Comment by foobarbazqux | Hacker News Reader

Comment by foobarbazqux | Hacker News Reader

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People used to like, if not love Google because they were about the free and open web. Many hackers would openly evangelize Google products and services because they were such a great company. Moves like this make it clear that they're becoming ever more concerned with the corporate agenda (pushing G+ in this case) than the hacker spirit.

One issue in this specific case might be that Google has way more than enough money to keep Reader alive, whereas many people on HN see their own startups fail due to financial troubles, and if they do make it to an exit their products are often killed by acquihires. Wealth is wasted on the wealthy and all that.

It feels like a betrayal because we thought Google shared our values. Really I don't think this is about entitlement at all. Using that word in this context amounts to shaming people about the anger they feel over a breach of trust. Entitlement is more like having your parents fly in to demand the university raise one of your grades so you can get in to medical school.

>Moves like this make it clear that they're becoming ever more concerned with the corporate agenda (pushing G+ in this case) than the hacker spirit.

The frustrating thing for some of us was that this is how it has always been and trying to point it out to people just got you shouted down. Google has always been about making money, what else? Watching otherwise intelligent hackers get so genuinely bamboozled by a simple motto has been surprising, to say the least.

Well, there is making money and making money. What's particularly frustrating and different about this one is that they used to be smart about it, but now they have deliberately destroyed a useful service with a fanatical following in favor of corporate buzzword dream that so far appears to be dead on arrival just like its two predecessors. A few years before that, they made a name making money off of something that actually was useful and disruptive.

Yeah, it's not a new thing, but I wouldn't say always. Like many of us I've been using Google for its entire lifetime. The motto got introduced at around the halfway mark in 2005 or 2006 if I remember correctly. That was also the time the censorship in China scandal erupted. I think before this there was less concern about their motivations, but I may just be misremembering.

I've been around for the whole lifetime as well and what I remember was technical people gushing all over google for every little thing. I don't remember when the motto came out but I remember that being the point where I knew I didn't like google anymore: to me that sort of thing is just blatant manipulation, which is intelligence-insulting.

We're on the same page. Honestly I'm not even that upset about Reader, I mean it's hardly a surprise.

I looked it up and they announced the motto with the IPO in 2004. Sometimes I think I compare their actions now to my expectations of the pre-IPO company; it doesn't really make sense.

Is it possible there is a world where Google does share our values but also knows when to kill off products they don't care about?

Ok, so the particular value I'm thinking of is don't kill off tools that a broad spectrum of hackers and non-hackers alike care about unless truly necessary. There are obviously shared values besides that one, and it's unrealistic to paint any organization as all good or all bad.

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