67 karma · joined December 12, 2021
Don’t hate the player, hate the game
Internally Google puts a huge premium on user safety and privacy. So much so that shipping anything requires getting changes through a regulatory process to safeguard users.
Google doesn’t do a good job of marketing its process. In some domains Google does explicitly use user behavior to drive revenue, so from the outside it becomes easy to spin changes like this as encroaching on user privacy, but I don’t see that here. I see something like a PM who is trying to surface some more functionality to users directly, and some engineers who spent far too long with lawyers to get sign off on this change.
It may be fashionable to sensationalize product changes like this, but the truth is often more mundane.
Edit: found a comment from the PM themselves in a previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30174304
In Oct I fell again, in the same strange way, but this time from a much higher height. I didn't blackout but I immediately knew it was not good. My symptoms have still not fully resolved 2 months later. The skin on the left side of my head is at times extra sensitive and at times borderline numb. I frequently have trouble focusing and have ended up taking 50% sick time to recover. The good news is that overall the symptoms are getting better.
I've surfed for over 20 years and fallen on significantly larger, more critical waves with no injury. Losing the ability to focus and think clearly is terrible, I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I also believe that because it's not a visible injury (ie I'm not walking around with crutches) it's harder for others to empathize with. Thankfully I feel supported by my employer, but I now believe that head injury severity likely goes undiagnosed and certainly under-appreciated in our society. The falls I took were very minor, if it can happen from that, my guess is it's more frequent that we realize.