2k11, what's the worst enormous tech company?

Apple have made real gains in acting like total bastards. Still Facebook though.

yeah I could see apple being the obvious choice a few years from now, but the goldman sachs deal sorta the cherry on top of facebook's sundae of evilness

Interesting how nobody really hates Microsoft anymore...they seem more irrelevant than evil these days.

I hate them for being irrelevant.

I haven't (regularly) used a Microsoft product aside from the 360 and Office in about ten years, so they're pretty irrelevant to me.

google and apple have done some crappy stuff, but they're not even close to facebook in this race imo

google is really annoying but I have a real fondness for streetview and I can't imagine any of the rest of these companies being crazy enough to say "let's build a car that can take a picture of every block in the world! maybe it'll be useful..."

facebook streetview would probably construct the world geographically using 2 billion party pictures

Jesus christ re: Goldman Sachs. That does it. Game fucking over.

$1000 invested in Apple 8 years ago today would now be worth over $100,000, just incredible

$1000 invested in facebook today would be...oh wait nvm you're not goldman sachs

is the decision really that easy? I want an argument for apple/google. itunes decided to crash while I wrote that last sentence.

Google has the potential for a lot of shitty behaviour in the next few years, but the other three have considerable headstarts.

In *theory* google has massive potential to fuck with a lot of peoples private data, which worries me sometimes.

Whereas in practice Facebook already has. I'm expecting this poll to be a landslide.

Yeah, facebook also indirectly responsible for Zynga who (unlike the other four here) have never at any point done anything not cynical and ruthless and depressing.

Jesus christ re: Goldman Sachs. That does it. Game fucking over.

― acoleuthic, Sunday, 6 March 2011 23:34 (Yesterday)

I do not make idle promises.

rip

Microsoft easy. Then FB, then apple, then google.

asocial network ftw

$1000 invested in Apple 8 years ago today would now be worth over $100,000, just incredible

OTOH I probably would have sold it when it doubled, or I would have sold it when it dipped near a hundred during the Great Panic, and would have barely broken even either way.

yeah it's easy to be like "damn how did I not do that" but really nobody could have predicted the extent of apple's success, also steve jobs could have died. also a quicker way to make money when going back in time is to give yourself lottery numbers.

i feel like microsoft's kind of kept a low profile lately compared to the other 3 here. can't think of anything interesting they're working on, for better or for worse

Inside my bubble it's hard to believe that Windows is still the dominant OS. Among my friends and acquaintances, I'd say it's like 75/25 OS X/Linux now.

Microsoft was going to get into cloud computing pretty heavy but now I think they decided a better strategy is to lag behind their competition and spend years developing the shittiest netbook possible.

Zuckerberg is so worried about the outcome of this poll he has got himself a cute puppy

http://www.facebook.com/beast.the.dog

apple: Building nice hardware but awful software with that ever-annoying exclusivity (app-store, itunes etc)
microsoft: Irrelevant and therefore harmless.
facebook: Not using it is the simplest solution to be freed of the hate for FB. It's easy, just don't sign up. The puppy can live.
g00gl3: Data-collectors that are way harder to ignore/avoid. No-one knows what they know and can/will do with it. I bet they don't even know it themselves. Yet. They aren't opening up about it though, that's for sure. So I will have to go for g00gl3.

apple has the highest quantity of stupid commercials, so them

i dont see whats wrong with facebook, they made a cool website that everyone enjoys, nbd

I don't know, but I'd say MS is the least evil.

has to be MS by virtue of they themselves not knowing what the point of the company is either

That's not evil, that is quite LOL tbh

i'm not talking abt 'evil' cos i dont really think that means anything w/r/t this question

what's the story with fbook and goldman sachs?

all google told me is US investors were excluded blah stopped reading

Goldman Sachs are investors in Facebook IIRC. They're investors in a lot of things.

yeah. idk, i guess they must be the only evil investors in the whole wide world though coz their involvement caused louis to quit fbook.

The extent to which Apple is making a lot of industries utterly dependant on doing whatever Apple say they should do is kind of worrying though.

dell is evilly shit

That said, I use products by all of these on a daily basis, so, y'know...

Google by far. ceo Schmidt has publicly made it clear that he is evil.

I sort of get the fact that Microsoft is fast becoming irrelevant, but I'd say people are way overstating it on this thread. Also, their behaviour in the past has proven them to be evil - if you're going to dismiss their evil actions as 'no longer relevant' then you can't go and choose google because they have the potential to be evil in the future.

(The answer is so obviously facebook.)

microsoft are only still 'relevant' because they've made themselves the default [via evil] not because of any good ideas

Well, yeah, not disputing that. If it was what's the best enormous company then their quantity of good ideas might count for something, as it stands the fact that they don't have any good ideas but still have remnants of their evil left in the system makes them pretty good candidates for worst.

voted microsoft for the lifetime achievement award - the other companies id argue for their size/stature are remarkably unevil compared to other industries

All these tech giants seem like angels to me when you compare them with giants of the financial or pharma sectors.

that's not a fair comparison though, those companies basically exist just to fuck people over

p sure all these companies exist to make dollars

google seems least evil to me, fbook most

microsoft's evilness seems to impact most on competitors?

Question is "worst", not "most evil".

I meant 'most evil' really

'worst' in the moral sense

cause like 'worst' I mean microsoft, duh

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505124_162-57396966/apple-is-almost-bigger-than-all-retailers-combined/

Is Apple really worth more than Poland?
Similar kind of 'it is if you just take the numbers at face value' article.

I would definitely rather own apple than own poland

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/05/marius_milner_google_wi_fi_snooping_assessing_the_disturbing_fcc_report_on_the_company_s_street_view_program_.html

I think I h8 google more than fb by now

zynga stock dropped 40% in one day lol

m@tt h is on the case!

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/07/26/zynga-insiders-dumped-43-million-shares-before-stock-crashed.aspx

is it illegal to sell your OWN stock before it goes death spiral? it's only insider trading if you tip off someone else, right? I mean, the head of a company can't somehow "un-know" the fact that his own business is going bad. obviously if you sell tons of your own stock outside observers are going to draw certain conclusions

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429442/google-puts-its-virtual-brain-technology-to-work/

mark my words google is gonna be responsible for the end of civilization somehow, I just know it

google is the correct answer, but google images is one of the best toys ever.

amazon belongs in that list

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917,0,7937001,full.story
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor

something abstractly terrifying/dystopian about this pic

http://www.technologyreview.com/files/92148/google.machine.learningx296.jpg

like i can see it beamed 30m high in front of a theatre full of schoolchildren, close-ups of cat faces flickering at high-speed in between images of protesting workers, race riots, space shuttles, abattoir footage

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/mark-zuckerberg-will-hold-fundraiser-for-chris-chr

traditionally Democratic constituencies, like powerful young tech magnates.

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/02/why-dont-people-hate-amazon/

Forty-six percent of all respondents said they “definitely would trust” Amazon “to do the right thing.” Only 8 percent said the same about Facebook. Add in “probably would trust” and Amazon’s total shoots to 91 percent, while Facebook’s reaches 49 percent.

funny how typing personal information into a website that helps you buy stuff is seen as more trustworthy/acceptable than typing personal information into a website that helps you kill time

definitely some amazon haters on ilx.

current rank by evilest:

1. amazon
1.5 google
2. facebook
3. apple
4. microsoft

1. MS -- still trying their darndest to be a monopoly; corporate structure that rewards psychopathy
2. Apple -- an actual monopoly
3-n. everything else

amazon: a monopoly also a monopsony, in the process of destroying entire industries
apple: not a monopoly makes cool but expensive consumer goods

Where does oracle fit in all this? I heard from some people who work there that their business model is to tweak open source code just enough so they can copyright it.

iatee otm

given our history, i hope everyone was sitting down when i typed that, but their ability to lobby to prevent states collecting sales tax from them alone is monstrous reason enough to hate them

if anyone isn't familiar w/ our history jj and I were married for 6 years and had a messy divorce

it's realy sad, it was a marriage

better the devil you know

hatian divorce, amazonian reconciliation

I made a joke that made no sense because it involves steely dan what is wrong w/ me

I don't know, puff puff post

uh oh I'm joking about cousin dupree

like in my head the punchline of the joke is just "ha ha, steely dan"

that should be the punchline to every joke IMO

to actually add 2 the thread, amazon prob treats its employees the worst as well

son you're playing with kindle fire
the kid will live and learn
as he watches retail burn
from the point of no return
amazon sisters shake it

iatee I thought you would be for the destruction of big box retail, if everybody is getting their shit delivered in the suburbs then there is less reason for people to drive

I'm against the destruction of small box retail tho

I've heard that Amazon's product business plan is generally to buy some of your hip new product (or comic book or w/e) and then when you've become dependent on them for sales and exposure, they try to fuck you as hard and dry as possible.

yup same as walmart

this is kind of dying away here now but there were twin-cities-specific reasons for hating amazon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Bookstore_Cooperative#Lawsuit

wiki calls it "sometimes acrimonious" but that's very mild: the copyright claim on its face was absolute bullshit (the bookstore had been around since 1970!) and amazon.com's lawyers engaged in some pretty flagrant homophobic baiting of the jury, according to reporting at the time.

i have to admit i didn't know the exact outcome of the case (i assumed the bookstore "won"), nor that the store closed last year.

Amazon and Apple have both done amazing jobs of masking their evil with good to great customer service/products. Amazon gets you nice stuff in two days and doesn't charge you that 6-10% tax (in a lot of states, I'm very happy Texas charges the tax) and there are a million stories of their customer service telling people to just keep the wrong item that was sent to them/etc.. It's so much easier to hate Walmart or Microsoft because they both appear to be disinterested in consumers, if not hate them outright and dealing with a trip to Wal-Mart on any given night makes your life worse.

I'm sad that zappos got sold to Amazon. With big, weird feet they were invaluable for next-day delivery and free returns.

zappos no longer does that?

no now they just send someone to your house who beats you with a baseball bat

free next day beating with amazon prime?

you still pay, they just use a bigger bat

http://i.imgur.com/UDO43or.png

"if the shoe doesn't fit, you must get hit"

Zappos does, I just try to not buy from Amazon, aside from e-books.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/amazon-used-neonazi-guards-to-keep-immigrant-workforce-under-control-in-germany-8495843.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxbX9qhbhMU

there is really no question at this point

Acting like a bunch of twunts isn't exactly evil, although OTOH pretending to bro it up while fucking everyone behind their backs was typical mid 90s Microsoft so YMMV.