Welcome to what I call Google's vision of an "Orwellian Computing Age". Your every action & communication will be monitored, and your entire digital identity can be deleted by a centralized, seemingly autonomous authority. Better comply with the TOS or you might get yourself "ungoogled".
Why I downvoted you: Objective discussion which leads to new ideas and solutions is generally hampered by name calling and over-generalization, which just leads to "my side is best, your side sucks" ... "no, my side is best, your side sucks". Add in the emotional charge, and people forget to think about what they say before they open their mouths.
I think you might have a point lurking in your polemic, like "I am afraid Google will start to monitor and try to control its users and content too closely, and as evidence I present their behavior on x, y, z." Why don't you rephrase with evidence, specificity, pragmatic alternatives, and scrubbed of ad-hominem name-calling?
(One of these days I am going to write a "Rhetoric for Hackers"...)
Why I downvoted you (redux): starchy would-be HN exceptionalism and undergraduate pomposity ("we're so much better than Reddit, ...").
The grandparent post was a bit overheated, but not exactly an out-of-control polemic. Much of what he wrote is literally true. It might be "improved" by pumping it up with a pile of "of course, there are many points of view here" and "other companies also do bad things" and "let's remember all the awesome things that Google has done". But so what?
Your rewriting actually removes content. He is not "afraid that Google will start to monitor and try to control its users and content too closely". He's saying it's already happened.
What you're asking is that instead of concisely putting forth their point of view posters puff up what they're writing with pompous polysyllabic mini-essays on Every Goddamn Thing, with copious footnotes, links, etc. Same biases, more tl;dr.
Forcing everyone to furnish "pragmatic alternatives" is also another great way of turning every concise 4-line statement into a tedious mini-essay. It's actually OK to be against something without necessarily having to lay out an 8-step plan to substitute for it...
Finally, ad-hominem name-calling can be fun and brightens up everyone's day, as long as it's not bullying. The guy isn't exactly going to ruin Brin/Page/Schmidt's days by taking a swing at the goog, now, is he?
Well I didn't intend to write an essay proving something's that's fairly obvious. I think Google's intentions look harmless on the surface, but there may be some sinister consequences if they continue down this road. And at the very least, they have a bad PR problem on their hands because I can't be the only one left with a bad taste in my mouth about this corporation.
Google's strategy is to entice you to give up all concept of personal privacy. Yeah, nobody's forcing you to sign up for their services. But since Google gives away it's well engineered products for free, they are purposely making it difficult or impossible to build competing services that are capable of making money. They don't need to even compete in the marketplace based on price because they've adopted a "burn down the forest" strategy that's subsidized by their advertising revenue. Want to develop an online calendar/document editor/spreadsheet system? Better find a way to make it free to compete with Google.
If you want evidence of Google's vision, let's go step by step through Wikipedia's definition of "Orwellian":
Invasion of personal privacy, either directly physically or indirectly by surveillance.
If you use Gmail, Android, Google Search (all free products), Google will track and process your actions. I don't need to prove anything here, this is their business model.
State control of its citizens' daily life, as in a "Big Brother" society.
If you were to use every Google service including Android, ChromeOS etc, they would be able to curate every piece of information you consume. This is what the Google Filter Bubble concept pointed out very clearly.
Official encouragement of policies contributing to the socio-economic disintegration of the family.
(not applicable)
The adoration of state leaders and their Party.
There was no end of media coverage about Larry Page taking over for Eric Schmidt. And even here on HN there are an awful lot of apologetic Google-fanatics and employees.
The encouragement of "doublethink", whereby the population must learn to embrace inconsistent concepts without dissent, e.g. giving up liberty for freedom. Similar terms used, are "doublespeak", and "newspeak"
I quite often hear people say "My data is safe with Google", and very clearly this turning out to be wrong.
The revision of history in the favour of the State's interpretation of it.
Google's censorship cooperation with China was fairly despicable. And they only started changing after they were publicly humiliated by PBS.
A (generally) dystopian future.
This is somewhat subjective. But I can't think of a better example of dystopia than if Google were to become an even more omnipresent part of the internet than search/advertising.
The use of euphemism to describe an agency, program or other concept, especially when the name denotes the opposite of what is actually occurring. E.g. a department that wages war is called the "Ministry of Peace" or "Ministry of Defence".
The first link is really a great retrospective (thank god for PBS) and it gives a much more nuanced look at the situation than the overly simple statement you made. The final outcome showed, at least for me, that Google is willing to learn and grow from it's experiences[1]. Thank you for sharing it.
All-in-all, your essay reads like a conspiracy theory that takes leaps of reason and logic so large that it would probably be better received and more relevant for some other parts of the internet. Anyone on HN understands Google's business model and the trade-offs involved.
On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with trying to drum up support for better policies from the services you use. However, this over-the-top rhetoric does not help your cause, and may even hurt it. Google certainly has room to improve (I might even be with you on some substantive points that were not mentioned), but IMHO, they have done a much better job than many of their competitors at freeing up users data[2] and being transparent[3].
Because, you know, Google+ is completely mandatory and there are no alternatives and you're not allowed to create or even think about an alternative or you'll be arrested or killed.
