I think people here are being ungenerous towards the author. Too me this story sounds genuine and not like a pr move dictated by Microsoft. It strikes me to be a personal account by someone who's trying to make sense of the past and actually mourning what he believe is the death of old Google. This deserves our respect as professionals because inevitably we are all going to find ourselves in a similar situation, trying to learn from the past and seeking understanding by our peers.
Also as someone who never worked at Google but has been a pretty big Google "fanboy" (of the search, Google Apps, Android, etc) his waning enthusiasm for the brand as an employee seems to have taken a very similar dip to my waning enthusiasm for them as a user, though due to personal investment his dip was probably faster and deeper than my own.
I've loved Google in the past precisely because they weren't Apple and they weren't Facebook. It seems increasingly like they are trying to be Apple and Facebook rolled up into one, which (most importantly for me) sucks because I'm not a fan of Apple or Facebook and (most importantly for them) sucks because they aren't a very good Apple nor a very good Facebook, so they're trading in their old fans for the hope of new fans that probably aren't interested anyway.
> trading in their old fans for the hope of new fans that probably aren't interested anyway.
100% agree. Two small decisions that enrage me for some reason:
1. Stealing the "+" operator away from searches
2. Making Google+ a (semi) closed platform - when I see a link on HN and I click through and it wants me to login to my google+ account just to view the article, I rage inside.
I always want better search, and I've always been happy with google. But now (for many little things like the two above examples) I really want someone else to come along and bring me better search. I don't like google anymore.
Delete your Google cookies and only log in to Google+ in an Incognito window. Then you won't have the "wants me to login to my google+ account just to view the article" problem ever again.
Or just skip it. If getting there requires manipulating cookies and incognito mode there had better be something special at the other end; in 99.99% of the links to G+ the payoff is not worth the bother.
You only have to delete your cookies once, and the main benefit is not that you can read stuff on G+, but that Google isn't tracking everything you read. As closely.
quotes on a single word actually _are_ the equivalent of +, AFAIK. I.e if you want foo, bar, quox to be all present on the page you search, the term is <"foo" "bar" "quox"> (minus angle brackets, obviously)
The statistic is over the total number of users, not over the total number of human beings, or the total number of human beings that ever existed, or the number of atoms in the universe.
It's good to see a Google manager hold that point of view. Do you have any influence in the organization? Or are mchurch's nightmare demons really running the show?
I've worked on the query parsing code for google.com, and, I promise you, + and "" were equivalent. (Barring unusual edge cases with ambiguous combinations of punctuation.)
"I've loved Google in the past precisely because they weren't Apple and they weren't Facebook."
I absolutely do not understand this frame of mind. Why not just like a company for its products, rather than liking them because they're "not" some other company?
Life is too short to get caught up in the identity politics of corporations. Google is a business, not your buddy.
"I think of if like a relationship with person. Do you want to be friends/lovers with a thief/liar/cheater? Reputation matters."
It's entirely possible to have good feelings about products, value the reputations of brands, and trust companies (or not) without getting caught up in politics. I like Whole Foods because they have really good produce, not because they're "not Safeway".
You don't have to choose sides in a religious war to make product judgments.
It's not necessarily always about 'choosing sides'. We are at the point where buying a product from one of these large companies no longer simply means "buying a product" (like you would produce at a Whole Foods). Popular tech products are so intertwined with their parent companies, that it basically implies more of a wager. As a user, when you make a purchase, you place a bet that in your commitment to use this product, the company behind it won't do something that will decrease the enjoyment/utility you get out of the product during its lifecycle. Now this doesn't have to be some new policy/action that literally occurred after your purchase, but rather something that was not obvious upon purchase, and might not even have to do directly with the product itself. Either way, this type of assessment still fits into what you're saying about evaluating a product on it's own merits, but at a certain point, the politics behind a product actually DO affect the product's merit, because they are so intertwined.
In my case for example, I just recently got bit by the fact that iPads are restricted to syncing with only one computer while I was developing an app for it. The iPad on its own is a fine piece of hardware, and is a generally nice product, but this one detail devalued it for me significantly. Can you honestly say this detail is completely detached from the fact that it is an apple product? I wouldn't think so, that move is completely expected from apple; it's part of the locked-down ecosystem you buy into with apple products. I actually like apple's products 'on their own', because they are well made and have attention to detail; however, I will [most likely] never again buy one due to apple's aforementioned politics, which directly affect my experience with their products as a user. Similar thing happened with Samsung/T-mobile and my Vibrant which they never even updated Gingerbread; awesome product on its own, but the service I got with it (part of my 'experience') was poor, and totally determined by the politics behind it.
So while it might be easy to detangle product from company for something as simple as produce, it gets a bit trickier when looking to purchase a longer-term tech product. If you're ok with lock-down, and/or lack of updates, that's great, Apple and Samsung products are totally awesome, they're just not for me.
For me it's nice that one company doesn't know/own everything about me. When you put all your eggs in one basket and then the company turns, getting out can suck. And sometimes I route for the other guy to prevent a total monopoly or to spur innovation.
Because the side effects of my decisions matter? If the 'identity' of a company is providing good products and doing something negative, then by buying their products I'm helping them do the negative thing.
By buying Apple products I'm, for example, supporting needless patent aggression. I may still choose to buy from them anyway because I find their products so good it's worth the hit, but I don't see any sense in ignoring a company's wider effect upon society - by doing so you're removing any incentive for them to behave positively.
A little off-topic. My comment is going to be anecdotal so it may very well be wrong and if yours has been a different experience I would love to hear about it.
A lot of people love a company X because it's "not Apple" or sometimes "not Facebook". I don't get that. It's doesn't make any sense to me. You like something; in this case a company, because it has/does/stands for/makes certain things. Why do people like X just because it's not, say, Apple. It only tells me you hate something and are picking their competitor because they are not Apple. Doesn't X has merits of it's own to be liked?
Personal case:
- I love Apple for OS X, iOS, iPhone (and somewhat the iPad)
- I love Google for search and Google Apps but not a big fan of Android (Maybe because I always had a Nexus One that didn't let me install more than a couple of apps because of internal storage, had a jittery UI, had to keep killing tasks to preserve battery, poor quality of apps and a not so awesome UX. If I had one of the newer Androids I may not be pissed at it.)
- I'm neutral on Facebook because I never share anything personal on it. I'm using it wrong. But that doesn't mean I love G+ or Orkut or MySpace.
- I like Microsoft for Office and their Exchange server.
Summary:
To me I seem to have a liking for companies because of their qualities. My question is if anyone knows studies or psychological explanation why people like companies because they are NOT some other company (aka competition of a company they dislike).
You're reading my comment about loving Google because they aren't Apple a bit too literally.
That's just shorthand to say I love Google because of many actual reasons including but not limited to these:
I loved Google because they've had a true culture of open APIs and open code as opposed to Apple who does use and contribute to OSS projects, but on a much more limited basis and generally only when it has immediate benefit for themselves.
I loved Google because they haven't had a history of disallowing apps from their app store for goofy reasons (like they compete with their own apps, or they are written in a language Google doesn't like).
I loved Google because I didn't feel like they were overstepping their bounds in deciding how I should use my computers or devices.
I loved Google because I never got the feeling that they were trying to trap me completely inside their own walled garden.
There are a lot of haters around, for example any link to http://winsupersite.com is hellbanned. I guess the anti-MS folks that abound here(mostly Apple and Google fans) have flagged the premier source of information about MS to death because they hate MS.
The beauty of a good smear is that is true. You have to find things that are genuine and exaggerate their importance and weight in the public mind through timing, placement and publicity. If it doesn't have the weight of truth behind it a smear cannot work.
To me, I see this as a cynical smear by Microsoft precisely because it is true and it is genuine.
So he complains about advertising and then he complains when they try to make a more honest living with app engine. At the end of the article you would conclude that this guy has had enough of rampant commercialism and was off to joing something like MSF. But it turns out to be MSFT. I know its harsh to say it but the guy comes across as a spoiled child.
