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Comment by Endy | Hacker News Reader

- Regardless of all this, most people will still use Google Search & GMail for critical information and gain most of their entertainment and research from YouTube. They will also click on Google ads and watch videos on YouTube without ad-blockers. They'll use Google Fi or Nexus phones, will use Android OS on other hardware, and Chromebooks.

In other words, all of those things you comment on are true but ultimately meaningless. Google is not going to change because the users do not care. They care only about their own lives - when Google harms them, they may make a token effort to move away from the platform, but they'll come back.

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Quoting from a book on information risk[0] I'm reading:

"... we have to remember how this form of loss [reputation damage] typically materializes for a commercial company - reduced market share, reduced stock price (if publicly traded), increased cost of capital, and increased cost of acquiring and retaining employees."

Iff we want Google to change, we should figure out a way to translate moral outrage into threatening some of the things mentioned in the quote.

[0] -- Measuring and Managing Information Risk: A FAIR Approach 1st Edition, p. 138.

That sounds like the only way to affect the company would be to become ridiculously rich overnight and work to actively harm them.

Not 100% true, but it still tells you something about why big companies don't care that much about what general population thinks of them.

not necessarily. Asymmetric warfare works as current geopolitical events show. leaking, doxxing etc are all methods that could (and probably will be) utilized if they don't listen to the good guys within their company.

I don’t think people are particularly crazy about google. Google is the default search engine of all major browsers (ie not Edge!), I can only think of one other major video hosting website (dailymotion). And you have to either buy a google powered phone or a $1500 luxury Apple product. And if you started using gmail 10y ago, it’s pretty painful to switch to a new email address, even more so than to switch banks.

The deterioration of their reputation will probably rather cost them in term of regulations and political pressure than market share. Think of what happened to banks. We start seing this hostility to big tech companies in congress and in every other countries.

$750 Apple product. That’s like saying all Android phones are $1249 because you can spend that much on a Samsung: https://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/phones/galaxy-note/galaxy-...

Actually, if you don’t mind going back a couple of generations (and considering that typically Apple gives 5 years support compared to a typical 2-3 for Android manufacturers that’s not awful) then you can happily get an iPhone with a pretty competitive CPU for $450: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-7

> $750 Apple product.

> you can get an iPhone [...] for $450

Way to miss the point :) many Android phones people use over here are several times cheaper. Many people just don't even ever think about buying Apple because of its price.

That's still really expensive.

I make decent money (like most on HN, I assume) and my phone costs under $300, the improvements for phones above $300 are relatively minor besides the camera.

The biggest damage to google in my eyes was the recent redesign of gmail. At this point, I don't interact with anything that they offer anymore outside of search, because they have forced me into using another mail client.

Same with me; it was one of the straws that broke the camels back for me. The redesign was clunky, slow, and loads a dozen iframes in the background. Combined with all the privacy and security issues, I figured I'd just do the switch. Turns out it has been far less painful than I anticipated. Glad to have jumped ship.

Perhaps a company shouldn’t be able to have such a broad reach across so many different mediums.

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