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Comment by chugger | Hacker News Reader

Google is a false prophet hiding behind the veil of their "don't be evil" mantra. Google is the real evil corporation but these geeks are too blind to see it. Now they know what these guys at Google are up to.

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> Google is the real evil corporation but these geeks are too blind to see it.

Okay, since there is a singular, "real" evil corporation, are the other non-real evil corporations in the imaginary-evil or fake-evil domain?

edit:

A bit cryptic, my point is that "evil" has been overloaded to meaninglessness. It decreases one's intelligence to use it in an assertion. In war and throughout history, party A asserts party B is evil, and party B asserts party A is evil. If party A is truly evil, then they would have no scruples over claiming party B is truly evil, and vice versa, analagous to the Liar's Paradox. Entering this frame, and debating who is "truly" the evil one, is a lens more likely to obscure than clarify.

An alternative heuristic for assessing the merits of actions: Coercion is considered polar to freedom by many social philosophers. Does party A use coercion to force party B into making a decision that leaves party B worse off?

Does google use coercion to drive user registration?

Does google use coercion to prevent deregistration?

Does google use coercion to damage competitors?

Does google use coercion to forcefully identify the anonymous?

No. No they don't.

whatever you think will make you happy.

You're trying too hard. People usually do that when they're defending someone they know is guilty. People usually just let the facts speak for themselves.

This is a really poor argument IMHO. You haven't addressed any of his points.

I disagree, google automatically created and logged me into a youtube account just because I was logged into gmail. It cannot be deleted, and it told me:

"While you're logged in, YouTube will keep track of your viewing history, and use videos you’ve watched, videos you’ve liked, and your subscriptions to recommend other videos for you to enjoy. With 48 hours of video uploaded every minute, we’re sure to find you at least a couple more videos worth watching!"

Coercion isn't limited to the targets decisions, it can also be applied to their acts. Coercion isn't limited to physical coercion. I consider the persistent pestering for a phone number in gmail to be coercive. I consider repeatedly asking G+ users for government ID to be coercive.

The most important question is not what are they doing but how you expect them to use this In the future. Good or bad intent is beside the point. Google wants to grow in a serious way and they not against some unethical actions to reach those goals. If groth continues they are going to have a near monopoly is many areas. It is best to have a fall back plan. I really don't want to have them as my omeaning ome or acess with the world. The above comment to early Microsoft was apt. The people that trust google would also have trusted MS before they threw all there loyal coustomers under the bus to lock out Netscape. I am sure they had no idea how much the tight integration with IE would hurt security and stability but they did control the market for some time.

The benefits of completly relying on google are minimal the potential costs are nontrivial.

That describes pretty much every other for-profit corporation that we all do business with on a daily basis as consumers.

I don't think they're any more or any less evil than other large company. But this is just about keeping them honest on an issue that is a very big deal with most of their customers.

Also I think most of these geeks are pretty smart and aware of what's going on around them.

Maybe not everything has to be a purely "for-profit" endeavor. There are alternatives and there are plenty of people willing to support change.

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/10/to_reform_capitalism_ceos_sh...

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