Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by 49bc 2925 days ago
> Google can practically destroy any company/person in any vertical if it so chose.

Yet they don't. So either they're not as scary as "Microsoft was even at its peak", or maybe they're not as powerful as you make them out to be.

3 comments

The key difference btw Google and Microsoft is this:

If MS harmed you, you'd know. If Google intends to harm you, it looks like a stroke of bad luck.

All they have to do is hide the tree (you the person they intend to harm) within the forest (thousands of other sites/businesses) affected by the same policy change.

You could go months without finding out. And if you ever do, it's extremely difficult to prove foul play.

Do we know this?

It is not possible truly to know one way or another at a complete level, although it is unlikely. Saying they are not this powerful is, well, simply not true. It is not possible without creating a huge skunk-works internal project binding people to secrecy.

Google doesn't have the power to bind people to secrecy in the same way that say, the CIA, FBI, or NSA do. It does not mean that they do not have the capability of doing these things.

What makes you say they haven't? There have been many stories of search algorithm changes hurting businesses

http://www.smeinsider.com/2015/06/23/google-is-ruining-small...

for one