george0812

So sorry, I'm working on touch support right now.

I understand the global economic climate and competition hasn't been great but I also feel like Netflix's original programming quality has dropped significantly too. Remember early seasons of Narcos, House of Cards,...? compared to the later seasons of the same shows or even new shows? I remember reading somewhere that the average IMDB scores of Netflix's original stuff have dropped too.

If major browsers were 100% user-centric they would've built ad-blocking into the browser. Maybe make it opt-in, but it should be there as a built-in feature.

Well for all practical purposes, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Twitter basically control what can or can not be said at this point. This is unlikely to end well.

Stephen Kotkin (briefly referenced in the article) is a history professor at Princeton University and known as the leading Stalin scholar. He's written amazing books and has long interviews on the subject on youtube. One thing that stood out from his talks/books is that he proposes that Stalin was no a psychopathic killer (unlike many other biographers/scholars) but a person who genuinely and deeply believed in communism and was willing to sacrifice anything and everything for it. He also describes Stalin as a super hard-working and pretty smart person.

Disclaimer: Kotkin is absolutely NOT a fan of Stalin, just trying to be thorough and impartial.

What were some of the surprising technical challenges you faced developing the app?

Unfortunately (and I mean it) there is barely any precedent for a regime like this turning around and the economy improving. In terms of economy, it's probably going to be downhill from here, companies will enter survival mode and innovation will be minimized. I really hope I'm wrong though :(

examples: Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, ...

I'd like to think that the need for advertising is just a bug in capitalism and eventually it'll go away.

I have never worked with a company as evil as Google. What adds insult to injury is the fact their mantra used to be: Don't be evil!

If your business relies heavily on Google to get customers (Adwords) or for generating revenue (Adsense, youtube, extensions, search, …) You are doomed. Google will/has terminated accounts on a whim with no recourse: one day you wake up and your business is destroyed, all you have is a vague, automated email and no way to contact a human being.

"Oh you spent 4 years working on this extension and have thousands of paying customers? We removed it because, well… we can't tell you! And, no we won't bring it back."

"Oh sorry we have to suspend your Adsense account AND keep all the money because… well, we can't tell you!"

"Oh you composed an original song for your youtube video? we're going to suspend your channel with 3 million subscribers because our system wrongly flagged your song as copyright infringement. And, no, we won't bring your channel back! ever!"

"Oh you use our PAID email service for your company paying us thousands every month? Oops, you're locked out because we falsely flagged you. We might give you access again in 2 months, we'll see… In the meantime use pigeons to send messages"

To Google you are just a number, a statistic. They absolutely don't care about you or your business because they have market power.

This company is the worst partner you can ask for, a true monopoly abusing customers and users alike.

STAY AWAY from Alphabet!