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points by lallysingh 17 hours ago | 0 comments

Same name, but the company is quite different. What of that old Google is left now?

This is an interesting question to ask of any company. Every company over a long period is a Ship of Theseus. Google started out as a rowboat and now it is an ocean liner.

Investment in product quality, "Don't be evil", everything that set a company apart and allowed it to rise, it lasts only as long as it is preserved in a way that resists decay.

Is there anything left of the rowboat? I'm at the point where I am actively trying to shut Google out of my life to the degree that it is possible. And yet it is still not Microsoft. I catch a glimmer of the old google in a product release now and then.

[–] jppope 16 hours ago

To quote Christopher Nolan: “You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

[–] virgil_disgr4ce 16 hours ago

Fun fact, according to C-Nol himself, his brother (Jonathan Nolan) wrote that line

[–] redwood 14 hours ago

And as a reminder to folks he's the writer of (the newer era) Westworld which if you haven't seen the full first season really turns into an incredible mind bender

[–] dinkblam 13 hours ago

That show should have died the hero, i.e. after season one.

[–] PaulDavisThe1st 12 hours ago

S2 was reasonably OK, IMO. But that was it. And all their talk of having a fantastic entire story laid out right from the start? I don't believe a word of it. There's no way they had thought up Rehobaum or whatever it was called back when they started work on S1.

[–] goodmythical 15 hours ago

I hear there's a janitor using the handle of one of the original paddles as a mop handle.

It's only there because it wasn't inventoried and so not lost in the purge.

[–] coef2 17 hours ago

The last two words of their old motto "don't be evil"

[–] freecodeio 17 hours ago

only the 2 founders, which seems have become quite out of touch lately

[–] nervai 17 hours ago

"The United Nations is a transparently antisemitic organisation" - Google Co Founder

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/07/08/sergey-...

[–] flir 16 hours ago

He's a peach

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/29/politics/sergey-brin-cali...

[–] vigilantpuma 12 hours ago

Trying to defeat a badly designed tax that even the Democrats aren’t aligned is evidence of him being a bad person? I think you can probably do better.

[–] embedding-shape 12 hours ago

Yes, actively working against "wealth tax" while you're wealthy, does indeed make you a bad person. A good person realize they're ahead of others, and try to help them rise as well, even if it means less wealth for them. It's called "greed" if you're looking for a specific name of this concept.

[–] WarmWash 11 hours ago

It took me a while to learn that giving money to the government isn't the highest form of good, despite also being a necessity to some degree. In fact I'm not even sure if it could make the top 10 of best ways to give money. But trust me when I was younger I definitely acted in that belief.

Like greedy Brin here has donated around $4B to charity that has gone to all manner of public good. Philanthropic organizations like his tend to be pretty efficient with getting good bang for their buck.

Had he given it to the government, which I'm sure you would call reason for celebration, well some of it would have gone to helping people directly, but most would have gone into protracted bureaucracy where just the rind ends up at the final objective. I'm actually pretty sure you yourself could write a decent list of government expenses that you would not want that money to go to.

In fact if you wrote a list of things that you would like it to go to, I'm pretty confident it would have very high overlap with what Brin does give to.

So what again are we trying to call out here? He's greedy?

[–] ethbr1 5 hours ago

> Like greedy Brin here has donated around $4B to charity that has gone to all manner of public good.

$4B out of $250B = +1.6% tax rate

And total over all years, not annual.

So no, charity fig leaf doesn't cover being a dick and fighting a meaningful wealth tax.

[–] embedding-shape 10 hours ago

> In fact if you wrote a list of things that you would like it to go to, I'm pretty confident it would have very high overlap with what Brin does give to.

Alright, lets give it a try:

- Wealth Tax

- Taxes of all sorts and kinds

What percentage of overlap do we have? I have a feeling it's zero.

> So what again are we trying to call out here? He's greedy?

We're trying to call out that working against a wealth tax because it'd impact you personally (since you're wealthy), is greedy behavior and greed is generally something most humans want to reduce, just like most of us wants less violence. We call people who favor greed and violence "bad people".

[–] vigilantpuma 6 hours ago

Again, it’s a bad tax. Judge this on the merits, not merely on the fact that it’s a wealth tax and therefore good prima facie.

[–] embedding-shape 6 hours ago

Ok, so it might need iterations. Lets implement it, then fix it once live? Nothing is ever set completely in stone.

Out of ~40 million people in California, the impact of this tax seems to be about ~250 individuals. If they were considering users of their products and services, wouldn't that amount of users compared to the entire user base, be considered almost a rounding error?

[–] JuniperMesos 9 hours ago

Nah the actual bad people are the people calling for the tax, who are primarily motivated by populist resentment of the visibly successful, and who don't have a good sense of what the actual problems in society are or how to actually fix them.

[–] murderfs 8 hours ago

The worse part is that it wasn't driven by populist resentment, it was cynical utilization of populist resentment as a cudgel to extort the governor: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/seiu-delenda-est

[–] freecodeio 12 hours ago

what's your rank on forbes top billionaires?

[–] Teever 9 hours ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44521137

It was dismaying to see this flagged so fast. When I reached out to the moderators about it they felt that it should remain flagged for reasons that seemed dubious and inconsistent imho.

[–] hparadiz 13 hours ago

He's right.

[–] hn_throwaway_99 15 hours ago

Not just out of touch, but downright psychopathic in my opinion. I used to greatly admire Larry Page. He seemed like a really smart, driven, level-headed guy. When the news came out that he was basically fine with AI wiping out humanity, as it would just be the natural evolution of intelligence, and to fight against that would be "speciesist", all I good think was "what a psycho".

And I really don't think I'm exaggerating Page's opinion on this, though I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.

[–] nextaccountic 13 hours ago

I'm willing to bet he's speciesist in relation to actual, existing species of other animals

[–] ctmlr 12 hours ago

Extreme wealth seems to cook people's brains.

[–] munk-a 11 hours ago

Counter point - accumulating extreme wealth seems to require a cooked brain. I genuinely believe that level headed people are unable to reach more than a few million in accumulated wealth as they'll clearly see how much more that money would benefit others compared to themselves.

[–] ethbr1 5 hours ago

Counter counter point - we've constructed a society that provides excess rewards to people with cooked brains and antisocial behavior

[–] redwood 14 hours ago

Incredible back story here if I can trust Gemini on this as that dates back to over 10 years ago when Musk accused Larry Page of being too obsessed with bringing about AI and hence co-founds OpenAI... the irony of course being that OpenAI raced ahead while Google has been conservative

[–] LightBug1 15 hours ago

I'm still calling the axing of Google Reader the jump the shark moment!