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by guessmyname
25 days ago
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I always find titles like “Google Hates You” a bit weird. People usually argue that employees are not personally responsible for bad company decisions, that criticism should be aimed at the corporation itself, not at random engineers or designers working there. But then we turn around and assign human emotions to the corporation anyway. A company cannot literally “hate” anyone. It has no feelings, intentions, or consciousness. So who exactly is supposed to hate you here? The CEO? The executives? The leadership team? Every single employee at Google? And who is “you,” exactly? Billions of users spread across the planet? I get the point the title is trying to make, but it feels more accurate to say that Google optimizes for incentives that are often misaligned with users, not that it emotionally despises them. |
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However, based on my general observation, a company's primary purpose is often the self-actualization of its owner. People usually cite monetization as a corporate goal, but since owners rarely hate money, the two usually go hand in hand. In reality, though, an owner's self-actualization takes precedence even in the face of clear financial losses. From that perspective, the employees hired by the company also bear a certain degree of responsibility.
Of course, I don't think that is inherently bad. You can't just divide everything into a moral dichotomy of good and evil; it's a deeply intertwined issue of desire, greed, and self-actualization (such as doing the exact research one aims for through massive corporate R&D investments).
Your point is valid, but it relies on extreme reductionism. For example, I might think a particular nation's system is flawed. A country has its merits, yet we still "hate" specific countries. But when you think about it, a nation is just a system too, isn't it?
Ultimately, we just speak selectively based on these cognitive frameworks. You could argue that Google's employees are entirely blameless, or you could argue they are serving an evil system. It’s merely a difference in perspective.
What is absolutely certain, however, is that Google's current form of business has completely upended the existing economic structure. Whether this is a net positive or negative remains to be seen. In the future, Google might pivot its business model to pay high-quality creators directly, but the real issue is that this new system leaves everyone highly susceptible to being subjugated by Google.
Realistically, we cannot predict everything in such a complex future, nor can we say this is definitively bad. Google users have a desire to find answers more easily, while content creators have a desire to make a living off their work. Striking that compromise is exactly what makes this so difficult.