Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

Google has several enviable, if not moats, at least redoubts. TPUs, mass infrastructure and own their own cloud services, they own delivery mechanisms on mobile (Android) and every device (Chrome). And Google and Youtube are still #1 and #2 most visited websites in the world.

View on HN

Not to mention security. I'd trust Google more not to have a data breach than open AI / whomever. Email accounts are hugely valuable but I haven't seen a Google data breach in the 20+ years I've been using them. This matters because I don't want my chats out there in public.

Also integration with other services. I just had Gemini summarize the contents of a Google Drive folder and it was effortless & effective

While I don’t disagree with you, for historical purposes I think it’s important to highlight why google started its push for 100% wire encryption everywhere all the time:

The NSA and GHCQ and basically every TLA with the ability to tap a fibre cable had figured out the gap in Google’s armour: Google’s datacenter backhaul links were unencrypted. Tap into them, and you get _everything_.

I’ve no idea whether Snowdon’s leaks were a revelation or a confirmation for google themselves; either way, it’s arguably a total breach.

When I worked at PayPal back in 2003/4, one of the things we did (and I think we were the first) was encrypt the datacenter backhaul connections. This was on top of encrypting all the traffic between machines. It added a lot of expense and overhead, but security was important enough to justify it.

And yet Venmo, a Paypal company, publishes transaction data publicly by default, no need to decrypt anything ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Venmo publishes raw unencrypted transaction data? Or are you referring to their social network features?

where?

Not that I disagree with your assessment but in the spirit of hn pedantry - google had a very significant breach where gmail was a primary target and that was “only” 16 years ago in mid 2009. So bad that it has its own wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora

>very significant breach

That page says it was only 2 accounts and none of the messages within the mail was accessed. I wouldn't call that very significant.

Is Google even required to inform you of a data breach?

They're subject to California law, so yeah.

https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/databreach/reporting

Don't forget the other moat.

While their competitors have to deal with actively hostile attempts to stop scraping training data, in Google's case almost everyone bends over backwards to give them easy access.

‘Actively hostile’ as in objecting to your content getting ripped off without permission?

It's a matter of perspective. In this scenario both sides see the other as hostile, just as one would look at a war happening as an outside observer.

The biggest moat is amount of money. Google has infinite amounts of money the print out of thin air (ads). They don't need complex entangled schemes with circular debts to prop up their operations.

They also have one of the biggest negatives in that they abandon almost everything they build so it’s hard to get invested in thier products.

I agree with the rest though

They don't abandon their money makers. That's the thing people don't get about the Google graveyard meme, they only cut things that obviously aren't working to make them more money.

Half of the things they build don't even have a chance to make money. But then people end up depending on their products and they they shut it down or sell it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com