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Comment by atmosx | Hacker News Reader

I agree with that. "Saving the world", "Changing the world" and other big words are often recited by Apple and Google. They didn't change a lot in my view. If it wasn't Steve Jobs inventing the PC another guy would have invented it a year or two later. As Linus Torvalds said "If Linux was not released in 1992, probably in 1993 someone would have come up with a similar idea, because at the time it was the natural thing to do". Kids in Africa are still starving though.

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When I grew up, "searching for information" meant thumbing through boxes of index cards at the library, scribbling down book titles and Dewey decimal codes, going on a hike down the dusty shelves to hunt down the books (half of which would usually be on loan, in the wrong place or just lost), and then sitting down and flipping through your meager find page by page, hoping that you could find something relevant somewhere in there.

The fact that this alone has changed into "type something into Google, get back relevant results in milliseconds" has already changed the world. (And yes, I know there was Altavista etc as well; but there's a reason Google won the search wars.)

Also, compare these two for kicks:

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Goldman Sachs: Our goal is to provide superior returns to our shareholders. (http://manonamission.blogspot.com.au/2005/07/goldman-sachs-g...)

Which of those two mission statements are more honest? I'm genuinely interested - I can consider it from both sides.

Any company has a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value. I just find it interesting that GS seems to have adopted that as its only goal.

I'm torn too. I'm from the Dewey decimal system. I collected a library a reference books over the years, trying to keep on top of things. I wish I had the Internet growing up. I'm waiting for a young Einstein type to arrive, and see how he, she uses the gift of the Internet. And no--I'm not really impressed with what guys like Zuch are doing(yea, I kniw it was helpful in overthrowing dictatorships), but I'm waiting for something really amazing. A gifted, determined kid has the potential to do so much?

Consider who the shareholders of Goldman are. Teachers' pension funds for example. Is it a worthwhile goal to provide them with superior returns so that their pensions are in good shape? Yes. Is it a worthwhile goal to organize the world's information? Yes. Let's not have this silly debate. Everyone should work on what they enjoy and find intellectually challenging and the world will be a better place

This is illogical. You don't show that "they didn't change a lot," only that they did what they did what they did first. That doesn't diminish the achievement of accomplishing an ambitious goal, and it doesn't diminish the effect.

Exactly. If Fleming had not discovered Penicillin, somebody else would have sooner or later. But it was still worth doing.

Just trying to understand your argument: So, you are saying that neither Google nor Apple has really changed the world because their achievements were much more inevitable in a short period of years (<5) compared to potentially stopping starvation? (Which I think we'd all admit is not inevitable at all.)

I can see the logic in that if that was entirely true. But I don't know if I can agree that either Google or Apple's particular takes on various high achievements were actually inevitable at all (search in various forms, and maybe not the PC, but the iPhone, certainly).

Okay I'll try to make an example: these companies are based usually on other peoples invention.

The originality most people see in Apple's products doesn't lie exactly there. The big thing about the iPhone was the battery life and the hard disk. Not the touch screen interface. A touch screen interface was easy to make and copy for Google, that's why he did so quickly.

Indexing large amount of information (what google does) was or would be a requirement in the years to come. A solution that would be begging for an answer. At the time, no one could foresee how a good indexing vs bad indexing will shape the internet. But a few years later it was clear that we're heading towards big data.

Now, I firmly believe that stopping starvation all over the world, with today's technology is entirely possible. I also believe that this would change the world for the better in a much more meaningful sense. Technology today allows to create abundance, but our society chooses to create virtual demand, where possible.

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