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Comment by suddenexample | Hacker News Reader

It's actually hilarious that whoever was in charge of Google's finder network decided to cripple the product's one and only function by prioritizing privacy.

In this tradeoff, Google gained a handful of articles mentioning the "innovative" privacy improvements (before the writers had a chance to test how terribly the network actually performs). For that, they sacrificed the chance to compete with Apple in this category, which outside of device revenue also weakens Android/Pixel ecosystem and market share. You really can't make up this level of incompetence.

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> It's actually hilarious that whoever was in charge of Google's finder network decided to cripple the product's one and only function by prioritizing privacy.

That sounds like that "whoever" was the corporate legal team. Every time I tracked down these kind of idiocities in large corpos, it's usually legal or security team that overrode common sense and sabotaged their own product.

> It's actually hilarious that whoever was in charge of Google's finder network decided to cripple the product's one and only function by prioritizing privacy.

That is a hilariously apt and depressing point. Wow.

Google's interest in user privacy extends as far as keeping competitors or customers of google from getting data about an Android user other than through Google.

Well sure, you could accuse Apple and Huawei of the exact same thing and still be right. Hardware OEMs are extremely desperate to force their customers through first-party services to extend the value of their sale. News at 11.

Because America lacks any form of conscious consumer protection, this is apparently fine to our regulators. Our market is entirely comfortable with OEMs fighting over who gets the right to exploit a customer with their defacto monopoly.

Google is a timid shell of its former self, it won't dip a foot in a pool without making sure the water is warm.

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