Ha, ha, very accurate observation.

And if Google keeps the pressure and nothing hits them back, soon the answer will be "Number 17 of 312 still using Firefox".

I still can't believe how Google has changed their tune - from "dont be evil" to being worse than MS ever was, which is quite an achievement in itself.

Google is in some ways much more adverse in impact than MS, but I suspect that hiring a bunch of people under the "don't be evil" mantra (and baking that "we're the good guys" into culture) has helped hold them back from some bad behavior.

At the same time an implicit belief in "we're the good guys" (combined with indoctrination including interview hazing rituals) can enable bad behavior, because then: "of course whatever we do is good, by definition, because we're the good guys" and then not questioned. MS did some really underhanded and insidious things with its power, and it's easier to see some of Google's behavior as due more to hubris/brainwashing.

I've started to use the CS101 whiteboard hazing as a litmus test for whether there's any point in trying to do good at Google, for my own career. So long as they insist on subjecting everyone to that (starting with people having just spent 4 years and a quarter of a million dollars on a Stanford CS education, and then people with verifiable experience on top of that), and also considering having been caught on abusive hiring/mobility conspiracy at they executive level, I think the CS101 whiteboard ridiculousness is not a good sign for corporate ego and intentions. It's also not great when CS students focus on drilling for that, to the exclusion of other things. For myself, if I applied anyway, I'd be fooling myself that I wasn't mainly after the compensation package, rather than wanting to have positive impact.

> I still can't believe how Google has changed their tune - from "dont be evil" to being worse than MS ever was, which is quite an achievement in itself.

It's called "selling out".

It sounds funny but I don't get it. ReCaptcha doesn't identify you does it?

To the website? No. To Google? Almost certainly given how it works.

I can imagine that, if Google already knows enough about you, just clicking "I'm not a bot" would be enough. Though I wouldn't know.

It seems like another way to punish people for caring about privacy.

There’s also this to consider: Google knowing enough about you to know you’re a human, and then wanting to use you to train. That’s why in some cases you can get away with just spamming whatever the hell you want in the picture grid. Because it trusts you enough to train it.