1.) Xiaomi worth billions of dollars, not 1.4 trillion, but way more than most companies.
2.) People call out Google all. the. time. There's an article here weekly about dumping Google, finding alternatives, praying for antitrust regulation, etc.
3.) We don't commonly call billionaires who live in the middle east, china, and other non-western countries "oligarchs", do you know why?
Why are you so upset about Xiaomi getting called out?
>Xiaomi worth billions of dollars, not 1.4 trillion, but way more than most companies.
I'm referring to Google with that valuation.
>We don't commonly call billionaires who live in the middle east, china, and other non-western countries "oligarchs", do you know why?
Propaganda? An oligarch is a rich person with a lot of political influence. Sounds like an average billionaire to me.
>People call out Google all. the. time. There's an article here weekly about dumping Google, finding alternatives, praying for antitrust regulation, etc
I don't think I have ever seen a mainstream publication refer to Google apps and services as spyware. Which of course is what they are.
>Why are you so upset about Xiaomi getting called out?
I know you were referring to Google, that is why I made the point about Google. Xiaomi is a tech company with a personal data spying program and is worth maybe 50 billion, and supposedly the "4th most valuable startup in the world," if you trust Wikipedia. My point is that the valuation is based on the profit potential that investors see, not how ethical either company actually is. And both derive a non-zero amount of that value from spying on humans.
The Russian oligarchs are a group of people that grabbed large amounts of wealth by reaping the downfall of the Soviet Union. They are a very specific, well connected group of people outside of normal Russian billionaires. The reason specifically that they are oligarchs instead of just normal billionaires is that they are very plugged into the government and sway its operation. And I know there's some cynics out there that will be like "well that's just billionaires in general" but I encourage you to learn about the leverage this group of people have on normal government operations.
With regards to the observation that no one refers to Google as spyware, I don't think I see this either. But I do see tons of mainstream articles raising the point that Google spies on users. The problem is that (it feels like, at least) only us tech-inclined seem to care:
>The report found that 80% of Americans think at least one tech giant is listening in on their conversations: Facebook at 68%; TikTok at 53%; and Google at 45%. But only 18% said they had deleted Facebook because of privacy concerns.
I fully agree Google is just an advertising company dressed up, and also further propose that its open source contributions and tech projects are its robing. I think there's still room to criticize other companies however, especially since privacy issues from companies like Xiaomi don't often get featured on HN.
There's a big difference between Google exploiting private data to sell you more things, and a different company exploiting private data to hand over to a police agency that arrests individuals for having the wrong political views.
I'm not suggesting the former is without fault, and fault by one does not absolve another. But you're right in that these are two very, very different things.
Oh, yeah definitely. I just dislike getting into those weeds specifically because it gets people weighing wrong on scales instead of actually calling out both wrongs individually.
How much political influence do you think someone like Bezos really has? Everyone in washington hates him. No one wants to do favors for him. They drag him in front of congress do get a bunch of soundbites to play next election cycle.
They win elections on shutting down his headquarter plans. They want to break up his company, raise his taxes on unrealized capital gains, they want to force him to divest his personal investments like WaPo.
Same goes for other billionaires. You think there's a lot of love for Ken Griffin? Or the Google founders? Or Jamie Dimon? Of course not.
Billionaires are a common bogeyman for the populists that have ruled the capitol for the last 10 years or so.
On the flip side, there were municipal governments literally giving Amazon powers over taxation and spending[1] to get them to set up their headquarters in their city. I think this is quite a bit of political power myself.
In public, sure. Behind the scenes, they're taking meetings with his lobbyists, and somehow the tax raise never happens despite politicians talking about ad nauseam.
Part of modern politics is running a kabuki theatre of performative populism on the campaign trail. Not much happens once they are in office, because you need quick wins ahead of the next election.
Which is a performative act of solidarity with warehouse workers. What happens if those in right-to-work states unionize and get sacked? Biden isn't shouldering any of the risks they are.
Actions matter more than words. At this time, it's not even clear if Biden will go to the mat for a nationwide $15/hr minimum. That would do far more to incentivize Amazon to improve working conditions, as its $15/hr starting rates would no longer be competitive.
also note that the Asian billionaires are learning for people like bezos/gates. In public they may be hate figures - but everyone orders from Amazon. Tax breaks for large companies.
(i.e) use thinktank to pass legislation to make everything they do legal.
>the populists that have ruled the capitol for the last 10 years or so.
So the instant someone is elected they start calling Random Joe for funding their next campaign? Of course not. Politicians talk to people who help fund them, that or they are out. Having a politician's ear is power that Random Joe doesn't have. Using Bezos is disingenious. How about Musk or Bill Gates or one of the many rich oligarch families who have the same name as former presidents? Don't pretend money has less power in US politics than in Russian politics. If anything it is worse.
> I don't think I have ever seen a mainstream publication refer to Google apps and services as spyware. Which of course is what they are.
You seem pretty active on HN so I'm a bit skeptical that you honestly believe this. But I'll respond in good faith anyways. Here's the first result from Google (didn't even use DDG)
- (Washington Post) Goodbye, Chrome: Google’s Web browser has become spy software[0]
But since you're active I'm sure you know about The Social Dilemma, Snowden, etc. I've seen episodes on 60 Minutes, CNN, Fox, and pretty much everywhere that calls criticism to companies like Google and Facebook. Does China get called out more often? Yeah. Why? Because we're in a cold war with them. But still in many of these pieces I've seen them make slights at American tech companies. Things like saying that what they do is bad, but what China does is worse.
I see people calling out Google regularly but rarely is Chrome explicitly termed "spyware", although it very much is: I had to configure G Suite managed browser settings recently and there are like 4 different backdoor ways that big G can "incidentally" process your web traffic and keystrokes: enhanced safe browsing, image alt text accessibility service, uploading your downloads to a scanning service, browser profile history sync, "make the web better" history upload opt-in, et c et c et c.
Pretty clear that GP understands this, since his next point specifically addresses Google. I think he's saying that Xiaomi is also a big company, albeit less big. Seems like a fair point.
This is a very interesting chain on how people interpret comments. To me (and you) it is obvious that GP only had one reason to mention Google (the 1.4 trillion valuation), but both the OP and the person you are responding to were convinced the GP "didn't get it". Fascinating.
The GP responded to each line in the original comment with a number. So, their point about Google (point #2) was seemingly unrelated to their point about Xiaomi's market cap (point #1) as they addressed different parts of the original comment.
The GP mentioned Google perhaps not because of the market cap mentioned in point #1, but rather as a response to the original comment's mention of American companies.
This is further evidenced by their use of point #3 to refer to the term oligarch, which was the third topic raised in the original comment.
You can see how not clear this is based on other replies to the comment as well.
2.) People call out Google all. the. time. There's an article here weekly about dumping Google, finding alternatives, praying for antitrust regulation, etc.
3.) We don't commonly call billionaires who live in the middle east, china, and other non-western countries "oligarchs", do you know why?
Why are you so upset about Xiaomi getting called out?