Character assassination, awesome!
Please leave the company i work for this out of this, always. I never speak for my company on hacker news unless i say otherwise. I've been very clear and consistent about that. Thanks!
However, given the personal attack, i'm done. This kind of stupid bullshit is one reason i've stopped contributing as much lately.
It's nice for you to present your opinion as if it was the only true possibility and everyone else is an idiot. It's not, however, a great way to foster a discussion. Tacking on a personal attack makes it even more welcoming.
Firstly, you have not responded at all to my comment on your comment. A sensible and worthwhile discussion may come out of addressing those observations.
Secondly, crimes are in the eye of the judge, but as the accused perpetrator holding my own council, referring to your role in Google and your legal training was a kind of awe. I am a game theorist (the bridge between my applied mathematics and macroeconomics careers) and so I am well aware of the importance of signalling and posturing. I fully expect that a lawyer, schooled and practiced in the manner of approaching a debate, is equally attuned to how what is said and what is not said. The game theorist in me saw something closely resembling strategic pre-positioning, and entirely without second aims, I called it out for what it looked like. That is not character assassination (in my eyes) but just a tiny bit of critical reading of your prose.
If you really want your employer to be left out of this, you can signal that to us all by removing any references to Google on your (already impressive) profile. Or perhaps leave the reference to Google but also ad something to the effect of “leave my employer out of this".
Anyway, returning to the main argument: I doubt any internet behemoth can afford to pull out of the EU and lose access to 740 million affluent consumers because they'd instantly lose revenue that would ruin their bottom line while also giving local European companies a neo terra nullis to develop their products experimenting on their captive audience until they are ready to take the fight back to the behemoths’ home turf.
The internet blue-chips hate being excluded from anywhere because whenever they are excluded from somewhere their revenue drops and some new competitor starts to simmer.
Haters are disproportionately represented in replies.
I have no side in this debate, and I’m sure you already realize this, but having the company you work for (especially when you are at a higher than IC level) is the surest way for people to not do that.
Plenty of folks on HN know i'm happy to participate, even in contentious topics.
I can get that kind of 'discussion' on Reddit. (IE Where the response would be someone pointing out that claiming someone else is posturing is itself posturing, etc).
Meanwhile, i'll stick to HN discussions with people who assume good faith and actually want to talk about the topic. When that stops being a possibility, i'll delete my account and go do something else with the time.
It quite literally was (ie it's literally dictionary definition character assassination), and if you don't understand that, i'm not sure what to tell you
"However, it's a very convenient cop-out for you to duck out of the discussion. "
So, just to get this straight, your way of having a "discussion" is:
1. slag on someone's character and background for no reason.
2. drag irrelevant stuff into the mix.
3. Cast aspersions on their motivations for refusing to participate as a result.
Yes, if that's how you have "discussions", please, feel free to keep me the hell out of them.
I've participated in plenty contentious discussions on HN with actually civil people.
No, that's absolutely not going to happen.
Additionally, they'd never risk withdrawing from a market and letting a local competitor develop, take hold, expand, and attack them on home turf. Look at social networks and search engines in China.
EDIT: I see you are fairly highly placed in Google. I'm quite surprised if you genuinely think what you wrote, given the raw numbers you must surely know, but given your legal training, I am not at all surprised that you would posture as if you were unaware of this.