Google hasn't changed, their actions have acquired increased consequences and attention. You'd have to go back to their early days to find a truly different Google, nearly two decades into the past.
Gates for example was always ruthless in business, even in the early days, it's just that few people cared about Microsoft's behavior until they became powerful. The same is true of Google and most any corporation. Google is behaving pretty much as you would expect a company in their position to, it's entirely predictable.
Amusing Gary Reback quote (he was notorious in those days for opposing Microsoft in Silicon Valley) from the 1990s Microsoft era:
"The only thing J. D. Rockefeller did that Bill Gates hasn't done," Reback would wail, "is use dynamite against his competitors!"
Wired, Nov 1, 2000
The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery...
Google the company shifted towards being purely profit oriented long ago, but google the employees didn't see it that way, and resisted quite a lot, until recently.
In some ways this is reminiscent of the history of civilization, where people band together for protection against marauders. In exchange for protection, we become vulnerable to tyranny.
Just to clarify- what sort of trust are you referring to in the context of a service like YouTube?
These problems, moderation and search (and some would say curation), are just two examples manifested by the hard problem of trust in decentralized systems.
I tried to find some pieces but it's honestly very difficult these days, due to the sheer quantity of garbage on the internet. My trust in centralized search engines is collapsing under the weight of so much spam. I'm legitimately worried there will be nothing to replace them.
Then we as the tech community need to figure out tooling so that grandma and grandpa can use p2p / mesh networks. We have several challenges in that way that I'd like to see solved, but don't know how to make that happen.
2 immediate challenges is that If you can't get today's iweather over ipfs or bittorrent (with a better UI clearly, not everything has to be file transfer), p2p can't fully replace HTTP. Email is arguably pretty federated if not quite p2p, but the spam problem is real.
The below example is an account of my grandma's attempt to get p2p chat going. Grandma doesn't even know what a p2p / mesh network is, but we will assume she read about it in the paper from the HK protests and being the enterprising unafraid-to-try-new-tech-things user most users aren't, she tries it out.
She is in a large concrete gym, no cell service unless she stepped out of the building for a moment. Remembering the paper article, she decided to try the Bridgefy app so she can text with someone else. How do you spell Bridgefy? Oh right, I have the paper here, let me painstakingly hunt and peck to find the name of the app in the Play Store, ah there it is. She stepped out of the gym, got signal, installed the app on both devices, then stepped back in and opened the app.
Her friend gave her her own phone so she could install both at once so they can be apart, yet chat.
Being forewarned by her techie grandson, she managed a feat denied to nearly all the cell-phone using public and skip the dark patterns of denying Bridgefy contacts, reluctantly giving it location access 'for Bluetooth', and attempting to stop it reading her phone number. Already, 95% of users would be long stopped by now. But she persisted.
The app would not move forward, giving error toast messages of error 7::0 cannot do that. She had to step back outside where she had signal for it to work for an unknown reason.
She got back in the gym, was not able to get either phone to talk to each other, either in 'public broadcast mode' or by trying to add a contact straight from the app. She uninstalled both copies and moved on without having p2p messaging, not because our devices' bluetooth radios couldn't handle ad hoc communication, but because the client doesn't exist that doesn't want to surveil or otherwise profile you.
PS -> that user was not an enterprising Grandma, but myself. If someone knows how to get Bridgefy / a p2p mesh chat app going without selling the privacy farm, I'd love to hear it.
It seems that the grandma/grandpa use case always comes up in technical discussions. I've never really seen the need to cater to those who aren't willing to learn how to use the tools they have.
Could a person born after 2000 figure out how to use a VCR? Set the timer so that it records the correct program? What about a rotary dial phone? Do they know how to make a collect call? What about directory assistance? Could they figure out how to use an 8 track player?
They probably wouldn't, but the motivated ones would avail themselves of the resources at hand and figure it out.
The same thing applies to current technology.
For tools that depends on network effects to provide value (such as P2P), the on-boarding process and learning curve are quite important to reaching the required levels of adoption.
This is especially true when you are competing uphill against alternate tools with established networks that provide more network effect value.
Yet all the examples I gave (rotary dial phones, 8 track players, VCRs) had very high rates of adoption. But I'm sure that there were people from generations once or twice removed from the introduction of such technologies that never really learned how to use them.
None of those products are close to as dependent on network effects to provide value. Rotary telephone didn't depend on other rotary telephone users, just the existence of automatic exchanges. 8 track and VCR didn't depend on other users of the format, but on the availability of content in that format. While they all gain advantages in pricing / availability from networks effects, the core functionality of these products does not depend directly on the network.
The rotary dial phone had no real competition.
8 track player adoption was largely driven by large automakers offering 8 track players as factory and dealer installed options (and thus simplifying the on-boarding process). Once 8-track's portable niche was taken over by the easier to use cassette tapes, it declined fairly quickly.
VCRs did not face an 'uphill' competition against a competitor with an existing network effect advantage. It can even be argued that Betamax lost (despite having a product that was percieved to be better) because its higher cost relative to VCRs hampered its on-boarding process.
There will (almost) always be people willing to cope with a worse on-boarding process and/or steep learning curve. (This is far more true for a product that has functionality not otherwise available.)
However, if your product is dependent on network effects and you are competing uphill against a similar product with a well established network, then your on-boarding process and learning curve will be critical (but not the only factor to) your success.
It is hard to find a group of products that is more dependent on network effects than P2P software (besides centralized messaging platforms).
It may be possible for them to change, but I doubt they'll do it on their own. The real driver that changes a company's culture is competition. And that's why I applaud this antitrust investigation.
Nadella has changed the course of that staid ship by changing the underlying culture, no small feat! Some specific actions: Microsoft Office on iPad and Android, going all in on cloud (Azure has 22% of the market, ahead of GCP's 7%, at the start of 2019), being friendly with Linux (Windows Subsystem for Linux - WSL, exFAT specs were released a few days ago), given up Windows Mobile (he “did not get why the world needed the third ecosystem in phones”).
https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-...
https://qz.com/work/1539071/how-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-...
This is the tech utopia's cop-out. What does p2p even mean? How is the current internet as it is not p2p? p2p doesn't solve discovery.
This is what happens when you develop an entire industry to avoid claiming the true number of employees your company has.
In the process you stifle creativity and innovation.
But hey, if your big enough you can just buy potential disrupters.
Inet in current form is too susceptible to governments and bad actors like Google who only work for their shareholders.
Has google released anything worthwhile the last several years?
What has happened to the culture of innovation at Google? We still know them for gmail, maps, and search but what have they done lately? They seem bland by comparison to the Google of the late 90s and 2000s.
Why has Google become the new Microsoft?