And the important distinction if you want to counter the argument that the person you're replying to is making:
Customers pay with money. "paying" with a currency like privacy or convenience isn't actually paying. If you aren't paying for something with money you aren't a customer, you're a user.
Interesting to compare and contrast American and European attitudes toward social mobility [1].
Apparently Americans are far more likely than Europeans to believe that hard work gets you to the top.
However, these expectations are apparently quite divorced from reality. Apparently hard work is far more likely to get you to the top in Europe (especially continental Europe) than in the US.
As a former Googler who was involved in comparing pay across Google sites, Zurich was on par with Mountain View in gross pay (and ahead of New York), and after-tax pay was markedly higher in Zurich.
While Berlin is a great city, it is very far from being a top-pay city in Europe.
After tax pay better be higher in Zurich... it's one of the most expensive cities to live in, especially as an ex-pat, in the world (and considerably more pricey than SF.)
I was in the London office (until a year ago) and led an engineering team spanning London, Zurich and New York. The majority of Google Zurich's engineers are not Swiss—elsewhere from Europe, from across Asia and many from the US.
Why do we allow WSJ submissions here if they don't want us to read their content?
I mean sure, you can go the "click web, then the right Google result" route. But that's like submitting a link to Adobe's most recent Photoshop update and then tell people "you can download Photoshop for free by starting your Bittorent client".
WSJ wants to hide behind a paywall. That's fine for them. But HN shouldn't be sending them traffic and enable that behavior.
But that's like submitting a link to Adobe's most recent Photoshop update and then tell people "you can download Photoshop for free by starting your Bittorent client".
I would offer a different analogy: "Here's a link to Photoshop, and Adobe will let you use it for free on a 30-day trial".
No-one's cracking the WSJ site, sharing someone else's subscription, or any other dubious behaviour: we're simply saying that "WSJ choose to disable their paywall for visitors referred by Google, so if you wish to avoid their paywall, you can use this practice, which WSJ allow".
Some HN users subscribe to the WSJ, others find the content valuable enough to use the web link. The submitter and those who up-vote the submission also believe the article has value.
The paywall is part of the WSJ's business model. HN submissions include the source of the article. If you choose not to support the WSJ or their business practices, you have the choice of not reading their articles.
I think the (fair) complaint that in situations like this where similar articles are written by a slew of sites, better good could be done sourcing from a site without a paywall; both in accessibility and in supporting non-paywalled news.
Even with the web links, that often doesn't work with WSJ any more with how they cookie; so I'm very supportive of non-paywalled links as a preference.
That's a good idea, especially for those that are essentially publishing the wire stories. If people find them, they can provide them in the comments, or perhaps submit them separately. Hard to tell sometimes if there's a better one out there.
I've heard people describe problems they have with the WSJ web links. I don't deny that they do, but I'm surprised I haven't seen them myself. I'm just running Safari with Ghostery. Never had an issue with WSJ (and I don't have a subscription).
It only works a limited numbers of times per month and it makes some of us feel dirty, like riding without a ticket, even if you know you won't get checked.
You're really a user; not a customer. Customers pay. Google is selling your eyeballs to advertisers. Advertises are Google's customers.