> Our technology group tends to work thematically, meaning that we try to focus on how tech is changing our readers’ work and personal lives. Google is the main focus of my reporting, and it is a brutally competitive beat. It takes me an hour to go through the day’s headlines each morning, and there are dozens of competitors and talented journalists on the tech beat. That means I’m often scooped, and the scrum of daily news can make it hard to see the bigger picture.
if the new york times cannot take an extra day or two to get a good, comprehensive and well-put-together story without worrying about the churning techblogs scooping them, who can? there has to be space for slower-moving newspaper articles, without having to fall all the way back to magazines.
The whole business model of journalism seems broken. I'd love to see a crowd-funded journalism portal that takes the 'patreon' model and extends it to a stable of well-trained independent journalists and provides them with an overall support structure of editorial oversight, illustration & layout support, etc, etc.
In place of advertisement, the portal could run their own messaging to fund various initiatives (raise x amount in order to bring on a tech reporter for x number of articles a year, etc, etc). Users could choose to fund specific reporters at x amount per month, or just donate directly to the portal for day-to-day operational expenses.
This exists via Bloomberg. Their $26k p.a. terminals subsidize the journalism.
I haven't found another general interest news org whose journalists take the time to actually understand the industry they cover. One could argue that it's run by a billionaire politician, yet it stays much less partisan than say, the NYT.
That said, these days the best content comes from single-beat sources.
The problem with journalism is everyone wants it but hardly anyone will pay for it unless it directly helps them in some way.
So Bloomberg and the FT (trade press) have a business model, the BBC has the license fee so doesn't need a business model, and everyone else will go bankrupt slowly – note that none of the other para-news apps which were fashionable a while ago (Circa, Feedly, Google Reader, etc...) have come anywhere close to being financially valuable.
I think a lot of people like me would pay for it if there was some sensible micro-payment system. I'm hardly ever inclined to sign up and pay ~$10 a month to read an article on a site. If I saw the article in a newspaper at a stand or machine, I used to spend 50 cents buy it and get an entire newspaper for my money. A single article would seem to be worth at most 25 cents, most of the time a dime, and I would gladly pay that amount to read a good article. I don't understand what the problem is and why this isn't implemented yet.
The 'business model' of big media like the New York Times is to be grandfathered by a bunch of people who are happy to spend a lot of money for the chance to form and color people's opinions. That is infinitely more valuable than the chump change they can make from advertising and circulation, which, as is apparent, barely covers operational expenses. You can see this story play out for all big 'serious' newspapers all over the world.
agreed, but it also referred to his google coverage being constantly subject to pressure of getting scooped. my point was that an nyt writer should not care if someone beats them to a story, they if anyone should have the luxury to trust that their readership would rather see a well-researched story than a breaking one.
They're in the news business, so scoops are always a huge driver, especially so with online news where the publication with a scoop with get a disproportionate number of PVs on a story. The NYT doesn't get to escape from that logic; it just gets to play on both slow/smart and fast/quick hit grounds.
The Guardian for one? I agree it's becoming more rare to see real journalism, and that's sad...which is why it's important to point out the ones who still do it.
Note that the crew working there is different from the www.spiegel.de crew and the quality of the weekly magazine is said to be much better (I am not a subscriber though)
Here's an interview Page and Brin did with Terry Gross in 2003, when they were more accessible I suppose. There's an amusing exchange where one of them tries to explain idempotence ("When I type 'Google' into Google and click "I'm Feeling Lucky", it just takes me back to Google.") to Terry:
That's a terrible interview. She literally ends by calling them nerds, probably in reflection of the fact that she has no clue what they're talking about.
My memory of that interview at the time was that it was terrible. I imagine it contributed to Larry and Sergey deciding talking to the press wasn't as good a use of their time as doing things.
She's in over her head technically (obviously) and asks an arguably insulting question to end the interview. It's a softball interview, but it was also in 2003 I think.
I tried doing that just now in Chrome, and immediately upon typing the interface with the I Feel Lucky button disappears and I start getting the usual results interface, with autocomplete.
I may be in the minority on this forum but I am not worried about the information that I willingly provide private corporations. The corporations that have my data continue to exist because people find their products valuable. When people talk about the power Google or Facebook have, they speak as though these are companies that have been around for hundreds of years amassing ever more power. I feel like I have more choices than ever as to the services I use and the power of these corporations is very fickle. Apple has lost over 10% of their value since this year began and about 25% in the last 6 months simply because expectations are that they are losing favor in the public, or at least that's my hypothesis. Every generation had a different country or corporation that they were afraid of.
And then we have the Congress in US with an approval rating in the teens and a re-election rate in the 90s [0]. Since there appears to be little accountability in the public sector and the monopoly on violence the government holds, I am much more concerned about that.
> And then we have the Congress in US with an approval rating in the teens and a re-election rate in the 90s [0].
Far be it from me to defend the United States Congress, but the two things--a low approval rating combined with a high reelection rate--are often presented as evidence for corruption.
Corrupt though they may be, it's a faulty measure--the approval rating is for all of Congress. Most Americans by default hate half of congress--the half in the opposing party--and disapprove of many of their own members.
Put another way, the approval rating has Bostonians evaluating congressmen from Houston, but most people end up reelecting their own congressman. "The problem isn't my congresswoman, it's the other idiots," etc.
There are other, unfortunate reasons for that, but that's a separate point.
But we know that these same corporations may be legally obliged, secretly compelled or financially incentivized to give or sell the information they have about you to the government. And if the government cannot get hold of the data through these means, they can simply steal it from the privately owned data centres where it has all been so conveniently aggregrated. Especially since Snowden we have seen that private corporations function as a funnel through which intelligence agencies amass data on private individuals.
People keep complaining about the "government monopoly on violence." What other group would you prefer to have a monopoly on violence? If the government doesn't enforce a monopoly, then invariably someone else will, in the process becoming the new government; or else two or more groups will actively dispute it, a condition commonly known as "war."
I can agree with that, and I hope that's what bko meant, but I've seen enough people (on HN and elsewhere) complaining specifically about the existence of the governmental monopoly on force that I wonder.
> What other group would you prefer to have a monopoly on violence?
The people. Governments can be illegitimate, e.g. not derive from the consent of the people, in which case government monopoly on violence yields oppression.
Violent revolutions are sometimes necessary in the course of human events. Without the people having the capacity to wage war on their government -- that is, the capacity for violence via the right to bear arms -- such revolutions are not possible.
If you're working and can't watch YouTube, here's a transcript:
> I knew that it was Larry and Sergey’s company, and I acted that way. For example, I never did any press. Right before the IPO, Larry and Sergey did an interview with Playboy — no pictures. It turns out that the interview was at the wrong time in the quiet period, and it put the IPO in jeopardy. “Did we screw up?” The correct answer is Yes. But the even more correct answer is no problem, we’ll fix this. From that moment on, they’ve never given an interview. That was 12 years ago. When they wanted to do interviews, they did them. Once they didn’t want to do it anymore, I did them.
Maybe given that Google is emulating Berkshire Hathaway[1] they could adopt Buffett's approach to taking questions which was for many years to avoid it 364 days of the year and then have one multi hour open question session at the annual meeting. He's changed a bit recently in giving more interviews but in earlier years the annual meeting was largely it. It seemed quite smart in that he could be open while being free from being bugged by journalists 99.5% of the time.
In public comments, Mr. Page goes out of his way to say the opposite, describing Google more in terms of a nonprofit than a gigantic corporation. During a 2014 interview with Charlie Rose, he said he wished there were a vehicle for people to donate money to their company so that it could be used for projects that had some kind of social purpose.
There is such a "vehicle", google something and click on an ad.
Seriously, why would anyone want to donate to Google so that they can do projects with "some kind of social purpose"? Is Google an expert at "some kind of social purpose"-projects? Can Google (or the founders) not afford such projects without normal people explicitly donating? Just the thought of donating to Google is offensive and I find the article author's seemingly awe at Mr Page's idea of such a thing repulsive.
Does "Once was at an off-the-record gathering where nothing interesting happened" mean that whatever happened is off the record, or does it actually mean nothing happened? I'm not sure how to read it.
"Emasculating" was a very strange and evocative choice of words for this. Most of the article describes Google's significance and direction, with only this snippet at the tail end having anything to do with the title:
> ....I can tell you from experience that it is really awkward and emasculating to try to interview someone who doesn’t want to talk. You feel like a big dork.
I assume the NYT headline was a reference to a few years back when Page was talking about how great Glass was and by way of comparison described looking down at a phone screen as "emasculating".
I assume he (Page) was just meant that using a phone a lot felt awkward and took your attention away from the rest of the world around you, but made a poor word choice while improvising in front of an audience. The tech press had a little tisk tisk field day about though, especially since this was well past the point where Glass was looking like a silly boondogle.
In most newspapers though, someone besides the author writes the headline for an article, so I'm assuming whoever wrote this one for the NYT thought they were being clever here in referencing that faux pas.
edit: Just checked it was actually Brin who said the emasculating thing, so who the fuck knows what the headline writer was thinking. Maybe they remembered wrong too.
The idea that "emasculate" was a bad word choice was a foolish media bandwagon. The secondary meaning of emasculate is "make weaker or less effective" and holding a fragile and valuable object does do that...
Many people think "a series of tubes" was a hilariously bad analogy for the internet too. It has always seemed reasonable to me, and some others. [1]
Maybe I'm just too interested in actual communication rather than mockery. But "Be liberal in what you accept" etc.
Well, it's a series, but also a collection at the same time, right? Unless you conceive of the internet as one long line of tubes connected one to the other (series) rather than a number of tubes, some connected in series but others running in parallel.
That's the subtlety of language the parent was referring to.
Actually the original context is something like "the internet is not a big truck, it's a series of tubes" which makes it clear that he was referring to what was involved in sending data down a single connection.
It would be absurd to infer that Stevens thought real-world truck haulage consisted of "one big truck" rather than a fleet.
The difference is that "series of tubes" is merely wrong/silly/awkward/clueless, whereas "emasculation" reinforces decades of toxic masculinity, which is a societal ill.
Maybe the author felt emasculated by the experience, and didn't realize that modern humanity demands attention to all manner of bizarre sensitivities because of a rabid desire to take offense where none is intended.
I do have to admit, I stereotype reporters as absolutely swimming in that particular lagoon, so it's unlikely, but hey, you got to speculate too.
I guess if you get to a) impose your own definitions and b) judge how others feel based on those self-definitions, then you've reached the "crawling up your own ass" stage of looking for ways to be offended. Congratulations! You're ready to join a variety of Twitter and tumblr groups who spend so much time in their own asses they believe such things to be important.
Agreed. I read the word "emasculating" with the meaning "deprive (a man) of his male role or identity", and was imagining that Page was calling into question his manliness during an interview like some kind of bro, which is funny to imagine considering I don't hear any accounts of him being the kind of guy who would do that.
Managing your public image is something I imagine can become pretty draining, so I'm not surprised he parcels out his comments to simple, controlled, one-way exchanges.
The first time I was aware of Larry as a person was in early 2014 when I saw a replay of him on stage at the 2013 Google I/O event. I immediately got an impression of him as being a truly saintly figure, with his gentle, soft-spoken demeanor.
Considering what I have been going through in my daily life, I could not be more in awe of what Larry has been able to accomplish. I feel that Google is easily an order of magnitude more important than the next closest institution, be it public or private, be it a business or a government.
My offering to Larry is a little thing that I've been working on for the past several years called "Linux on the Web". If you stick those four words together and put it into a relevant search engine, then the link should appear as the top hit. It only works in Chrome... a fact that truly warms my cockles at this moment.
I f*ing love that man.
Screw all the haters.
Suggestion to all potential future reporters out there: pay more attention in your math, science and engineering classes, and less in your liberal (f)arts classes.
> Suggestion to all potential future reporters out there: pay more attention in your math, science and engineering classes, and less in your liberal (f)arts classes.
No. You do not create technology that serves real humans by refusing to study the humanities.
> The first time I was aware of Larry as a person was in early 2014 when I saw a replay of him on stage at the 2013 Google I/O event. I immediately got an impression of him as being a truly saintly figure, with his gentle, soft-spoken demeanor.
I don't have any strong opinions on Page as a person, but if you decide that someone saintly based purely on their stage presence, you are in serious danger of getting taken for a ride by any charismatic jerk who crosses your path.
>Suggestion to all potential future reporters out there: pay more attention in your math, science and engineering classes, and less in your liberal (f)arts classes
You were making sense, until this last para. Have some compassion - you don't seem to care that a human (journo) is degraded into such a position (used emasculate to describe his position) by another (although no fault of the latter). Its good that humans are different, for various reasons -- its so obvious. Going by your logic, what Mr. Page does is fart compared to say a Roger Penrose writing 'The Road to Reality'.
All said, we all try our best, you know. Your project looks interesting. So is mine, or that journalist's or Larry Page's or Roger Penrose's. In the large scheme of things, who knows what really matters.
Is it fully accurate (or helpful) to think of Google only as an advertising company? Movie theaters and gas stations earn most of their profit on concessions and ancillary stuff that isn't the central product or service, yet we don't think of either as strictly a "concession" or food service business.
I'm not a 100% sure about this, but maybe you know. Do movie theaters and gas stations provide their core service at a loss so as to profit from the ancillary stuff?
I'd agree with you if movie theaters were giving the ticket away for free in order to get you to buy a $20 hotdog.
The movie ticket receipts go to the studios. Tickets alone don't make the theatres any money. For a bunch of historical reasons (antitrust) studios don't own the theaters.
maybe you consider these weak points in support of the argument, and I'm not certain I agree with all of them either, but its a starting point. here, first few things off the top of my head:
1. highest market cap of a major tech company that is a) an important part of masses of people's daily lives, b) working on experimental projects that will not realize their fruits in the short term, c) has intimated a progressive vision for society.
2. has the necessary funds, personnel resources, knowledge base, and lobbying power to accomplish ambitious goals.
3. category definer for the domain of internet search advertising, which is actually a bigger deal than you make it out to be. this corresponds to a very basic human need: finding what you're looking for, including things you're looking to buy.
4. philosophically speaking, seems to have an actual grasp on what it is they are doing beyond the simplistic definition "making money" or "increase shareholder value". their actions are (if you believe their own statements about it anyway) guided by a coherent vision to "organize the world's information".
5. has already changed the way people speak and think about using the internet, which is the civilizational mega-project of our time that will have irreversible impact on human culture from this point forward.
I guess then we first need to establish what properties 'the worlds most important company' would be likely to have. To me, the company would have to be firmly established as a key player in so many different markets such that if the company were to vanish they would literally be chaos on the streets.
hmm, I think that describes something different. "the world's most indispensable company". google isn't that. not sure what is. maybe the big oil companies (collectively) are indispensable? that's kind of a shame really. no company should be indispensable.
to me though, google is clearly important, in a historical sense. they are building things that change the world. they also seem to care (at least pay lip service) to trying to change the world in a way that is a net positive for most people.
The argument, as I've heard it, is that everyone goes to Google to find things, thus the "view" of the world is filtered by Google. If they like you, you are very visible to the world, if they don't, then you are not. So to some their very existence depends on Google returning a way to communicate with them in response to the appropriate question.
That said, while it makes it very important to an olive oil producer that they can be "found" it is less important to you and I that we find that exact olive oil producer in response to the question about where we could acquire olive oil. So Google is asymmetrically important.
The asymmetric value (producers need Google's favor more than consumers) leads to SEO as an industry, which in turn isn't always great for consumers. I can't remember which items off the top of my head, but every now and then I try to google a thing I'm not familiar with and it takes some effort to find results that aren't trying to sell me that thing.
Pretty much any highly contested search with purchase intent is going to be nearly impossible to search for. Try "free credit card" some time, or "cure for headaches" :-)
"It is worth $500 billion" - which is a pretty small group of companies (two)
"Six Google products have more than one billion users" - again a pretty significant achievement. Facebook has 1 or 2. Apple has none - the iPhone has sold about 700M units across all models apparently.
"I use Google to research stories, I email my editors through Gmail, and I use Google Maps to go to meetings." - people in first world countries probably use a google product every day. Few companies have that level of global reach and touch so many people's everyday lives.
Advertising is a very old profession, it predates humans. Flowers are mostly advertising, and most people consider them beautiful. Perhaps there is hope for a startup that could make advertising more like flowers.
By flowers advertising, it means, flowers look pretty to attract insects and animals, who will get stuck with the pollen and help the plant reproduce. He's diluting it down to "attracting something, someone on a visceral level for own benefit".
>It boggles the mind that an advertising company is the most important company in the world
>I don't trust Google at all
I'm sure that you would prefer that a maker of phone trinkets to have the label as the most important company in the world, but Google is much more than just a "advertising company".
If 90% (that was the figure when I last looked at them a year back), or at the very least an overwhelmingly large percentage of your revenue comes from advertising, you're an advertising company.
In that case, Apple is just a smartphone company and Microsoft is just an enterprise software company.
I understand your motive to label Google as just an advertising company, but just because their monetization strategy is the result of being the best search engine company on the planet doesn't mean you need to belittle their accomplishments.
Additionally, since Apple makes the majority of their money from selling phones it doesn't negate the fact that they were also a "advertising" company up until the day the realized it was a failed venture and wasn't worth sinking more time and resources into. Regardless of Apple's pro-user rhetoric they did exactly what Google did, but were just very unsuccessful at it.
> Our technology group tends to work thematically, meaning that we try to focus on how tech is changing our readers’ work and personal lives. Google is the main focus of my reporting, and it is a brutally competitive beat. It takes me an hour to go through the day’s headlines each morning, and there are dozens of competitors and talented journalists on the tech beat. That means I’m often scooped, and the scrum of daily news can make it hard to see the bigger picture.
if the new york times cannot take an extra day or two to get a good, comprehensive and well-put-together story without worrying about the churning techblogs scooping them, who can? there has to be space for slower-moving newspaper articles, without having to fall all the way back to magazines.