Comment by ardy42
8 years ago
> This is Verily, not Google, owned by Alphabet.
That's a minor distinction without a difference in the public's mind. Alphabet == Google unless you care an unusual amount about that corporation's org charts.
8 years ago
> This is Verily, not Google, owned by Alphabet.
That's a minor distinction without a difference in the public's mind. Alphabet == Google unless you care an unusual amount about that corporation's org charts.
It's very different. They are literally different companies with different mission statements. Just because you don't want to take the time to understand, being content to become outraged whenever you read a specific six letters in sequence, doesn't mean everyone else should, or that you should contribute to FUD.
This comment and a few of your others have crossed into flamewar, which is the opposite of what we want here, so please don't do that.
As for your main point, I don't see a good solution. No one has heard of Verily. If we /s/Google/Alphabet/ in the title, that feels a bit like weasling to me. Everybody knows this company as Google. On the other hand, if we leave Google in the title, we get irrelevant (and worse) comments about search engines and ads.
Hey - I realize that comment was a little over the top, not sure what others you're referring to, though. My irritation got the best of me.
Regarding your other point, I think the good solution is to accurately address the topic/subject, even if that means some people don't recognize the connection. If the headline was referencing Verily, instead of Google, then a good number of people would learn about Verily, right? Pandering to the uninformed doesn't help anyone, except in this case, the publisher, which was clearly going for clickbait.
I really don't think it's a good idea to favor inaccurate information over writing a few extra sentences (maybe just one?) in the article.
As a better alternative: "Verily Has a Plan to Fight Mosquitos in California"
Then in the article, something like "Verily, a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google's parent company, ..."
Boom, no false info, people learn who Verily is, and the world is better off for not leaning into clickbait and outrage-based journalism.
> It's very different. They are literally different companies with different mission statements.
Only if you care an unusual amount about that corporation's org charts. Corporate mission statements are meaningless, except to an even smaller group of people.
Insisting that Alphabet isn't Google, is sort of like insisting that Puffs [1] tissues aren't Kleenex. While it may technically be true in some legalistic sense, a vanishingly small number of people actually care and colloquial language disagrees. People will look at you funny if you act like the distinction matters, because it doesn't.
[1] https://puffs.com/en-us
The distinction matters a lot for Google and Verily because they have different motivations.
If you are trying to understand what incentives impact the company, you have to address them specifically. Google is incentivized by the drive to make profits from advertising. This leads them to do many things that are predictable. Verily has different motivations, which change predictions about them. Their parent is motivated to make profit exclusively, so you can make predictions around that.
It absolutely matters when two companies are different, especially if you actually want to understand the situation, motivation, etc.
I'd agree that it doesn't matter to the average person who isn't interested in discussing topics related to the company, and colloquially, the terms are used interchangeably, which is fine. However, for discussing the moral, ethical, legal, etc, issues around the company, it's important to make the distinction to more accurately understand and predict future behavior.
In the case of this click-bait-titled article, it does matter though, as Google has a publicly understood identity, which has no business playing with mosquitos. Verily is in the business of life science, and therefore has plenty of business with mosquitos.
Conflating the two in this context first makes the company recognizable to the general public, probably the point of the mis-representation in the title, but second, it serves to lead the suspicious people on HN and elsewhere to wonder how Google is making destroying the environment profitable in advertising, which is so far from what's going on it would be laughable, if it wasn't so dangerous to the actual scientific and policy dialog that should happen around the topic.
"Corporate mission statements are meaningless, except to an even smaller group of people."
They are point blank different companies.
Different CEO, HR, contracts, locations, resources.
The only thing they have are common ownership.
There might be some hints in strategic overlap.
They are more like 'different companies' than they are 'the same company'.
They could be peeled off from their parent owner and much would be the same.
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https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/goog Let's not kid ourselves, Alphabet Inc is Google.
Most companies are broken up into separate entities. For instance, nearly 100% of the banks you interact with are more than one "company". You have mortgage, auto loan, credit cards, etc. The reason for this is liability and billing (same as Alphabet). They may even have different mottos and definitely different management. All that is to mitigate risk and work more effectively, but they are the same entitity owned by the same people, typically with the same driving factor or competitive advantage.
In the case of Verily and Google, however, they don't have the same driving factor or competitive advantage. Google's profits and business strategy revolve around advertising. Verily revolves around life sciences.
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So in your mind, AWS is a completely different company than Amazon, right? They have their own CEO..
What Stock does one acquire to own part of this company? Oh, GOOG
Yeah and P Diddy changed his name again.
The immediate jump to assuming outrage and FUD in others strange. I associate Alphabet as ~= Google and I am not outraged that they're researching this topic. Why the overeager apologia?
I'm not particularly interested in defending anyone here, but I am very concerned with how easy it is to lead online opinion by misrepresenting the facts.
The article is clickbait, the comment I responded to is misdirected outrage without a genuine effort to understand the context. This is a problem that is plaguing our society, and therefore gets me a bit worked up. It's so much easier to drop a snarky remark that is irrelevant to the conversation or doesn't actually refute any point than it is to engage with the context, but that's bad for society and the current conversation.
I generally associate Alphabet and Google because they are related. However, only through a parent relationship are Verily and Google related - and there is no "ad company" trying to "eliminate" mosquitos.
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