• 4 Posts
  • 34 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 4th, 2023

help-circle











  • I keep seeing “Monopoly” repeated, but I’m having a hard time understanding the logic.

    They haven’t bought competitors. They don’t do anything to hinder others progress in this market, sometime to the detriment of their customers (see: Steam launches another launcher, to launch the game). They haven’t openly shown anything anti-competitive, in fact they have stuck to their guns (30% cut) when others have attempted to compete.

    What they have done is cultivate the best platform that continues to evolve, add features, and maintain stability. Consumers continue to choose to use Steam overwhelmingly, but outside of Valve’s own games, there is no threat of exclusivity or punishment.

    It’s the opposite of monopolistic behavior. Any company is free to compete, build their own platform, and offer software. It’s expensive, and tricky to get right, but nothing is stopping them, Valve included.







  • Yes, it talks about ownership, because the original poster talked about ownership.

    Google hosts files, and thus needs to have some semblance of control over what actually is hosted on it, or they become liable for the same content.

    Pirated material? Child pornography? etc. It all needs to be scanned and determined if it violates rights/laws and be dealt with.

    Google has always done this automatically, because the sheer scale of content they host is overwhelming.

    I totally understand the ‘own everything’ mentality that some hold. That’s fair – then host it yourself, encrypt it, and you can hold the key to your little kingdom. For most people, that isn’t a factor.

    To get back to the original claim – they don’t claim rights over what you post. It is yours. You just can’t host other people’s stuff. The definition of that is incredibly broad and largely commercial. 99% of people will never, ever run into the issue. 99% of the remaining 1% will discover it innocently (such as another poster trying to back up office). The remaining will already be versed enough to encrypt their data locally before uploading.





  • It’s articles like this that make me glad there are numerous horses in the race.

    Autonomous driving is an incredibly complex problem. We have people like Musk who thought they could throw money at the problem and have it solved in a few years, with disastrous results.

    We’ve lost Uber, and Cruise is flagging. Both had been touted as examples to follow. Both have had some serious safety problems from moving too quickly and lacking caution.

    Behind all of this is Waymo. Plodding along, gathering vast amounts of data and experience and iterating slowly.

    I think they, out of all these players, understand the stakes at hand, and the potential profit on the other end. But you have to get it right. It has to be nearly perfect, because people need to trust it, and our emotions are fickle.