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1. Embed this notice
   Lauren Weinstein (lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org)'s status on Friday, 12-Jan-2024 06:33:19 JST Lauren Weinstein

   Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was the most successful minicomputer firm in history. At its high point, it had multiple large campuses and amazing facilities, and even ran helicopters between them and to Logan Airport in Boston where they had their own gate. (I rode them. Very cool.) Their PDP and VAX series computers were crucial to the development of ARPANET and its evolution into the Internet.

   It seemed impossible for DEC to vanish. But due to a series of market changes and poor decisions by management, they are now only a memory. Their productive period was about 30 years, from 1960 to 1990. This 30 year period is a not uncommon one for corporate arcs.

   #Google is now 25 years old.

   • Embed this notice
     phiofx (phiofx@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 12-Jan-2024 06:33:17 JST phiofx

     in reply to

     @lauren the difference, and it is a desperately important one, is that Google is not a tech company.

     It is a digital advertising intermediary that is so anomalously profitable that they can bankroll a good fraction of the worlds tech infrastructure.

     Imagine a 1900's company building and distributing all Ford T-model engines "for free" so that they can collect and sell location / behavioral data of all drivers.

     #surveillancecapitalism is a thing apart.

     We *are* in the Twilight Zone.

   • Embed this notice
     phiofx (phiofx@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 12-Jan-2024 06:51:03 JST phiofx

     in reply to

     @lauren why would they sell PII once when they can sell the value extracted from it in eternity.

     The argument that others are worse is hollow. There is nobody as dominant and normalizing of the new morality that has turned tech users into product as they are.

   • Embed this notice
     Lauren Weinstein (lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org)'s status on Friday, 12-Jan-2024 06:51:04 JST Lauren Weinstein

     in reply to

     • phiofx

     @phiofx Google doesn't sell any user data. They never have. So your analogy falls apart quickly. You want something to worry about with surveillance? Worry about the data brokers who actually sell PII ! Worry about your ISP. Has your ISP ever offered you control over your data like Google does? Worry about efforts from the Left and Right to impose content micromanagement by gutting Section 230. Worry about the state and federal laws in process that would force use of government IDs to use websites, based on "protecting the children". The list goes on. Most of the "surveillance" complaints about Google are hyperbolic and incorrect. Admittedly, Google has long erred in not better explaining how they actually operate. I've pushed on this issue with them for decades, to little if any avail.

   • Embed this notice
     phiofx (phiofx@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 12-Jan-2024 07:38:57 JST phiofx

     in reply to

     @lauren

     Anyway, we live in different moral universes, but for the record you missed the core point of my comment to your post: that their real trade is so different from standard corporate (old tech) business models (ie the business of actually selling tech to clients) that any comparison with the DEC story (or the lifecycle any other normal tech company for that matter) is meaningless.

   • Embed this notice
     Lauren Weinstein (lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org)'s status on Friday, 12-Jan-2024 07:38:59 JST Lauren Weinstein

     in reply to

     • phiofx

     @phiofx I've never, ever heard any ordinary consumer complain about Google ads. Oh yeah, the activists always are complaining. Oh yes, and politicians with their own motives. Keep in mind I've been running the PRIVACY Forum on the Net continuously for over 30 years, I am pretty well informed about this stuff. This "users are the product" party line and false equivalences are the best way to cause me to leave an argument. Lots is wrong with Google, but lots is also right, and I don't play with the haters.