Please, no more sarcasm. you've filled this thread with confusion.

Sorry, I thought for those in the know, every point would be remarkably false.

1) http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/11/19/hell-freezes-over-th...

2) http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/13/motorola-droid-razr-...

3) https://www.abiresearch.com/press/googlemotorola-mobilitys-m...

4) http://www.anandtech.com/show/7586/motorola-moto-g-review/8

Not everybody follows the details of OS version updates on Motorola phones.

Yep. I'll go even further: in this case, "not everybody" means "nobody."

Nobody, aside from the people on XDA and /r/Android. And maybe a few on HN.

If i'm not mistaken, Google has been dipping it's toes in home automation for some time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_PowerMeter

http://mobilesyrup.com/2013/12/17/google-dipping-its-toe-int...

To acquire home statistics. Can you imagine the personal data gathering? And the $ value attached to that data?

All sweetened with sugar for you to buy the product, connect, and give your data for free.

Oh how I would love to be a fly on the wall and look at who exactly is pulling these strings.

Government? - Which ones Private equity? - Which sticky hands Other Countries? - Which ones & what would the data be worth to them?

This is why I disapprove of services such as: Google glass, Home automation data gathering, Car & transport data gathering.

I'm not an 'all-or-nothing' kind of guy, but sheesh....

And that 23andMe DNA gathering product: https://www.23andme.com/ It's like a totalitarian wet dream.

Yeah, if you're on the cynical side of the whole "Google is co-opted by the government to help track and control the populace" idea, which you have no reason not to be after the NSA leaks, it is absolutely terrifying.

I am definitely not into conspiracy theories, but: if Google is really doing this out of best intentions which I can totally buy, and Google has no interest in spying on anyone personally, but only in selling ads, which I can also buy, I think it is still a problem. The thing is that once every household has a smart Internet connected gadget with eyes and ears and a way to load software onto it remotely, it is just too big a target for someone like the NSA not to go after. Why not load spy software on these just in case? Oh and it can all be legal and it can be made illegal for Google or Nest or whoever to talk about it.

The analogy here is something like the OnStar system in recent cars. I don't think that many people who made it happen primarily did so to give the banks a way to find and repo cars, but once a large percentage of cars have this system it does enable banks to do it much more efficiently. Not to mention what the authorities can do with these same systems.

Yeah, you've got to be really careful about cynicism. It's very easy to venture into David Icke territory.

I can't help but feel that this is a funded attempt to subvert power away from OPEC nations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC

If so, could be to help these guys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_(oil_companies)

It says in this article:http://ow.ly/syrfO "Google is a widely-known proponent of “green” energy, promoting low-power data centres and clean grid-based power whenever possible."

Excluding "It is good for mankind & the Earth", Why is it important to 'reduce' in western nations, when so many developing/upcoming/industrial/manufacturing/oil nations are laughing at this policy?

Something's up. And it isn't share price. Sorry for my conspiracy feelings -My instinct tells me there will be comments about being overly-conspiratorial (If so, this will suggest my instincts are correct), but I'm more than worried about my children's children and their future.

For some reason in these Austere times, there's a squeeze going on which is being driven by more than you and I are presently being told.

This is absurd. That data isn't worth anything, let alone to make up for the investment in these things. No one cares that you turn off your lights at 9:43, or that you are at slightly more risk for diabetes. At least not advertisers or the government. And the government isn't paying for this stuff anyways, they just get a court order to take it for free.

If you are so afraid of data gathering it's pretty much impossible to do a lot of technologies. I can understand being against centralization and sending that data over a network to third parties. But even that is necessary in order to improve the product. You want your self driving car to have billions of hours of experience behind it, right?

"No one cares that you turn off your lights at 9:43, or that you are at slightly more risk for diabetes. At least not advertisers..."

Seriously? Lifestyle information is a gold mine for advertisers. If someone is diabetic, they need drugs, so I'm sure going to serve up more pharmaceutical ads (and those pay very well). If they're running the heater, they're almost certainly in the market for a jacket, blanket, or similar. Suddenly using "auto away" for stretches at a time? I bet they're traveling for work, and could use some luggage or a vacation to throw mileage points at.

Waay more profitable than just throwing random crap out there and seeing what sticks.

um, wat? I was commenting regarding ugly OEM themes ruining the paragon of perfection that is AOSP. I think you may have meant to reply to someone else.

just write:

>Yeah, motorola products have completely gone down the toilet after that acquisition. They were so great before with fast updates and a wonderful skin of android, and now they're either non-innovative or way too overpriced for the value. /s

it would have saved http://imgur.com/2iha7bO

Well, I think sarcasm is the appropriate response to a top comment that contains no information besides "I don't like this".

He could have told us why he doesn't like this, or give us an example of another company that was acquired by Google where the result was bad for consumers, then at least we could have had a discussion about this.

But this way it's only "I don't like this" vs "I like it" and there are definitely more interesting discussions with more information in this thread that could have been upvoted.

Motorola not withstanding, Google has a history of killing/closing well-loved products (profitability aside).

While I am not upset by this acquisition, I can certainly understand the sentiment.

I can't speak to validity of the top comment being only that aforementioned opinion, nor am I suggesting that sarcasm was inappropriate, but I think this only highlights the upvote/downvote mechanism as an I agree/disagree button more than a add to/ doesn't add to the discussion button.

Yeah, and like Android and Youtube. Sarcasm aside, Google has actually done pretty well with acquisitions compared to other companies. (Say ones that begin with "M" or "Y").

You can see the list in wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...

YouTube was fine when Google wrote checks and got out of the way. Now Larry and co. have their hands all over it and YT is slowly going to shit... from the G+ spam to the annotation spam and of course you need to sign in to keep them turned off (lol maybe!), to "hey let's make you rebuffer the whole video you just watched" to just horrid performance drops in general to "hey we found a way to make YT comments even worse".

I can't feel that we'd be much better off if MS had decided to lose billions on YouTube along with Bing and Google had pressed ahead with Google Video as a legitimate competitor.

"hey we found a way to make YT comments even worse"

Could they get any worse? Seriously does any normal thinking person really participate and contribute comments in that quagmire? I sometimes I thank Google and Yahoo for creating those honey pots for the internet brain-dead to vent their steam and vitriol, keeping them well away from stuff I like to constructively participate in.

Well, since they are (more) tightly integrated with Google+ you get even more inane one-liners like 'interesting' that somebody posted with sharing the video, and useless banter in conversation threads following these shares.

Actually the comment quality on the videos I watch seems to have improved markedly since the G+ integration...

Coincidence? No clue... Still, all the "OMG G+ will destroy youtube!1!" whining is looking pretty stupid...

I agree... it is still horrible, but it seems to be slightly less horrible now.

I always thought of them as the "song ID" section for artsy videos, because that's what they used to be good for. Now even that is broken.

I'd love to see Nest integrated with Google+.

"OMG LOL your house is burning down."

Was just noting today how crappy youtube has become. Agree with you totally.

+1,000,000

comments, ads, channels, even the way the video buffers is annoying smfh

while its hard to argue with your point. YT is a huge revenue generating product. Now more than ever Google is probably being pressured by the "content owners" and trying to balance the need for creators to market their channels and helping them grow through questionable content. I think with a mature, product like YT its understandable.

I understand the ads, and they blocking videos just because somebody passed aroung listenning to a music. I don't care about comments at all, thus I don't even know how they changed...

But what I'm unable to accept is why the client won't let me buffer a video and erases everything just as soon as it's diplayed on the screen. It does not make downloading the content any harder - all it does is making me download the videos, whatch them and delete, because the official player sucks.

Agree , I generally look forward to vimeo as an alternative

While I agree with the statement, lately Google's action has been concerning (with things like Reader, Google+ push, and what not).

I just don't want to see Google dominating the world. Competition is nice.

Are you implying that google did a disservice to the competition by creating a desire for a product and then retiring it with months of warning for competitors to develop their product and attract google's large user base while allowing users to easily migrate their information to those services?

Google did a disservice by creating a free service with which other companies (who need to make a profit) couldn't compete. The only way to make any money in the RSS space was to create something that interfaced with Google Reader (which I know because I spent a lot of time trying to find a good one that didn't).

There are parallels to the Internet Explorer/Netscape issue. Google provided a free service to everyone, killing any good paid services/products (which didn't integrate with Google Reader), except instead of taking advantage of their monopoly they just threw it away.

Now you have companies like Reeder, with a sufficiently large user base, who have to not only scramble to provide their own backend (or integrate with someone else's), but also scale it to the appropriate number of users literally overnight, which is not necessarily an easy task for a company which has, so far, only needed to have client-side developers (which is why most client apps, like Reeder, moved to using some other company for their backend instead of writing their own).

There was certainly no malicious intent, but they basically crushed an entire market and then abandoned it.

"literally overnight"

3.5 months.

Also, you'll be hard-pressed to find much upward pressure beyond free on this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_feed_aggregators

> There are parallels to the Internet Explorer/Netscape issue. Google provided a free service to everyone, killing any good paid services/products (which didn't integrate with Google Reader), except instead of taking advantage of their monopoly they just threw it away.

"except instead of taking advantage of their monopoly". Woww way to telegraph the fact that you completely misunderstood the Internet Explorer/Netscape issue. Parallels with IE/Netscape are meaningless if the monopoly _gets thrown away_.

That is actually a very good point. With all the lamenting of Google Reader sunsetting, positive externalities are ignored. And they are plentiful: multiple startups have springed up to compete for new audience, established companies like Feedly have experienced an influx of users and the landscape generally became much more competitive.

In the warsaw circle countries, we had a joke (and I say it as a fairly hardline socialist) that „communism heroically solves the problems it created”.

Sounds like the case.

I agree with vdaniuk, that it is a good point. It changed my mind a bit.

On consideration, I'm a big fan of Google, Apple and Amazon. The thing that makes me (and probably others) nervous about all three is that they are too big. For instance, a monopolist strategy (Microsoft style) might appear someday.

Yes and we can find tons of examples where they haven't done well, e.g. Jaiku which they pretty much threw away, Dodgeball which let the founders leave in anger and got them to found Foursquare outside of Google etc...

You're looking at this the wrong way. Google acquisitions tend to go two ways: talent acquisition, or hitting for homeruns. Is it worth it to Google if they buy a Jaiku and a Dodgeball and a bunch of other relatively small companies and essentially whiff, then knock it out of the park when they buy an Android or a YouTube? Short termers always back, but when you look back over the last five years the overall strategy has been sound.

With specific regards to Foursquare: note that the founder left to do Foursquare, and they're floundering right now. Maybe the vision was never sound to begin with.

Y!?

Oh, not Y! (although some have speculated that Mayer move was a reverse-acquisition)

Sarcasm aside? I think the case could be made that those products have grown in public perception, but also suffered at the same time very definitely because of Google influence. Take the second comment ever by one of the YouTube founders? https://www.youtube.com/user/jawed/ for a quick example

One can object to Google's Plussification of everything, but it's not like the quality of Youtube comments have been harmed. (In fact these XKCD comics may be obsolete now: https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+comments+site%3Axkcd... ) And Youtube overall has done quite well.

Android would have gone nowhere without being acquired, since OEMs and carriers wouldn't talk to such a small company.

Yes it gives you traction, when otherwise people might not have heard of you, but you also lose your identity more than ever. In the past when Google acquired something it was like "Yay! Google!" now it is like "Yay that company! And sorry." Actually the top comment in this thread nailed my immediate feelings pretty well.

(

I think there a lot of things to bash Google on, but the outcome of Motorola is not one of them. The G and X look like great phones and they were all pieces of shit before.

the parent comment was sarcasm.

I immediately thought 'google will tie this into your google phone for you. That could be pretty nice.'

I think the concern is that they'll tie it into their data collections practices. An online page to manage your thermostat(s) remotely and grant access to the API, but you have to sign in with your Google+ account to access it.

pspb is clearly making an ill-advised attempt at sarcasm.

I don't mind sarcasm as long it's marked "<sarcasm>...</sarcasm>" at the least.

You're being sarcastic right? Sorry if it's a dumb question.

Everything I just said is the exact opposite of reality, so yes.

Poe's law explains why sarcasm doesn't work on the internet:

  "Without a blatant display of humor, it is impossible to 
  create a parody of extremism or fundamentalism that 
  someone won't mistake for the real thing." [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

(edit: Poe's Law always reminds me of this SNL skit where Fred Armisen tells Jimmy Fallon that the right way to tell a joke is to use a "catch phrase": http://video.tvguide.com/Saturday+Night+Live/Weekend+Update+...)

Well not exactly: the one(?) form of sarcasm that works very well is when the facts being stated are clearly false. Though obviously this does rely on the audience knowing the factual background...

It relies on more than that. Not only does this rely on the audience to know the factual background, but it also relies on them coming to the conclusion that you also know the factual background and are not just uninformed, misinformed, or plain wrong. Sarcasm on the internet only works well between people who are familiar with one another.

This also relies on a similar cultural background. You'd be surprised at the cultural differences between US/California (a lot of the posters here) and Eastern Europe (my case). And my situation is mild - imagine how this scales between US/California and someone from a completely different culture (China, Africa, India). Actually it doesn't scale at all :)

If you must use sarcasm, here are a couple of common ways: 1) Yeah...because>(rest of comment) [the ellipsis will clarify that the comment is sarcasm at least some of the time but its reliability is not perfect]

2) end your comment with '/s' [most people know this means the previous comment was meant as sarcasm. it should be the preferred method of communicating sarcasm and the sentiment that the referenced recipient is obviously wrong]

Let's hope you're being ironic :)

"Fast updates"? "Wonderful skin of Android"? Yes, that's sarcasm. MotoBlur was a prime example of egregious and UX-destroying vendor meddling with Android.

Like the Moto G?

Exactly a phone with an S4 pro for $180?!?! A complete rip-off I tell you.

Sarcasm

The Moto X and G are a really GOOD value...

I hope the next Nexus phone is made by Motorola. I really like the body of their devices. I wanted to get a Moto X developer edition but it was too expensive, unfortunately.

(sarcasm) - use it!

!I wish sarcasm punctuation caught on⸮

sarcasm detector is reading off the meter... sarcasm detector broken