• BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    it’s pretty depressing to have watched Google grow from this supposedly amazing company that was willing to develop any amazing idea into something to only caring about how to inject ads into your brain and monetize every shred of data it can harvest from you by any conceivable means.

    • FoxBJK
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      1 year ago

      When was Google not a data harvesting company? Seriously, their mission statement has always been “collect the world’s information”. They didn’t build Chrome all those years ago for the good of the web. It directly served their primary end-goal of getting you to see more ads.

      Feels like we’d have to go back to before 2008 for the Google you’re thinking of, if it ever even existed.

      • BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        originally, google’s primary purpose wasn’t harvesting your data-- it was search and ads. then there was email. then some other stuff would come and go, and they started hoarding personal data because it made their ads better and their search better. eventually, it became the prevalent underlayer of all of their business, but that’s been over the course of over 20 years.

        but it didn’t start that way.

        Feels like we’d have to go back to before 2008 for the Google you’re thinking of, if it ever even existed.

        well, yeah, lol. google and the world existed before 2008, you know…

      • boxvoy@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        Yes, before 2008. Google was a breath of fresh air against all things corporaty. There was a time when people said “anything good for google is good for the internet” (https://broadbandpolitics.com/2008/07/18/whats-good-for-google-is-good-for-the-internet/). They were instrumental in pushing the boundaries of web 2.0. Google maps with its seamless tiling or auto complete for search results or desktop search were all nothing short of magical at that time. Gone are those days though…