, Stripe and other companies hated by HN commenters outside of HN, even in technical communities.

I think the average consumer does not know and/or does not (have the time to) care about it. It's almost impossible for an average consumer to own a device where some huge corporation does not have its influences. Just like it is almost impossible not to use any Unilever product.

The echo chamber can have an external impact at (sometimes) crucial times. For e.g. There can be a future scenario where Google struggles with its search business and other companies/general public do not invest in a new Google product just because people from this echo chamber advise them not to and highlight Google’s poor reputation in handling non-search products.

Microsoft's stock price from 2000 to 2014 flat-lined. I believe much of that was due to Microsoft hatred. The tactics worked well when Microsoft had no real competition, and crushed fledgling competition early.

As soon as there was an alternative, everyone piled on.

There was an army trying to passively-aggressively harm Microsoft in everything it did, and it mattered. If there was ever a gray area where Microsoft wasn't the obvious choice, people decided the opposite way.

Google is gradually becoming the next Microsoft.

It's not even dislike, so much as well-founded distrust. Each time I've done business with Google, I came out behind for it at the end, because I was treated as a statistic. Google would gladly take out my business for their convenience if it didn't impact their bottom line. It wasn't malicious, like Microsoft, but just apathetic.

At this point, it's left behind enough victims among decision-makers that GCP is permanently kneecapped in the race with AWS, Azure, etc.

There is nothing in common to what you mention with Microsoft and Google.

Microsoft was the butt of the joke of literally everyone that had every used a computer. There were countless memes about how bad Windows was, made by people with 0 technical literacy. Your grandma had probably heard about Windows Vista sucking, despite not knowing what it was.

Almost nobody outside of HN has a similar experience with Google products.

You are in the same echo-chamber as the original commenter.

> Almost nobody outside of HN has a similar experience with Google products.

YouTube's algorithm and recommendations are both memes and well analyzed in popular media, and people who have only ever used phones and iPads know to add "reddit" to their search terms to sort through the garbage Google would show them otherwise.

There are also office workers and consumers who have been burned by adopting Google services, like workplaces that adopted Google products for chat and voice/video, or by buying Nest products or investing in Stadia.

> Almost nobody outside of HN has a similar experience with Google products.

This statement is imprecise. Youtube creators, for example, hold a similar view.

Grandma doesn't make decisions about what cloud platform to use, or where to host content. Among key decision-makers, distrust of Google is widespread.

Google will do fine in search (at least until / unless it's disrupted by Bing or DDG), Android, email, and in other consumer products. Where this will eventually kill Google is in B2B: GCP, Google Workspace, etc.

> Youtube creators, for example, hold a similar view

I think the fact that they are called "Youtube creators" and not "Video creators" highlights how weak the argument is.

You seem to be a Google apologist. Just because a platform is currently the biggest and most dominant hardly means it has trust and love. YouTube is the Windows of video platforms.

Yes but an echo chamber as defined by GP, of tech literate people. So I lean towards agreeing with them that tech literate people are mostly starting to see the problem with "big tech", not just Google. The chamber is not just as small as HN. Regular users care less about this because they see the free service but even they are starting to be pushed away by hostile moves like retiring even paid services and products without reasonable justification or advance notice.

But there's no single problem that's a trigger for all, not everyone is upset about the same thing and I don't agree that Reader, or the NSA, or any other single issue singlehandedly turned everyone against Google or other tech companies. It's the whole environment, and different straws broke different camels' backs.

IDK in the US, here in Europe I have already a bunch of non tech friends who use Brave Browser, and/or some alternative to google search.

> You are in an echo-chamber.

Doesn't matter. An echo-chamber that your target demographic frequents can be just as damaging to your overall reputation if not more.

Source: Someone currently working in government IT procurement who is literally in charge of evaluating cloud-based products (hi, google!).

Also funny you mention Paypal and Stripe: At my last job, we chose to go with traditional payment processors in large part because of how frequent stories about Paypal and Stripe screwing legitimate companies pop up.

Look at the consensus about Google when it comes up in the news or other articles posted to Reddit's most popular subreddits. It's not good. Then look at how technical subreddits talk about Google. It's even worse.

Even popular science and tech press is highly critical of Google, and no longer just publishes the company's press releases with gushing endorsement.

Back in like 2014, I agreed with your sentiment and even said the same thing myself. Back then, popular sentiment towards Google was very positive and there was a lot of excitement, but generally, the nerdier someone was when it came to computers, the more likely they were to be at least critical of Google if not hostile towards them.

Now it's different and people are looking at Google like they look at Facebook or Comcast.

Why did Bezos buy it then? Pretty sure there was at least an idea to have it add value. Getting sick and tired of billionaires destroying the internet.

Destroying communities and history isn't a great look. I'd like corps to be held to some sort of clause where they have to do something with their acquisitions or give it back to the people that are actively using it. Imagine someone bought Craigslist or Wikipedia and just shut it down.

It's so much effort to get a community like DPreview back, it's probably not going to happen. Some are trying and it's just not it.

> Why did Bezos buy it then?

When Amazon bought it 16 years ago it had a lot more visitors and Cameras and Lenses were some of their biggest sellers. As discussed [1] previously Lenses and Camera sales have dropped by 66% and 50% respectively since then and (however sad) the smaller community isn't probably producing enough sales leads to Amazon sites anymore (you have to go a long way down the best Camera & Photo Products best sellers list [2] to find any cameras that are on DPReview). If I were Amazon I can see why they would do this, it's a shame they couldn't sell the site to a third party though - I'm sure it could still survive financially.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35248296

[2] https://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-camera-photo/zgbs/photo/...

What would they buy today? A website about manufacturers of knock off cables? Is there such a thing? It makes you wonder...

> I mean, it makes a lot of sense when one doesn't value the importance of preserving culture

So sad to read this about a company that started its empire by selling books.

Jeff Bezos didn't start Amazon because of his love for books and wanting more people to read, he started Amazon because he didn't want to regret not trying to start a internet business when he was older. He went out looking for business opportunities, and saw books as one that could potentially work, so that's why he started with books.

> In his typically analytic way, Bezos cast his decision in what he calls the "regret-minimization framework." He imagined that he was 80 years old and looking back at his life. And suddenly everything became clear to him. When he was 80, he'd never regret having missed out on a six-figure Christmas bonus; he wouldn't even regret having tried to build an online business and failed. "In fact, I'd have been proud of that, proud of myself for having taken that risk and tried to participate in that thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be such a big deal. It was like the wild, wild West, a new frontier. And I knew that if I didn't try this, I would regret it. And that would be inescapable."

https://web.archive.org/web/20000408032804/http://www.time.c...

Knowing the motivations behind Amazon in that light, makes everything they are doing today makes much more sense, rather than trying to understand it from a perspective of "a guy who wanted to sell books".

Aside from everything else, thinking about minimizing regret is a pretty good strategy to follow:

> Human beings are undeniably complex, and what motivates us can often be a mystery, even to ourselves. So, how do we go about gathering and analyzing the data that will help us answer the most fundamental questions about our lives and our purpose? The answers may lie in an unexpectedly rich source of knowledge, our regrets. While regret is likely to have a decidedly negative connotation for most of us, it is also extremely powerful and can teach us a great deal about ourselves and what we value. It is an emotion that is present in all of us, and social scientists (like anthropologists and sociologists) have been fascinated by the subject for decades. Today on the show, we are joined by one such expert, Daniel Pink, author of the book The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. In our conversation, Daniel shares details about the research he conducted for his book, how he determined the four main categories of regret, and what we can learn from our regrets by confronting them head-on. We also discuss Daniel’s 2011 New York Times Bestselling title, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, and what he thinks about working from home in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Daniel is an exceptional storyteller and is highly knowledgeable on the subjects of regret, motivation, and the important role they play in our lives. To learn more about the many facets of regret and how it can help you thrive, be sure to tune in today!

* https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/246

> from the early days when everyone was skeptical of digital cameras, to the modern age when film is somewhat a niche hobby

Maybe film will come back. Digital cameras used to be a great idea. Now they get mainstream press coverage for things like

"California residents struggle to photograph the orange sky because their digital cameras won't allow the sky to be orange."

"Samsung will locate the moon in your pictures and replace it with stored stock photography of the moon."

"Samsung will add teeth to photographs of your infant."

I'd like it if my digital cameras wouldn't add information to the photo that wasn't present in the sensors. I don't think that's actually a minority view.

>Maybe film will come back.

It's already been gaining popularity for years. I've read consumer[0] sales of instant film are the highest they've ever been.

Hell, digital cameras from 10-20 years ago are starting to be considered "retro", and zoomers are buying them.

[0] historically the majority of sales were apparently for professional/commercial purposes.

Of course any pro camera allows manual white balance.

The Samsung thing was indeed ridiculous yeah :) but again a pro camera wouldn't do this.

> Maybe film will come back.

Only with retro-hipsters and perhaps some niche applications. Digital is just more convenient and practical for 99.99999% of situations. (I say this as someone that worked at a photolab as a student.)

I don't think I buy any argument of the form "X is small, company Y is big, therefore company Y should not bother with X".

I appreciate that you may not actually believe this, given your second and third paragraphs. But even from a business-business-business point of view I don't buy it.

Big companies are made of smaller pieces. Those smaller pieces are made of smaller smaller pieces. Etc. If running DPReview makes sense for some sub-sub-component of Amazon, then it doesn't make any less sense just because that sub-sub-component is a part of Amazon and Amazon is very large. It's not like it has to be a distraction from the people trying to run a trillion-dollar company; they can ignore it, just like they ignore lots of other things at lower levels.

It may in fact be the case that (in business-business-business terms) running DPReview doesn't make sense for whatever sub-sub-component of Amazon it's part of; in that case, maybe (again, from the culture-ignoring profit-centric viewpoint) it's right for Amazon to shut it down. But that isn't because DPReview is small and Amazon is very large, it's because DPReview is (hypothetically) unprofitable, or not a good fit for whatever bit of Amazon it fits best with. Those are good business-centric reasons for closing something down. "It's small and we're large" is not.

> For a $1T org like Amazon, these are distractions.

A $1T company is spending multiple millions left and right on useless virtue signaling trying to show how good a corporate citizen it is. Even a fraction of that money could have saved dpreview.

For a $1T organisation, there should be better ways to handle and channel distractions. For e.g. Goodreads, acquired by Amazon in 2013. Otherwise this is a “failed” aquisition. The failure is from the society’s perspective.

> For a $1T org like Amazon, these are distractions. Even trying to transfer it is a distraction; it wouldn't move the revenue needle. It makes sense.

Not wrong, but on the flip side how much of a financial drag is operating it really? Are they that hard up for cash that the low margins (or even loss) of this property makes a meaningful difference?

> It makes me sad to see a part of our shared culture destroyed like this. Reminds of me of the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban; this time because some people have no taste.

like that, if those Buddhas had been privately owned all along, and they were sold to some large corporation, and then that corporation just decided not to maintain them anymore because it made no business sense for them

so, not a lot like the Buddhas of Bamiyan

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