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Comment by jefftk | Hacker News Reader

How is Google a way, way worse monopoly than Microsoft was?

(Disclosure: I work for Google now, and I think I would not have worked for Microsoft 20 years ago)

Microsoft just wanted to be paid its OS and apps, not so different from anyone else selling a product. Sure, they wanted dominance but who doesn't? Google certainly can't credibly claim that.

Google is inserting itself into every aspect of communication and information retrieval on the Internet to build a profile of people so that it can better cram targeted ads into their faces. Both the privacy aspect and the advertising aspect are troubling.

Microsoft went well beyond just trying to get paid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

I work on ads at Google and "inserting itself into every aspect of communication and information retrieval on the Internet to build a profile of people so that it can better cram targeted ads into their faces" is not a good model. For example, Gmail data is not used for targeting ads: https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...

(speaking only for myself)

You work on _ads_ at Google, and are concerned about the ethics of working at Microsoft in the 90s? Sure, anti-competitive business practices might be unethical, but how can you possibly in good conscience suggest that bundling IE is more ethically problematic than building massive surveillance applications to sell ads? Just the implications of the data collection alone should be enough for you to quit your job before even considering any business angle.

Hope you enjoy the stock grants!

> Hope you enjoy the stock grants!

If I thought my work at Google was making the world worse I wouldn't do it; see this discussion a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21617291

For example, I'm currently exploring whether https://github.com/WICG/webpackage/blob/master/explainers/su... can increase the security and privacy of ad loading and rendering.

> bundling IE is more ethically problematic than...

I don't think bundling IE was at all the worst that Microsoft was doing in the 90s. Their efforts to kill the web, Java, and Linux, all threats to their strategy of a Windows monopoly, were much more of a problem.

> building massive surveillance applications to sell ads

Ads fund an enormous number of sites, and without them the web and information in general would be even more centralized.

If you oppose ad personalization and targeting, trying to convince individual adtech employees to quit is a terrible strategy. Instead you should advocate for legislation such as the GDPR and CCPA that set out what sorts of behavior are acceptable.

The end result of Microsoft wanting to dominate OS is equivalent to Google wanting to dominate communication; through monopoly of a resource they are able to charge a tax to all users of consumer technology.

> "The end result of Microsoft wanting to dominate OS is equivalent to Google wanting to dominate communication; through monopoly of a resource they are able to charge a tax to all users of consumer technology."

I agree with you and the other Google employee who brought up EEE; Neither Google nor Microsoft is better than the other in that regard.

What I am saying is that Google's broad collection of personal data (over which the public has minimal visibility or control) and their focus on advertising (not really a societal good by any measure) adds on top of their desire for monopoly to clearly make Google the bigger problem.

Windows was a far more liberal and fair platform than Android is. Once you have your software installed, it could do with the system all it needed, if the user gave it enough rights. On Android, you can't really run your app in the background (trust me, we develop an app that depends on being constantly in the background), so the developers are forced to use proprietary push notifications, which are fully controlled by Google.

... And each new version of Android puts more and more restrictions on things. For example, in Android 6 I could record incoming calls easily. Not so much on Android 9, "you are forbidden to do that because it is illegal in some jurisdictions" (not in mine, btw!)

This the kind of comment that only portrays one side and the readers think "Google BAAAAAD".

You know what happened when background services were allowed completely, battery issues, crashes, just a complete shitshow. One one hand HN raves about the iOS quality, OTOH blames Android for trying to do the same thing.

It should up to user to decide what to do with their devices. Operating system should just ask for permissions to perform tasks with potentially harmful effects, and notify on high energy drain. If a user is fine with that, he shouldn't be handcuffed by OS vendor from doing what he needs.

> One one hand HN raves about the iOS quality, OTOH blames Android for trying to do the same thing.

Oh, good old straw man argument? Actually, Android started out as an almost completely free GNU/Linux computer, and is slowly morphing into the same almost fully locked clone of iOS. And in my mind it's NOT a good thing. And yes, Apple's monopoly on sending push notifications on iOS is as harmful, as is Google's on Android.

Please put AOSP on your devices. Let us others have a sane device experience not dealing with bad apps.

And how do you suggest working with restricted background running, given that AOSP still has precisely the same policy regarding background tasks? And you can't even rely on push notifications, because as I understand you suggest getting rid of Google Apps too - and Push notifications come only with Google Apps.

You can modify AOSP how you like. If you want hacker friendly behavior, be ready to hack.

Returning to my original comments, on Windows I could do all the things I can't do on Android without hacking or modifying it.

And guess what Windows does suffer from shitty apps giving you blue screens. Battery isn't as much of a concern on PC but it's absolutely critical on mobile.

Also, most users want their devices to work not have to constantly fiddle and make decisions. You can put AOSP and even a different app store and do whatever you want.

You can put a different appstore, right, but you still have to rely on some external push notification service, because the OS became crippled and less capable than it was.

I repeat, you could easily run background tasks in Android 1.5, no problems, and you can't now. Only with persistent icons, and even that looks likely to change. So AOSP doesn't really help here because the OS itself becomes more restricted.

Also, 'most users' argument is not valid. It's like suggesting, "people can cut themselves with knives, so let's ban knives and everything with a blade. If some people NEED to cut other people, like surgeons, well, whatever, they shouldn't, because most users don't do that"

What a stupid argument. Again buy a phone from a different company. Flash your own bits. "Hacker" needs can't dilute a consumer product.

Well, that phone from a different company will have to run another OS, because no Android vendor will help with the kind of problems I'm describing.

Also, do you _really_ suggest that running a persistent ssh session in a terminal or a VPN connection is a 'hacker' activity that should require flashing a phone with a custom build of an OS? Uh-oh.

> you can't really run your app in the background

This, last I checked, was OEM specific. I agree with your point, most OEMs are indescribably awful about killing any and all background apps - this does not, however, make it Google's fault.

I've disabled GApps and the GSF on my phone, but Riot/Element still works quite well with background notifications when it's excluded from battery optimizations.

> I could record incoming calls easily.

This is still possible, and I do it, with the stock dailer on android 8.1. I use a VOIP provider that offers call recording. As it's my primary number, all my calls are recorded with no interaction on my part.

Off-topic, but transcribed voicemail is offered as well - which I think used to be carrier or even iPhone specific. There's lots of functionality in Android that's not natively supported, but that doesn't mean it can't be done :)

VOIP provider in question (that I'm not affiliated with) is voip.ms, in case anyone is curious.

> This, last I checked, was OEM specific.

Umm, no. It is nice how you cite your anecdotal evidence about riot, but if you would study this issue a bit you would know, that on Android 1.5 you could launch a background process and it would stay in memory indefinitely, and on recent androids it's only possible with persistent notificaton icon (to which a lot of users complain about). If you don't have the persistent notification, then oops. If you don't want to research this subject yourself, you should probably trust me, because we have an app with >1M installs that depends on being in memory.

>> For example, in Android 6 I could record incoming calls easily. Not so much on Android 9,

> This is still possible, and I do it, with the stock dailer on android 8.1

Let me check, was Android 8.1 released later than Android 9? Hm, I guess, not. Anyway, this link [1] would be a good place to start to learn more on this subject. Let me cite:

"The official API for call recording was removed with the launch of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Developers are hard to stop, so they found workarounds to keep this feature alive, but Google finally killed off the ability to record calls with Android 9.0 Pie."

So, do you agree now with my point that Android is becoming a more and more restricted platform in every way?

[1]: https://www.androidauthority.com/record-calls-android-101910...

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