It's not much about Microsoft. At least it improved human life in serious ways (Typescript, VSCode,...). What did Google bring to my life ? Nothing except for spam stuffs from Ad, Email,...
You're responsible for your data, not Google, not Microsoft.
Uh... Maps? Open, Permissive phone OS compared to the alternative? Greatest entertainment/information system, especially one that's democraticsed producing media?
In terms dev-related stuff, TensorFlow - literally something that's made today's ML possible, Kubernetes, BigTable, MapReduce, and yknow, that good old thing called Chrome..
I understand hating on Google. They're not that great, but none of the FAANG are "great".. They all have some terrible bits, some good bits. However, to say that Google has not provided anything except "spam stuffs" is very wrong.
Search alone has changed the entire way that humans consume information. I would say that today's internet landscape, for better or worse, would not exist without Google.
Search alone has changed the entire way that humans consume information.
I believe this thread would have a much less dramatic headline if Google didn’t itself kill Google Search ten+ years ago.
Also, it bought most of the examples listed, not made these. It just saw an ads/dm opportunity.
I also remember using Opera on its last original engine and those “Get Chrome” banners which made a whole browser freeze and stutter on anything but Chrome. I’ve pointed that out a few times back then on forums, but not too many people noticed it, it seems. The “our ads our performance” trick fled completely under the radar.
Real Question: What is wrong with Netflix? (The "N" in FAANG, right?) The only thing I can think of: Work life balance does not sound good. It sounds like you need to be "pro-athlete" level and are constantly at risk of being laid-off or replaced by someone better. That said, they pay silly good money. But are they evil to their customers? I don't see that.
People sometimes fault them for removing content (not their fault, everyone saw Netflix works and made a streaming service of their own) and cancelling series too quickly and erratically (true). Also people have a problem with the average quality, but seem to misunderstand Netflix's business - they need to have lots of content, one very good series per year isn't going to keep subscribers on the service. They have great quality stuff, and meh filler that some enjoy.
So all in all, disagreements with direction, but nothing wrong/evil on the level of any of the FAAN.
You forgot to mention Google's contribution in open source projects. Even their hardwares are OEM unlock-able. If it wasn't for Google, smartphone market wouldn't be what it is today.
in the long history of ML, tensorflow is not that significant. realistically, nearly everything it did was available in other systems before. It was really just a grab for Google to try to get everybody to use their framework. But it wasn't a good framework, and it evolved terribly.
MapReduce was not and isn't something that made ML possible. It made data engineering at scale possible.
> in the long history of ML, tensorflow is not that significant.
I don't necessarily disagree, but that's only from a technical pov. However, I think the release of it as a open-source library made it so that it's far easier to learn the tech that already existed. Vast majority of university courses use it to teach lots of different concepts that were far more "mathy" before.
> MapReduce was not and isn't something that made ML possible. It made data engineering at scale possible.
Yeah. Maybe I worded that wrong. I wasn't saying it made ML possible. Just that it's a huge contribution to the Open-Source tech overall.
mapreduce wasn't a contribution to open source tech, except in the sense that it was published with enough detail for Doug Cutting to make an open source version.
Both MR and TF are net-negative for the outside world. I think more unis teach pytorch than TF now.
You literally said "made human life better" ... it doesn't matter if you use them or not.
Also, you don't use a Phone? or Maps? Really? Do you use Chrome? Do you use Firefox, because Google's contributed a massive amount to the web standards that are implemented in both Firefox, and Chrome.
this setup and response seem a little silly to me. "what did the romans ever do for me?" "roads? aquaducts?" "ha! I don't go anywhere and drink well water!"
You have already lost the argument. I'm sorry but nobody would care about anything you say because that almost just does not apply to anyone else.
Also the fact that those products have no effects on you has nothing to do with whether a company is important or if their products are significant or helpful to the vast majority of human population.
And to be a bit cynical, it feels the only purpose of this comment is to show that you have a unique lifestyle, not to contribute to the discussion constructively or based on consensus. (Of which there are many on HN)
Actually i can answer more clearly on the why Typescript (example) improved human life.
I used it, and also guided other juniors to implement real world products which're running in production to help others human life in a very short time, in a maintainable way.
This was impossible before with old toolings.
Is it more clear to you ? I'm also sorry for not so clearly said, but that's how conversation works ;)
While it might be fashionable to hate on Google, the question "What did Google bring to my life" seems really odd. I can't believe I have to say this but search, and more importantly good/fast search, is to Google's credit. Typescript and VSCode all have, and will continue to have alternatives, but for a long time, Google was (some may argue it still is) the bleeding edge of search.
Anyway, there might be a generational thing at play here, if so, I meant no condescension.
What an absurd statement. I don't have especially strong feelings for Google in any direction, but I can't deny that, even if Google had only done search or Maps, that alone would be a massive boon for society.
You're responsible for your data, not Google, not Microsoft.