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Comment by jeffclark | Hacker News Reader

In related news: I am no longer with my college girlfriend, despite the fact that 8 years ago I told her I would never leave her.

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Good to know that the company that holds my email, appointments, two-factor-auth, credit card number, and search data has the reliability of a flaky college freshman.

Also good to know that there will literally ALWAYS be people willing to minimize the broken promises of corporations (when they're not insisting that no corporation would ever be so stupid as to break a highly visible promise because the outcry would be tremendous).

Reading this is a breath of fresh air from the traditional "defend Google or other corporations at all costs" type comments. Maybe now we can drop the meme that Google is some altruistic entity and realize that ~97% of their revenue is from advertising. This is why they exist.

It's now just a matter of time before paid inclusion results show up in the organic SERPs like Yahoo used to have.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paid_inclusion

Edit: Whoops they already broke that promise too!

http://marketingland.com/once-deemed-evil-google-now-embrace...

The best part is in Google's original IPO filing they promised not to ever accept money for inclusion of results:

> "Google users trust our systems to help them with important decisions: medical, financial and many others. Our search results are the best we know how to produce. They are unbiased and objective, and we do not accept payment for them or for inclusion or more frequent updating."

> "We do not accept money for search result ranking or inclusion. We do accept fees for advertising, but it does not influence how we generate our search results. The advertising is clearly marked and separated. This is similar to a newspaper, where the articles are independent of the advertising."

> "Some of our competitors charge web sites for inclusion in their indices or for more frequent updating of pages. Inclusion and frequent updating in our index are open to all sites free of charge."

> "We apply these principles to each of our products and services. We believe it is important for users to have access to the best available information and research, not just the information that someone pays for them to see."

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/0001193125041...

Times sure have changed!

> Also good to know that there will literally ALWAYS be people willing to minimize the broken promises of corporations

At some point, people realize that corporations exist to maximize profit and not necessarily for the good of the customer.

Then why are they making promises for the good of the customer?

There are plenty of corporations who don't make such promises.

To maximize the profits?

I think the Guardian knows what a corporation is. That does not imply that they can't complain about corporate decisions.

> At some point, people realize that corporations exist to maximize profit and not necessarily for the good of the customer.

Trite, but disputed by many (most?) leading authorities, including Peter Drucker.

http://www.humanresourcesiq.com/drucker-on-management/column...

>that corporations exist to maximize //

Some, probably most, not all.

Exactly which company doesn't exist to maximize profit?

There is such a thing as a B-corporation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation

"A benefit corporation or B corporation is a corporate form in the United States designed for for-profit entities that want to consider society and the environment in addition to profit in their decision making process."

E.g., Patagonia is a B-corp.

"Maximize profit" is not a well-defined single thing. For instance, the suggestion that companies maximize profits without regard for their customers must explain why the customers actually stay with that company; in general that may be a short-term win but a huge long-term loss, and many companies have died that way. If nothing else you've got to consider long-term profit vs. short-term profit, and there are in fact many other "something elses" to consider (what level of risks to take, etc).

Maybe this is rhetorical, but there are a few that don't place "profit first". One such is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

A "non"-profit? Different definition of profit, it's trying to maximize something else

Well the company I work for as one and any other company that realises the pursuit of money without regard for other ideals is an exercise in destruction and exploitation.

Often co-operatives will fit well in to this category as the workers in a co-operative are rather less likely to malevolently exploit themselves in a disdainful pursuit of profit before humanity.

http://hackingbusinessmodel.info/

Silence fills the room...

Those two don't have to be mutually exclusive you know..

Killing the goose is never maximizing profit.

Agree about freshman, just wanted to add, that this freshman has managed to do other not so nice things recently, thus increasing cumulative damage to the reputation well beyond sum of each part. I assume that at some point powerusers will start to migrate to different services, when/if competitive enough offer comes

> Hitler promised not to invade Czechoslovakia, Jeremy. Welcome to the real world!

I would hope that Google considers itself, at least a little bit, more moral than one of the top ten most evil persons of history.

It didn't take very long to reinforce Godwin's Law on this thread...

Here's the reference for those that haven't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOeiEKemWeA

A promise made by Marissa Mayer, who, as most of us know, works elsewhere now. Sure, the promise was arguably on behalf of the company, but "under her watch" is also arguably implied.

As it turns out, corporations are made up of people and, like people, have the tendency to change.

No reason to abstract it. Corporations are people, obviously. We are just seeing Google get over that idealist phase so many of us have in our youth.

This is just Google, all grown up.

And... Did you leave her? or just break up as a common agreement? In legalese language, I am pretty sure that a promise is synonym of contract, and contracts might be dissolved if both sides of the contract agreed.

This being an open promise is not a contract but a reaffirmation of a goal, since people change is regrettable but OK to break promises to ourselves sometimes when the interest of the goal had changed.

> In legalese language, I am pretty sure that a promise is synonym of contract

You are 100% wrong.

From Wikipedia article: [1] "In the law of contract, an exchange of promises is usually held to be legally enforceable, according to the Latin maxim pacta sunt servanda."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promise

Like said, the word "exchange" is critical here, and isn't pedantic - this is a key part of the modern western understanding of contract law.

A contract must be quid pro quo to be valid.

"Bob, I'm going to come fix your fence this weekend" is a promise, but it isn't a legal contract.

"Bob, I'm going to come fix your fence this weekend for $100" is a promise, and because there is a quid pro quo exchange it can qualify as an enforceable contract. Bob can potentially come after you for damages if you renege on your end of it.

One-sided promises (like the one Google made) are generally not considered contractually obligated[1].

[1] http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/consideration-every-c...

"Exchange" is the critical word. A single promise is extraordinarily different, in the legal world, from a contract.

Ok, let's try with another wikipedia article: [1]

"A contract is a legally enforceable promise or undertaking that something will or will not occur. * The word promise can be used as a legal synonym for contract *,[2] although care is required as a promise may not have the full standing of a contract, as when it is an agreement without consideration"

Emphasis is mine :)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_law

That article is wrong (and the cited source for that claim, if you follow it, leads back to a thesaurus-like entry that is, unlike the other definitions on the page, itself unsourced though the source appears to be itself a tertiary source.) A promise is not a "legal synonym" for a contract. A promise is a necessary but not sufficient element of a contract.

Whoever wrote that is wrong. Click the "[2]" citation, and you'll see that it in no way backs up the claim.

Well, along with the proper definitions from other (cited) legal dictionaries on that page, there's also an unsourced, thesaurus-like entry that does seem to suggest what the page is cited for, though the other definitions on the page make clear that that entry is only accurate in terms of loosely associated concepts and not proper synonyms.

Ok.. I know the discussion is going way off-topic and getting pedantic connotations. To illustrate the point in my original comment, I would like to make a last cite from Britannica.

@dragonwriter: For some reason I can't reply your comments, I guess HN is delaying replies after a while precisely to avoid long off-topic threads (although they are fun :)

"contract, in the simplest definition, a promise enforceable by law" http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/135270/contract

And a promise, in the simplest definition, is not enforceable by law. That's why it's totally different from a contract.

The fact that one of the words is a subset of another depending on the context doesn't invalidate the fact that the words are still synonyms when they are used in a specific topic.

Moreover, by what you said before: > "Exchange" is the critical word. A single promise is extraordinarily different...

I would conclude that you are actually agreed on how I used it in my original comment:

> "and contracts might be dissolved if both sides of the contract agreed. This being an open promise is not a contract but a reaffirmation of a goal"

How that can be "100% wrong"?

The part that's wrong is the part I quoted.

So Google broke up with early adopters. Apt.

This is exactly the problem people are having with Google. We/they have this ideal of what they thought Google was/should-be and Google isn't/haven't-been-completely living up to it.

That's just puffery. Everyone understands it to be based upon a continued mutual attraction, but the situation changed.

The advertising situation hasn't changed, and promising no banner ads is not puffery.

One could argue that the advertising situation has changed. Back in 2005, the types of banner ads that they opposed were heavy, often Flash driven punch-the-monkey junk.

Now, they are putting non-animated (from the samples that I have seen) banners that are completely relevant to your search.

Does that argument hold up? I don't really think it does. But maybe that is their angle?

If you find contradiction between my two statements then you can accept the latter, as I am also evolving. -M. K. Gandhi

Touche! =)

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