Google's 25th Birthday
blog.google
blog.google
Thank you Google, you've made a dent in the universe!
I'm fully in agreement with most here that the modern Google is a danger to the internet, but it's pleasant to be reminded that this wasn't always the case. It's a bittersweet anniversary, so let's take the sweet with the bitter.
As much as I wish it, Google search is only the secondary focus. They multi-billion deal with Apple shows the massive cash stack developed from search, which would lead one to believe Google lives from search. I would have no problem with this co-dependant relationship, except it show the darker side of Google. Anything for installs. If Google was suddenly forced to be ONLY a search engine, I maintain they would fail - No gmail apps. No slides. No voice. A "nothing but search" Google would make unimaginable amounts of money, but it would only be clicks. Quick impressions, that don't generate the revenue Google stockholders now depends on.
The clicks themselves should be enough. My mind explodes at the concept of counting Google's click-thru revenue; thank god for 64-bit CPUs! As the world's finest data-mining corporation which {likely, obviously, as proven in court} funnels untold data to `todaysTLA {}` they have show time and time again, they care not for their free-tier customers, employees or paying "customers". The amount you pay pales in comparison to how much the revenue stream is from `{data mining data points for gmail, android etc}, of course they are going to monetize you. The massive income increase and the thankful government's soft-hand approach is the underlying motivator. The amazing ability of Google's lawyers to keep the vast majority of the current anti-trust trial relatively hidden screams of influence.
This being said, who do we turn to? Who's the stalwart, effective and visible protector of the internet now? Obviously not firefox, gnu, debian or mullvad. Where is their a major-league player that can take us back to the internet of old, the internet of a useful GeoCities page? I use Firefox on every device I own. I'd cross-compile before I go to Chrome, but they don't just own client-side-internet, do they?
The internet before capitalism was a wonderful thing, but we had a problem - someone eventually pays. Someone eventually pays for everything - email, www, gopher, newsgroups, ftp. Even today, at some point, you realize "the cloud" is just someone else's machine, which they pay for. Universities fronted the bill for years, but quickly bowed out.
Maybe one day we will reach a point that a `cloud_server {4-core arm cpu, 4GB ram, 40GB disk};` is so cheap as to be offered for free. Until that day, the internet is for those who pay in either money or information. I do not agree with the way TLAs work the system. I think the google tradeoff is bad. I understand that my ability to browse www.mario64speedruns.com depends greatly on if I trigger a captcha through Cloud{Flare,Front}, based mostly on my ad-blocking.
And even once we reach the promised land of free 4/4/40, it will only survive because of actual, paying, CC-on-file customers. The sooner we come to "horrible acceptance", where we realize the free-love-1972 isn't the world we live in, the better. It will quicken the people a thousand times smarter than me figuring out a way to keep 1% of the web free.
None sucks; better than none sucks less; therefore 1% is amazing,
I have some 30 Google accounts, each for one service I used either once or sometimes for a couple of years. Although most of them are unusable now because I cannot proceed beyond the login without supplying a phone number. Well, they have recently sent out mails that they will delete them soon if they remain unused.
I did use Google search from when nobody knew it in the 1990s until 3-4 years ago when I switched to Duckduckgo.
20 years ago I would have applied to Google if they had only had a tech job in my country.
I have only one Android account. I keep that phone constantly in flight mode, except when I absolutely need to use a single app for work.
Today I am convinced that Google is a harmful company that the US government should split as they did with AT&T. And as a European we should not send any data to the US because of what Snowden have taught us and the US government does not grant data of foreigners any protection.
Advertising is 95% an unethical business. Using the computation power that Google wastes for it in the cloud and at the edge is just evil. Overconsumption is a fact for large parts of the planet. Trying to sell more is wrong, we need to live with less. Myself by my own choices I took a 30% salary cut twice in my career. And I am still on the overconsumption side, even if the phone I type this on is 9 years old and my main phone more than 5.
> The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.
- Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine
Thank god for Kagi
To paraphrase what the DOJ just said in their opening statement, the Google you're talking about is long gone.
That means they’ve been evil or rushing as fast as they can toward evil since… 2008.
Google died at about 10 years old.
What is the good of owning the leading ad and tracking network if you don't use it?
And besides think of all the good things one can do for the world with so much money... Only, like Mozilla they sold out the one thing they could do that no one else could (providing a free, independent browser in Mozillas case, having access to everyones thoughts without abusing it in Googles case).
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. There's never been a case of a player with Google's degree of market leverage that hasn't become corrupted (or any government in a similar position, for that matter). It's not about handing out money. It's about having democratic checks in place to behead and dismember entities that do what Google has done. The vestiges of the US Govt and EU parliament are probably the last thing standing between info sector monstrosities and the end of free thought and speech in the world.
I hope that in another 25 years giants like Google, Microsoft, Apple and so on are just small players in a globally inter-operable, open and diverse technological world.
I would argue that a strong unified platform (Windows, the web, whatever) is good for user and developer experience.
Book publishing. Fine art. Music. Poetry. Travel and tourism. Food.... need I go on?
> Capitalism abhors competition
"One of the foundational blocks of capitalism is competition." [0]
> I would argue that a strong unified platform ... the web, whatever) is good for user and developer
"The Web" was [1] a standard, not a company or "platform".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
[1] I say "was", because companies like Google practically destroyed it, leading the creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee to tragically denounce the Web as having "failed humanity". (I disagree the Web did not fail humanity, greedy companies did.)
Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan combine for 77-91% of the market: https://www.statista.com/topics/9280/book-publishing/#topicO...
>Fine art.
This isn't an industry, just a tax evasion scheme for rich people
>Music.
3 players control 70% of recording: https://musically.com/2023/04/26/music-copyright-publishes-i...
>Poetry.
Not an industry, never has been
>Travel and tourism.
Airlines consolidate and consolidate, rail is nationalized, taxis have been cannibalized by Lyft/Uber - what's your argument here?
>Food....
Once the market figured out how to sidestep government regulation of the ride-hailing industry, it got significantly cheaper, easier, and more accessible?
On the back of VC funding and operating at a loss? This isn't a great argument, TBH, and prices have increased to the point that they're generally in line with "real" taxis in places I've been -- and still without Uber and Lyft having become profitable.
5,000 years of human history is roughly as long as we have the concept of an economy. Before that, you had access to the people in your immediate vicinity and "competition" for services was not a concept.
>>"One of the foundational blocks of capitalism is competition."
This is just unserious.
We need to push politicians to fix the antitrust law. It isn't just Google that is benefiting from this now toothless law.
For now. But I see they are working extremely hard to change that.
The amount of people that were empowered to explore and discover (or time saved from getting lost) is incredible by any measure
I'm not trying to be negative, just don't see where the praise is coming from, it's a crowded market.
I can assure you they were. I worked at Microsoft through the entire Windows Phone era and used the devices from the Samsung Focus through the Lumia 950.
They were WAY behind. Traffic data, road closure data, what lane you should be in to make your turn data. Street view, business hours, voice-guided turn by turn navigation - they were way behind in all those areas the entire time and it was heartbreaking. I loved Windows Phone the platform, but maps were at least as strong a reason as apps for me finally giving up.
They created Google Earth which was _mindblowing_ at the time.
They didn't invent it but they advanced it so much farther and faster that they might as well have.
I wasn't sure of the details of acquisition vs invention so I went to Google Earth's wiki and found a pretty interesting timeline. iirc Google News was invented right after 9/11 because the news sites themselves were falling over from increased traffic, and Google Earth has its ties to the war as well:
>> During the [2003 Iraq] invasion, It was used extensively by Miles O'Brien and other on-air broadcasters, allowing CNN and millions of viewers to follow the progress of the war in a way that had never been seen before. Public interest in the software exploded and Keyhole servers were not able to keep up with demand. Keyhole was soon contacted by the Central Intelligence Agency's venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, for use with defense mapping databases, which gave Keyhole a much-needed cash infusion.
>> In October 2004, Google acquired Keyhole as part of a strategy to better serve its users.
"Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration"
GPS has made people dumber and lazier. I don't remember when I turned on GPS last time.
For maps I find Openstreetmap superiour to Google maps in many cases.
Calculators have made people dumber and lazier. I don't remember when I last multiplied two numbers using a calculator last time.
How much tuning did Google need to do for that?
Interesting to see the big adsense block present on the page and the example being an exact match domain, which is clearly an MFA (Made for Adsense) website.
These feel like epitaphs, to me:
"We're not a conventional company and we don't intend to become one."
"Do know evil."
I still have fond memories of being in high school and a librarian showing me this “Google page”. Back when it seemed like SV tech would be an enlightened realm for the betterment of humanity.
They should get some kind of an award.
Today you have to make a choice: Do I want to pay a premium to lock myself into the Apple walled garden or do I want to prostitute all of my privacy to Google.
Choosing a 3rd way comes with severe limitations in your daily life.
Such a heart-warming story about Google wanting the green dress for itself, scraping a copy so the destination site didn't get the web traffic.
I hope it returns to "Don't be Evil" mantra and create/acquire some world class products again.
Lots of discussion here
If you were making a joke I applaud you and apologize for my whoosh.