2k15 what's the worst enormous tech company?

http://www.theawl.com/2015/05/what-could-go-wrong

Striking drop off in people who GAF in last year's poll.

This may be the last year Microsoft is even on this list

To be followed by Apple in a year or so, with the inevitable advent of the wildly unsuccessful Apple Clock.

zuckerberg's famous distraction

it's been weird to read so much about the facebook instant thing, and dread it, but yet so far i've never even seen it because i rarely use facebook on my phone. once it rolls out to desktop i'll be prepared to yodel in derision. my sense is that people are already rolling their eyes at others who are complaining about instant, but it just seems like a fucking terrible development.

Samsung bigger than all of these except Apple btw

IBM and Oracle also hueg, but being mostly behind the scenes we don't think of them as much

microsoft nostalgia aesthetic in full flow

I'd get an Apple Clock before a watch, especially if I could stream things on it and display HD ambient things like aquariums and fireplaces.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

google x100000000000000

Google Now is creepy as hell. My Android-using friends talk about how amazing it is and how Google predicts that since they're at work and it's 5:15 they'll be leaving soon so it shows the best route home etc. and that just sounds like a dystopian nightmare to me.

voted amazon

google is more likely to be next year's microsoft than apple. they're totally freaking I'm sure

voted facebook bc it annoys me personally the most, but i know in my heart of hearts amazon is the true evil

bezos is pretty easily the most evil ceo

stiff competition

write in for uber

st1ff

Voted Google just because the last Android update fucked up my phone.

jeff bezos is the worst person, google has the worst products (glass, +) along with some great ones. but fb is the all around worst company because it is invasive and deceptive AND is not a good service in the first place, fuck a facebook to the grave.

ebay should be in this list also imo

still voting amazon, but i'm beginning to appreciate its straightforward evilness in the face of silicon valley seasteaders who think they are 'recreating society' with their fuckin golf-club-sharing apps or whatever

Oracle remains the correct answer here, IBM is no longer a tech company but a capital-divestment program focused on non-GAAP earnings-per-share

what puts amazon over the top for me isn't their stakhanovite shit or their quiet absorption of the entire internet but that i give them more of my actual money each year than i'm even involved in generating at all the other companies combined

that is they win because they have the best product

the answer is probably google. No single company should have access to so much information. I don't like facebook either, but that's easier to opt out of.

It's weird that microsoft is probably the least bad of these companies at this point.

it's only the least bad because no one uses their products (aside from xboxes)

their products are still extremely widely used

microsoft nostalgia aesthetic in full flow

― anvil, Tuesday, May 26, 2015 11:02 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://i.imgur.com/NS2e0zR.png

yea was gonna say Microsoft products are still pretty widely used, office environments are still pretty much all windows right?

"nobody uses microsoft products anymore" is the new "nobody i know voted for Nixon"

Most people still have Windows computers. Not just in office environments.

Windows has become this background thing that people barely notice that works on a large variety of pcs and everybody takes for granted. This is what all OS developers should strive for.

googles got to be the most widely used out of all them

prob not even close

even in china where google is against the law all the phones are (forked) android

tho whether that counts as google or not at that point is debatable

http://www.neowin.net/news/surface-likely-to-be-the-next-billion-dollar-business-for-microsoft

"On the software and services side of things, Microsoft already has 16 billion dollar businesses which include Windows, Windows Server, Azure, Office, Xbox, SQL Server, System Center, Sharepoint, Visual Studio, Dynamics, Online ads, Phone, Office 365, CAL, Enterprise Services, Enterprise communication software. Now, according to the latest earnings, Surface could join this list by the next quarterly results."

think ive seen one surface in my life

I have a Surface and ... it's not awful! I really quite like it.

I wish Apple made something like it.

Oracle remains the correct answer here

otm. the enormous tech company that best deserves consideration under RICO

yes yes oracle is evil but it doesn't fit well in this group, oracle isn't gonna start delivering groceries or start a social network.

it's a classic evil capitalist company like Monsanto or a cigarette company rather than a company that actually has plans for world domination.

lots of people use windows but isn't microsoft basically in stasis as a company

Microsoft is actually paying me to include them on these lists ftr

yes yes oracle is evil but it doesn't fit well in this group, oracle isn't gonna start delivering groceries or start a social network.

it's a classic evil capitalist company like Monsanto or a cigarette company rather than a company that actually has plans for world domination.

― iatee, Friday, May 29, 2015 11:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if you're thinking in those terms, surely alibaba takes the cake

i agree that it is really quite difficult to defend google at this point. it is probably the tech company that's done the worst damage

having said that, there are less enormous tech companies equally as bad but for other reasons.

the rest on that list have some saving grace, with microsoft even trying to turn things around as the old school evil tech company it once was labelled as.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

curious what ppl will point to as google's worst crimes

google is the only one of these whos services i really use.

voted for facebook because they have done the most damage to society

i'm confused how an area can lack cab service yet not be walkable

AMERICA

have u heard of... the suburbs

gonna need the thread-starter to weigh in on that

otm

AMERICA

― brimstead, Wednesday, December 2, 2015 4:24 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Huh i live in a suburb and there are taxis. I can even order a lincoln towncar to drive me to the airport. guess the rest of yall are fucked

it's a suburb of how large of a city? what's the wait?

it's also a bureaucratic nightmare -- places where the city/suburbs are largely governed by a county/municipal area government will often do taxi licensing at that level, but in places where the licensing is different, companies might have to work through licensing in each individual jurisdiction. afaik a couple of the cab companies are only licensed to do pick-ups within the city proper, here.

it's a large city, 40 miles away.

the wait? i don't know, who cares.

can you guys post some pictures of what taxi-less suburbs look like? do they have bars?

xp welp good luck

well yeah they do, is the only use case for needing a car going to the bar?

how often do you take taxis, brimstead?

I've been in a neighborhood in chicago a relatively short drive from a really busy bar/restaurant area, tried to call a cab, and they're like "uhh yeah it'll be an hour" and we ended up finding alternate transportation and I guess the cab never even showed

http://cbsnews2.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2012/01/25/f9f9209b-a644-11e2-a3f0-029118418759/resize/620x465/c5c25f5eebf65db51f566936576672e4/Scorsese_taxi08.jpg

say what you will about the murdering taxi driver, he did get his fares to their destinations

well yeah they do, is the only use case for needing a car going to the bar?

― μpright mammal (mh), Wednesday, December 2, 2015 4:59 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what else is there to do in suburbs ;-)

i don't take taxis much, no, i'm rich and own a car.

Uber has grown on me because
(1) I live in an area with lousy cab service and where even the private car services are often like "yeah we don't have anyone" or "one hour"
(2) You can order an Uber with a child carseat, and while they charge extra for this, it's still less than those outrageously priced "kid cab" services.
(3) When we came into JFK after Thanksgiving, the airport taxi line looked like it was at least 40 minutes. We called an Uber and it came in 10 minutes.

That said, I almost never take cabs anyway and I probably only use an Uber like once every few months -- to/from the airport, once to get from the subway to a friend who lived way the fuck away from any subway, etc.

However I get the sense that their business model and seemingly low/reasonable prices are fueled by a flood of venture capital plus unsustainably low pay for drivers, and that the good days probably won't last forever.

It would be faster for me to walk 15 minutes, wait 20 minutes, ride a bus for 30 minutes, and then walk for another ten than it would be for me to call a cab right now to go downtown.

what else is there to do in suburbs ;-)

i don't take taxis much, no, i'm rich and own a car.

― brimstead, Wednesday, December 2, 2015 7:34 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol most of the people I know who regularly take uber:
- own cars
- use them to get back from the bar

which I figured was the use case you were assuming?

pplains otm about the average wait for people just wanting a ride

my old firm had an account with uber black that we were allowed to use so i use(d) uber all the time, i kinda love uber. taxis in toronto are notoriously shitty, drivers will scum you consistently are super inappropriate and never know where anything is. they also constantly hit cyclists. since ive moved ive taken more cabs than ubers but they just seem to have terrible press

anyone the real criminals are ppl that drive cars in large metropolitan areas. and facebook

Uber drivers also sometimes do little extra things to get their star ratings, like the last guy (who had a huge, really comfy minivan for my family's trip to the airport) had kids' music playing when he got to us, presumably bc of the carseat request. OTOH in the rare instances where I have to get a cab home from work because I had a deadline and leave at like 2AM, yellowcabs are much easier -- one passing at any given second vs waiting for an Uber. Plus the yellowcab drivers will get you home faster because they speed and drive aggressively.

Uber drivers have consistently canceled on me, so they and the company can all die in a fire.

not enormous, or even worst, but still:

When a Unicorn Start-Up Stumbles, Its Employees Get Hurt

Irony-impaired Yahoo had a party:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/yahoo-had-a-party

Does "written by a guest" mean unedited? I mean, not that journalism's strong point is editing these days...

feel free to start a new threat iats

but

http://thenextweb.com/opinion/2016/01/04/report-facebook-and-google-cant-play-nice-and-users-are-pawns-in-the-game/#gref

Facebook has tested the loyalty and patience of Android users by secretly introducing artificial errors that would automatically crash the app for hours at a time, says one person familiar with the one-time experiment. The purpose of the test, which happened several years ago, was to see at what threshold would a person ditch the Facebook app altogether.

should uber join this elite group or is it too niche?

and maybe airbnb

I'd say keep it to publicly traded entities; the enormity of a privately-held company is less certain.

OK facebook is officially the worst

semi good friend of like 15+ years used to be a cool l33t haX0r back in the day but now works for facebook (he started a family). now i get to see all the times he likes mark zuckerberg's posts and related fb pr pieces. i guess that's the definition of getting old.

so though fb is the worst, i now think what would happen to such a good guy if fb did go away. severance doesn't last long, especially when only one person is working to feed a family of four. i've curbed all my negative talk of social media on fb because he and a few others work in big tech companies. hurrah self-censorship

do you suppose zucks monitors intra-corp likes for double secret probation purposes

fb has a high amount of employee churn. what would happen to a good guy is likely a better job at a better company if fb went away.

j, ha. said friend "like" some fb stuff out of genuine interest in backend/systems

phil, yeah, i'd hope so!

If FB went out of business maybe a bunch of programmers would move to other parts of the country and go work for people who actually need help with things other than showing ads to people.

what's up with this guy

https://twitter.com/JohnLegere/status/685201130427531264

crazy pitchman for second-tier carrier who doesn't want you to look behind the curtain

remember when ISPs of the late 90s figured out they could use web proxies and caches to compress content, leaving modem users with kind-of-shitty recompressed images and weird issues refreshing pages? someone decided it'd be a good move to do that, but only for certain types of media.

Times Insider: Covering a Google Chief

Conor Dougherty provides a look at what it’s like to interview Google’s elusive co-founder, Larry Page. Hint: it’s emasculating.

sure

pitching an interview with Larry or Sergei in 2016 seems like a good way to get sent to the annual paint drying convention so I guess you gotta find an angle

The article itself drove me up the wall, of course.

Dude is like "this is important, because this guy is one of the most powerful executives on the planet - he and Brin control the entire company - the company is quite likely the richest and most powerful firm in the world - I have been working on a profile of the guy for X amount of time, all I do is try to learn about him, and I have gotten to spend maybe 5 whole minutes with the man, including at an "off the record gathering where nothing happened." So he takes several paragraphs to point out that his subject is incredibly powerful and accountable to nobody, basically.

I agree, Conor, that your work is important. Maybe that should get a competent journalist to do it. Do any of those still work at your place?

is there a 2k16 version of this thread?

wondering what people think of this: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-09/amazon-is-building-global-delivery-business-to-take-on-alibaba-ikfhpyes

okay okay I'll make one one sec

oh, no big deal to me! i rarely post on the tech thread anyway, was just wondering *whistles and shines an apple while nonchalantly flipping a coin up and down, quietly snapping and walking small S-curves around a fountain in the town square while waiting for the fall social to begin*

Idiocracy complete:
http://core4.staticworld.net/images/article/2016/03/dashbuttondoritos-100653454-large.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/aRva0iA.jpg
personal collection

Need!!!

the worst this year is Nest, which is being run into the ground by (yet another) unrepentant asshole named Tony Fedell.

http://recode.net/2016/03/30/nest-2015-sales-budget/

There are many stories about how much of an asshole he is, and he seems proud of it. Fuck off, assholes.