Honestly, it's no so much cynicism as it is skepticism. By the stage in the game, we have more than enough cause to abandon the image of a softer, gentler capitalism that we thought tech companies were going to be in the late 90s to early aughts and look at then with the same critical lens we shine on other immense, oligarchic organizations.
I really love Twitch Plays Pokémon, because to my mind it illustrates so well both the beauty and the peril of any sufficiently large corpus of humans. Although at any given point in time it is moving at random, over bigger time scales it is clearly moving with some kind of intentionality. We can't say what Red is doing any given instant in time, but over the past 10 days it is clearly bent on progressing through all the goals in the game.
Anyhow, Google is an advertising company. It moves ads. That is the life blood of the organization. Most big decisions are made directly by the executive team, whose intent you can ascertain directly, but lots of smaller decisions are made by thousands of other people lower on the chain.
Clearly, over the long term, Google is going to optimize towards showing you more and better ads, and I think this move is oriented in that direction. As a rule of thumb, I think Google has a tendency to punish or discourage all forms of non Google advertising.
On the plus side, this right now is clearly a net win for consumers. Sometimes things aren't as crappy as they seem.
"Clearly, over the long term, Google is going to optimize towards showing you more and better ads, and I think this move is oriented in that direction."
This is the part i don't get.
Let's ignore this specific case for a second (so this is more of a lament, than a direct response to your argument about this specific case): In general, believing everything is tied to ads shows a distinct lack of imagination on the part of HN people, who by and large i've found to be pretty imaginative.
For example, Google has been working on diversification for years, among other things, so why would one assume everything is tied to ads?
To be frank: Does everyone really believe Larry and the executive team are that dumb? That they can't come up with any business strategies that don't involve ads?
>For example, Google has been working on diversification for years, among other things, so why would one assume everything is tied to ads?
OK, well, broadly speaking, Google like all organizations wants to grow. The best source of growth is increasing revenue stream. Advertising, in turn, was 96% of their revenue in ~2012^1.
They're going to try to find other revenue streams. But advertising is clearly not going anywhere.
We're still figuring out how advertising is going to keep working. And honestly, advertising is huge money and is what is driving the fierce battle over mobile at the moment. Here we have what is possibly the last great expansion of fresh eyeballs, and it is crucial for the existing companies to figure out how to serve them ads. Hence Android and the WhatsApp purchase.
So. If you have a feature that in any way can improve upon 96% of their business, that glove will probably fit.
I mean, I doubt Google Cars is seriously so they can show commuters more ads. They have a deep capacity for machine learning, and they bought Boston Dynamics; I'm sure we'll see lots more Google automation in the coming years.
I really love Twitch Plays Pokémon, because to my mind it illustrates so well both the beauty and the peril of any sufficiently large corpus of humans. Although at any given point in time it is moving at random, over bigger time scales it is clearly moving with some kind of intentionality. We can't say what Red is doing any given instant in time, but over the past 10 days it is clearly bent on progressing through all the goals in the game.
Anyhow, Google is an advertising company. It moves ads. That is the life blood of the organization. Most big decisions are made directly by the executive team, whose intent you can ascertain directly, but lots of smaller decisions are made by thousands of other people lower on the chain.
Clearly, over the long term, Google is going to optimize towards showing you more and better ads, and I think this move is oriented in that direction. As a rule of thumb, I think Google has a tendency to punish or discourage all forms of non Google advertising.
On the plus side, this right now is clearly a net win for consumers. Sometimes things aren't as crappy as they seem.