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Google taught me it's OK to be evil (lemmy.ml)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[–] 91 points 3 years ago (4 children)

A company that survives long enough eventually gets turned to the dark $ide. Greedy asshats will always ruin a good thing for their own benefit

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  • [–] 82 points 3 years ago* (3 children)

    Any company that becomes publicly traded gets turned to the dark side. That's the factor that does it because they have a legal requirement to do everything they can to maximize profits.

    Trying to sustain perpetual growth will always lead to companies fucking over their customers and employees.

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  • [–] 20 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    While I feel this is true there are so few privately owned companies that prove this as fact. Holds breath that steam never fucks over its customers

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago* (3 children)

    I live Valve, but there's always that nagging bit in the back of my mind reminding me that they can always turn evil in the span of a few years. And the recent debacle with Dolphin doesn't help

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Dolphin isn't really their fault though. That all comes down to the developers and Nintendo. The outcome sucks either way

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    No, Dolphin was their fault. Valve reached out to Nintendo before Dolphin was added to the store. If Valve hadn't asked Nintendo for permission first, Nintendo probably would have said nothing

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    It makes sense though. People can already install Dolphin wherever they want, including the Steam Deck. But Valve probably thinks they can get Nintendo to publish on Steam. It wasn't so long ago that Sony and Microsoft maintained exclusivility on their platforms. Valve doesn't win anything allowing Dolphin on Steam, but it can potentially anger Nintendo.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Nintendo sent them a DMCA takedown request for the Dolphin Steam page. So I don't think we can blame Steam for wanting to stay out of legal trouble

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    No. That is not at all what happened. No DMCA takedown notice was ever sent in this.

    What happened is that Dolphin applied to go on Steam and announced that. Then Valve emailed Nintendo asking for permission. Nintendo said they didn't want it on the store, pointed to parts of the DMCA which were not actually valid for a theoretical case, and Valve blocked Dolphin from going on Steam

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  • [–] -1 points 3 years ago*

    Valve is already evil: they locked down their steam client (unacceptable in the times of GOG, and Epic Games) and allow developers to put DRM in their games. Outside of that they were the pioneers of digital gambling with CS:GO and TF2 and using anti-features as a way to entice people to purchase micro-transactions.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    There is also the B Corp designation (short for Public Benefit Corporation) which allows a company to balance its responsibility towards the share holders with some other benefit it aims to provide where the share holders aren't the (only) beneficiaries.

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  • [–] 26 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    The biggest problem in my opinion is, when companies stop to be companies and instead turn into glorified money trees whose only purpose is to shake all value from, value generated by the people who have to work there.

    Once a company sells its soul to investors, it becomes nothing more than a human in the Matrix: a thing to harvest, to be kept alive until nothing of value remains, then thrown aside and disposed.

    Source: I speak from experience, worked at one investor-driven enterprise and one that is listed on exchanges

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago

    It's why I think worker-owned coops should be more common. Research shows that they're a more resilient business model than hierarchical businesses. I think it's because they can largely avoid the principle-agent problem, wherein executives and investors act on behalf of the company, but their personal incentives do not necessarily align with the company's. For example, a CEO has a vested interest in pumping up profitability in the short term, even if it's by slashing R&D funding and alienating customers long-term, so they can get nice numbers to pad their resumé. Likewise, investors just want their investment back.

    With a coop, overall control of the company's decisions is guided more by the long-term health of the company, as that's what is best for the workers. It aligns incentives, avoiding the perverse incentives that cause hierarchical businesses to make unsustainable, short-term business decisions.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Being good is good for growth, but investors eventually want that payout.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago

    Google also had, realistically, no competition in the online ads business for most of that time. Microsoft tried so hard but never broke into that market. No other online ad company could even come close to google 2000-2010 in terms of scale, technical chops, etc.

    It’s easy to have principals, it’s hard to live up to them. The first real competitor to Google’s online ads dominance was Facebook and has caused Google to completely shit the bed (from practices and policy, they’re obviously doing well money wise)

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