I'm guessing it's some sort of a rule here to have at least one anti-google link on the front page at all times but I think this needs addressing:
1. Ads keep the lights on and they are labeled as such.
2. The Basecamp guy was complaining that ads for competing services are showing when searching for his service which is something that courts have affirmed time and again as being pro consumer because it exposes new users to competing services.
Fair points, but on the other hand, to quote Page and Brin:
"we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline’s homepage when the airline’s name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine. In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want." [1]
[1] Larry Page and Sergey Brin, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, 1998
The anti-google (or anti-amazon, anti-FB, basically anti-FAANG) garbage that gets plastered on HN is really childish and tiring.
Reminds me of all the “M$” bashing back when slashdot was still relevant. I can recall top comments for articles about larger HDD’s were usually people decrying “bloated software” or wondering who would ever use all that space. Articles about LCD monitors were full of people bemoaning the loss of “superior CRT’s”. Anything new was suspect. Of course all that “M$” anti-tech bashing eventually made them completely irrelevant and now they are but a footnote in history.
Dunno where I’m going but besides being “two minutes of hate”, these anti-FAANG articles totally remind me of slashdot.
I don’t think that had anything to do with why Slashdot faded into obscurity. Slashdot refused to allow users to post stories, so Digg (and then Reddit) ate its lunch.
Being constantly attacked is just a reality of being at the top. Doesn't matter what it is, individual achievement, business political entertainment etc... if you're on top people are going to just come after you, no matter what.
The sentiment against MS was legit. They abused their OS monopoly to try to own the web and also tried to destroy Linux by labelling it communist (think about how ridiculous that seems now.)
Their current mea culpa phase should be evidence that the angry nerds on slashdot may have had a point.
edit: Why the downvotes? Perhaps peoples' memories need jogging.
I find ad labeling on Google increasingly subtle. Ads seem to be so voluminous on Google lately that there’s no organic results to contrast them with above the fold. By definition (2), if I only see paid results above the fold, I think it’s fair to argue it has become an advertising engine. Search users are scrolling down results less and less, and there’s a tremendous bias towards the top results. When there’s no organic results above the fold, to users Google often feels like it’s completely driven by ads.
There is about 149 billion dollars of difference between the amount of money Google needs to "keep the lights on" and the 150 billion dollars that Google will see in revenue this year. Also, if "ads keep the lights on" then why aren't there toll booths on all paved roads, since "tolls pave the roads"?
I agree with you. The fact that Google serves ads for search results is not the problem, the real issue is their indifference to user privacy. They would have to sell ads to keep lights running. But they can do away with privacy transgressions.
Yeah when I search "basecamp" I get 2-3 competitors clearly marked as "Ad", and the top actual search result is Basecamp homepage, with six(!) different pages inside the Basecamp site listed under it: Basecamp 3, Basecamp 2, How it works, Try it FREE, Pricing, Basecamp personal.
There are ways to keep the lights on without showing ads.
Example:
Offer a "premium" search experience. They could let people customize what types of results they'd like to see. When I'm searching for a software engineering question, I'd almost always prefer documentation, then code, then q&a, then blog posts. I'd also love to set which sites I'd prefer to see results from (mdn, Reddit, etc).
The issue is that ads would almost certainly make more money than other options. And, as a for-profit company, Google has a lot of pressure to do what makes them the most money. It would be tough for them to tell their investors, "we know we could make more money by showing ads, but we're not going to do that". Even if they could offer a better experience/product without ads.
Personally, and this is almost certainly a controversial opinion, I think the issue is with the for-profit company model. As soon as you give people equity, you're under a lot of pressure to do what makes the most money rather than what's best for the world. I'm curious what Google would look like if it was a money-making non-profit.
> I'm guessing it's some sort of a rule here to have at least one anti-google link on the front page at all times
Not only this, any submission that's remotely related to Google HN crowd finds a way to start bashing Google. It has gotten so bad that recently I started hiding any submission related to Google.
Why would you think there's a rule that there must be anti Google content on HN? If you think an article needs addressing you can just go ahead and leave a comment, you don't need to preface it with "this needs addressing". It's literally what the comment section is for.
>ACCC to lead development of a code of conduct to govern dealings between tech giants and media businesses.
Murdoch country is doing his bidding and tapping themselves on the back, all these attempts against US tech firms is protectionism and should be countered as such.
The ACCC is one of the most important consumer rights bodies in the world. They do so, so much for their constituents — for example, Australians don’t need to buy AppleCare to ensure Apple has to replace faulty components, which has had a knock-on effect on what Apple provides with AppleCare, which benefits consumers around the world.
To paint their actions as “protectionist” is way off the mark of how and why they do what they do.
If it got to that and it's not some sort of WSJ attempt to advocate for this sort of thing, facebook must fight it tooth and nail, and stop these attempts at governmental micromanagement once and for all.
It's suspect that they are going after tech companies which are national treasures but are enemies to corporate media, it's strange that this sort of action isn't being considered against actual malicious monopolists that the press isn't constantly attacking. No one is suggesting going after disney for instance even though they have that market cornered.
Entertainment. I guarantee anybody in your average household is a fan of something Disney outright bought the rights to. Whether its Marvel (if I hear about another reboot of X-Men or another Avengers movie imma pull my hair, OTOH I did like Guardians... Yikes even I am falling for it!) then theres Star Wars which has a huge following of people from all ages. The typical Disney public domain rip offs as well. The insane amount of music they own the rights to.
Here in Florida its scary how much power Disney has. They also own the media to a point and you find it hard to see anybody speak badly of them within the media. The amount of things I see covered up that never winds up in the media genuinely scares me. How is it possible the media keeps specific things quiet for Disney.
There are still five major movie studios in the US and the minor studios like Blumhouse and Tyler Perry Studios routinely put out movies that have a higher ROI than the major ones.
As far as TV, there are plenty of TV studios and streaming services.
And now they're removing their content from those. They also own several of those streaming services (ESPN, D+, and significant enough parts of Hulu). By contrast their streaming competitors own one single serve (with maybe the exception of Google and Apple who own music streaming services and video streaming).
If nobody sets up a roadblock I fear where it ends, if it does.
I forgot to add a disclaimer: long before I was a developer I worked for Disney. I'm somewhat biased, but I also attempt to not be blind. It's a monopoly on your children to a significant scale. If they stop buying out companies, it still feels like they've bought out some of the more major fandom franchises.
I just went to check, and after their last major buyout they own all of the Narnia movie rights.
If you replace “civil rights and democracy” with “arbitrary power” (and, as far as what both those cheering and those complaining mostly said, “Facebook” with “Twitter”), sure.
Facebook has been doing everything in their power to gradually erode people's privacy, so their business model is strongly consumer-hostile, unless contributing to the erosion of civil liberties and human rights isn't considered hostile towards people.
Disney's attack on culture through the lobbying of copyright extensions is not an excuse for what Facebook is doing. Both companies need to be dealt with, and we can do our part by not defending them when there's an opportunity to call them out.
> Disney's attack on culture through the lobbying of copyright extensions
Nitpick: that should be "a copyright extension", not "copyright extensions". There have only been two copyright extensions that have affected Disney: the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.
I haven't been able to find any evidence that they lobbied for the 1976 Act. Probably because there would have been no need for lobbying, as the 1976 Act had near universal support.
That's because it was a major overhaul of US copyright law, which went a long way toward making US copyright law compatible with the Berne Convention. (There was still a lot to do to actually allow the US to join the Berne Convention--those final changes were in the Berne Implementation Act of 1988).
I'm not sure how the popular notion that Disney is constantly getting copyright terms extended arose.
> I'm not sure how the popular notion that Disney is constantly getting copyright terms extended arose.
They've earned this reputation by lobbying successfully for copyright extensions more than any other company in history. They absolutely deserve harsh criticism for it.
> They've earned this reputation by lobbying successfully for copyright extensions more than any other company in history
As far as I can tell, they've lobbied once for a copyright extension (the 1998 Act).
Their copyright was also extended by the 1976 Act, but as previously noted, I can't find anything suggesting that they had any influence over that. The 1976 Act was the result of a revision effort that was started by Congress in 1955 to address the widely perceived problems of the 1909 Act. That effort included 35 separate studies into the problems with the 1909 Act.
That took about 5 or 6 years. Then there were 15 years of negotiation and compromise and drafting involving pretty much all interested parties. As far as I've been able to find, the only thing in the result of that which did not have widespread was the provisions involving cable television. Those stayed controversial all the way.
The narrative that Disney and/or other big corporate interests somehow pushed the 1976 Act through is just not at all supported by the historical record.
I have to admit, I am struggling to find facts to back up my argument. I could go on a tangent about trademark, and while it's related it doesn't defend my original point.
I suspect Disney had a huge role to play in lobbying for these laws, but thank you for pointing out that I actually have almost no facts to back up this claim (seriously, I love being proven wrong because it means I learned something).
you have no privacy, it is an illusion. your civil liberties are already stomped flat by government yet people want to hand them even more authority and control over their lives.
get the priorities straight, government is first and foremost the issue when it comes to privacy and civil liberties. corporations are beholden to what politicians threaten them with in lieu of campaign donations and favors so take offense and aim at the right group.
it isn't corporations doing their best to end privacy in communications and once that is gone through encryption back doors and bans nothing else much matters.
put it this way, the politicians and their sycophants sure have done their job in getting people to look behind the wrong curtain. give them more power they say, trust them they say, fbi I say, nsa I say..
Facebook isn’t eroding people’s privacy. People knowingly share information with FB. On the other hand, how many people know about all of the information that Google collects - especially on Android phones?
Exactly. Cloud-powered voice assistants are thoroughly uninteresting and a huge privacy concern. Local, 100% in-device processing should be the future and if that were the case this link would indeed be "alarmist"
That’s what all this stuff inevitably becomes unfortunately. It’s a shame that lawyers have to mediate our access to our rights. I sincerely believe if we replaced high school with law school we’d all be much better off.
The barrier here isn't really the need for a law degree. Prosecuting these kinds of cases against deep-pocketed defendants like Google doesn't only take expertise in the law, but the resources to review millions of pages of Google emails to establish how the system works and what Google's intentions were, as well as experts to opine on technical aspects as well as calculation of damages. There is no practical way for individuals without significant resources to prove up this sort of case on their own.
The realistic alternative is having government agencies prosecute these sorts of cases. It's a very good alternative, and is used in most other countries. It's an odd confluence of factors that results in private class action litigation being more popular in the U.S. (From the left, trial lawyers are major supporters of Democrats. From the right, Republicans would rather have these class actions than new government agencies.)
> The realistic alternative is having government agencies prosecute these sorts of cases.
I wasn't saying the result would be that we each tend to our own legal matters instead of having regulatory agencies. I was saying that when only a tiny fraction of the citizens is legally literate, and only a small fraction of those people are actual trained lawyers, not many people are going to be looking out for our rights, muchless even know what those rights are or should be.
Thankfully we have the judicial branch to interpret what was written hundreds of years ago.
Besides, the 1st prevents the government from making laws that abridge the freedom of speech. It doesn't give every tantrum-throwing cowboy the right to spout off without consequence.
1. Ads keep the lights on and they are labeled as such.
2. The Basecamp guy was complaining that ads for competing services are showing when searching for his service which is something that courts have affirmed time and again as being pro consumer because it exposes new users to competing services.
This describes a recent case and links to others: https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2018/05/another-court-...