(disclaimer: googler)
I see it as a hubris against the idea that Google claimed to not be evil, and the fact that evil is such a poorly defined concept, and whether or not Google meets the bar depends entirely on the values of the perceiver. Many perceivers, for instance, miss the distinction between "Don't be evil." and "Don't do evil.". The former is a mindset, strategy, and intention, while the latter is impossible for a corporation with 50k employees.
Then, the only logical conclusion for someone who hasn't grasped all of the above is that Google is becoming more and more evil every day.
What's the mindset behind the broken permissions on Android? Where any app that wants to change behavior when you get a call must request permission to your IMEI and calling/called number? Or why the broken, upfront, all or nothing model is still even used?
What's the mindset behind G+'s incessant nagging, and forcing it as a requirement to even rate apps on Play? Or the same for YouTube, etc.? Not to mention the "real names" debacle.
At what point are we allowed to say Google's mindset is not "don't be evil" as far as external observers are concerned? Or will everyone that brings this up always be labeled as unable to understand?
Where any app that wants to change behavior when you get a call must request permission to your IMEI and calling/called number? Or why the broken, upfront, all or nothing model is still even used?"
At the time android created its permissions model, most of these issues were not obvious, or it would have been done differently.
Remember, of course, that prior to things like android (the first version of the iphone only had webapps), permission models of any sort were pretty much unheard of. Flip phones running java apps, or blackberries, had apps that got to do whatever they wanted.
Permissions changes are being slowly made in android. The same way you'd slowly change most serious things about something with billions of users.
It's not like C++ or Java just release new features every day (even if we may want them to :P).
This is of course, the same as any large system in engineering.
I don't know enough to comment on the rest.
" At what point are we allowed to say Google's mindset is not "don't be evil" as far as external observers are concerned? Or will everyone that brings this up always be labeled as unable to understand?"
Truthfully? It doesn't matter. At some point, every company large enough will lose its sheen, and people will worry about it, and eventually question its motives. Nobody can be perfect at doing the right thing all the time, even if they wanted to. Eventually, even with the best of intentions, mistakes add up, and people stop believing. In fact, i'd wager it happens slower if you don't even try to have good intentions, and and just stay under the limelight, rather than try and occasionally mess up.
In any case, I guarantee the same will happen to Mozilla (or whoever we want to peg as the current defender of the world) over time, the same as it has happened in the past to every other company. Non-profitness won't save them.
Chrome dev here. The way the Chrome settings web UI is written does not lend itself to strong consistency, just eventual, as devs notice it and fix it. Your DNT example was fixed last week in https://codereview.chromium.org/665113003.
Another example of inconsistent button ordering: the overlay for disconnecting a managed profile has its buttons reversed from the usual order, while the overlay for disconnecting an unmanaged profile does not.
Android permissions aren't great. When Android was being designed (before Google bought it), the permissions were a huge step forward from desktop apps, which can still do anything at all. Arguably the very concept of upfront permissions is inferior to asking when needed, but attributing malice to the choice is silly. It'd also be really hard (or even impossible) to change without breaking all the apps out there.
G+ is annoying, indeed. They were aping Facebook with the real names thing and they should've known better.
Where any app that wants to change behavior when you get a call must request permission to your IMEI and calling/called number? Or why the broken, upfront, all or nothing model is still even used?"
At the time android created its permissions model, most of these issues were not obvious, or it would have been done differently.
Remember, of course, that prior to things like android (the first version of the iphone only had webapps), permission models of any sort were pretty much unheard of. Flip phones running java apps, or blackberries, had apps that got to do whatever they wanted.
Permissions changes are being slowly made in android. The same way you'd slowly change most serious things about something with billions of users.
It's not like C++ or Java just release new features every day (even if we may want them to :P).
This is of course, the same as any large system in engineering.
I don't know enough to comment on the rest.
" At what point are we allowed to say Google's mindset is not "don't be evil" as far as external observers are concerned? Or will everyone that brings this up always be labeled as unable to understand?"
Truthfully? It doesn't matter. At some point, every company large enough will lose its sheen, and people will worry about it, and eventually question its motives. Nobody can be perfect at doing the right thing all the time, even if they wanted to. Eventually, even with the best of intentions, mistakes add up, and people stop believing.
I guarantee the same will happen to Mozilla (or whoever we want to peg as the current defender of the world) over time.
None of these things say "evil" to me even remotely.
No, we perceive the disctinction just fine. Some of us just believe Google does "evil" with mindset, strategy, and intention...
What possible motivation could they have for being "evil", comic book style?
