I regret to inform you that Noto is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, which is FSF-approved, and essentially ensures that it will be available to all in perpetuity.

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=...

You aren't really contradicting that they have incentive to improve everything. Incentive is not the same as action. You're effectively arguing with clouds for being in the sky.

Then that makes "incentive" a rather useless word, because everyone who wants to make the world a better place also has the incentive to make everything better. Why single out Google if it's also true of Microsoft, Apple, and me?

Why are you so abusive towards me when you agree with me?

I'm not knocking them for stopping support for things they don't find sufficiently monetizeable.

I disagreed with the statement "Google has a deceptively simple incentive to make everything better", and gave counter-examples.

Append something like "... where it helps drive profit", then I've no complaint.

Well Google has an incentive to make everything better, but they can't literally work on everything, so they have to pick and choose.

For example Google has repeatedly explained Reader was killed because "usage has declined"¹ So this validates my point: they put resources in developing a product, but it doesn't get enough traction, so they kill it and redirect their resources to other projects that will hopefully be more successful and provide more users and ad revenues to Google.

¹ http://googlereader.blogspot.ca/2013/03/powering-down-google...

That example does not validate your point because it supports multiple hypotheses, including my hypothesis that Google is only interested in improving things which generate sufficient profit.

That's not your '"everything"' but my '"everything", except where it doesn't.'

In other words, they pick and choose.

FWIW, I also have inventive to make everything better, because I want the world to be a better place. But I too must pick and choose.

No, there is an incentive to work on everything. Given bandwidth constraints, there isn't sufficient incentive to work on everything at once. The fact that they have to pick and choose does not negate the fact that they have more incentive to improve everything than pretty much any company in history (with the exception of Facebook, perhaps).

I'm honestly not sure i understand how your evidence supports your point. They did, indeed, have incentive to make everything better. That they later stopped supporting a thing does not contradict this, because they had the incentive to make reader in the first place.

Stopping support is, as someone said, not about incentive, but about later action.

The fact that they cannot focus on everything does not in fact, mean they have less incentive. It just means they can only do a limited set of the stuff they have incentive to do at any point in time.

That does not change the incentive itself.

If you want to argue "they only have incentive to do what is profitable in the first place", you would have had to argue "they could have made reader, but chose not to" or something similar. (IE they did not have sufficient incentive)

TL;DR your argument is misplaced. Google has incentive to make everything better. They only have resources to long term focus on things that make profit.

These are not contradictory statements.

Then why single out Google? By that argument, I also have incentive to make everything better, because I want a better world. So, I imagine, do you.

DuPont wanted a "Better Living Through Chemistry" - didn't they also have an incentive to make everything (made of chemicals) better?

Is there something different about Google's incentive which doesn't apply to Microsoft, Apple, eBay, GitHub, ... or the Sierra Club or WWF for that matter?

"Is there something different about Google's incentive which doesn't apply to Microsoft, Apple, eBay, GitHub, ... or the Sierra Club or WWF for that matter? " Nope ;)

>>Get over it and move on with your life already.

Please review HN guidelines.

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Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."