Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome - eviltoast
  • wolfylow@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    57
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    Man I wish we hadn’t all fallen for the “don’t be evil” motto all those years ago.

    This move from Google is utter, utter bullshit.

    • Dale@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      37
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Well they did remove the don’t be evil motto… guess it didn’t fit their business model

      • JoeCoT@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        19
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Spoiler: it fits very few company’s business models. Some companies can avoid it, if their owners/board want to. But once they take venture capital, or go public, they lose that choice. And that “don’t be evil” promise, and most any other, is void.

        • aeternum@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          once they go public, the only goal is MOAR MONEY! reddit will also fall into this trap when/if they go public.

              • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                You’re right, because usually the deeper pockets win. It’s likely the shareholders would just fire the executive and sue later, and then settle for whatever part of the golden parachute they want back.

          • beteljuice@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Reddit already fell into the trap a while ago. They’ve started walking into a cave they found in a trap, and now it’s so bad that we are here.

      • d-RLY?@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        That is because they are a publicly traded for-profit company. They are legally required to do anything and everything to always make the numbers go up. By any means necessary, which is where any semblance of “not being evil” goes to die. Especially after a product/company was able to get massive popularity for doing/supporting actually good things and/or being known for being “the” name that people think about as being ridiculously well made. So many CEOs and the top controlling shareholders start gutting everything to squeeze out any and all extra profits. Just a hollow shell where massive cuts in jobs and replacing anything that got them there with passive money generating replacements. And since basically all normies just go with whatever they were last really told was good. They don’t notice how bad it has become, and don’t question it at all (like how many people thought those IE toolbars were just part of IE from an update).

        Feel free to skip the next bit as it is more rant about the importance of actually updating the information normies have gotten and just default to.

        I on a daily basis have to explain to customers who’s computers I work on, that AVG and Avast are beyond bad things to have installed these days. And that they (and really all the major paid for AV products) are the reason that their computer is dog slow. Along with pointing out that all the scary messages they are seeing are from the AV products trying to constantly up-sell them on getting every single one of their pointless products that they will never use/need. Especially bad when you pay for something and think that it will just do the damn thing you wanted without harassment. Just to then get more alerts and pop-up messages trying to scare you more into getting more “protection from X” than you got before giving them any money at all. They just keep using these things all because someone or a few “tech people” that they personally knew at work or before moving somewhere told them it was the best. Same goes for shit like Office and Outlook. So many older folks think they can’t use email if it isn’t through Outlook and freak the hell out if their drive or OS fucks up. They think they can’t create/open documents if it isn’t Office (same goes for Acrobat for PDFs). There are randomly people that do need those things, but they also tend to be more aware of stuff like creating backups of PST files.

    • intrepid@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      We all did. It’s very much possible that they really meant it at the time. Most companies start with a lot of idealism. And then they become successful and consequently the target of cronies. They feel like they’re entitled to everyone else’s earnings and the dark pattern begins.