Before people go too far with not actually reading the article, here are the main points to actually understand:
1. This is Verily, not Google, owned by Alphabet.
2. They are releasing male mosquitoes (that don't bite) in the area, where the species is not native. They are attempting to remove the species only from their unnatural habitat.
3. The headline is clickbait, as Google is not involved and no one is trying to eliminate mosquitoes "around the world."
In all cases I've seen of countering mosquitoes in any way, all researchers are aware of risks and take them very seriously. The goals tend to be similar to this one or have to do with eliminating the spread of malaria and other mosquito-transmitted disease.
Alphabet was a corporate restructuring of Google, which also changed the name "Google Life Sciences" to "Verily." The search engine Google is not involved, but the company everyone knows as Google is involved.
That's as relevant as saying "everyone knows" that the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation has Microsoft involved.
In other words, not relevant at all. The money can originally have been generated by Google, and now it's invested in something completely different but that has the same ultimate owners.
People and investors can legitimately start new ventures with different missions that operate completely independently for all practical purposes. Nobody claims that The Boring Company is just Tesla, or that Tesla is just SpaceX, or that they're all just PayPal.
I don't get why people are so quick to jump on the assumption that because there are things they dislike about Google's business model or practices, the whole umbrella of Alphabet's hugely diverse set of businesses is somehow tainted by association.
Google does what it does - bad things included - thanks to the decisions of a small group of people, who is now also controlling Alphabet and its subsidiaries like Verily. It's perfectly rational to assume they have not changed the methods, management style and ethical boundaries that led to the disliked behaviors in Google.
Citation needed. To the contrary, Alphabet is an enormous conglomerate with over 100,000 employees, where the kinds of methods, styles and ethics you talk about are largely determined (successfully or not) by the director-level leader of each one (suppose ~100 people), and the leaders of Alphabet only have the time to handle the highest-level questions of coordination, investment, and biggest-picture thinking among them.
Alphabet is a complex group of people, and the idea that its operation and behavior can be reduced to just a handful of controlling people is overly simplistic. You try getting 100,000 people to follow a single method or style and see how successful you are at herding all those cats... (not to mention how famously de-centralized Google has been from the start).
That's all is not a change of "the methods, management style and ethical boundaries", is it? For example, to change it to a strict enforcement of certain ethical boundaries.
As you said it also applies to Google, and nobody to my knowledge ever claimed that all departments and all people in them a e.v.i.l., not even criticis of all sorts of things Google did and does.
>I don't get why people are so quick to jump on the assumption that because there are things they dislike about Google's business model or practices, the whole umbrella of Alphabet's hugely diverse set of businesses is somehow tainted by association
Because Alphabet is Google. The only reason that diverse set of businesses exist are the practices previously at the same company. There is no separation like your other examples, they just changed the name.
However, they are different companies with different staff, mission statements, and overall goals now. Conflating them to suggest that an ad company is trying to eliminate mosquitos is misleading, at best.
Alphabet is a company that still makes the bulk of its revenue from advertising, and invests that money in its other ventures. It's not misleading at all to suggest that this project is being funded by advertising revenue.
Sure, Alphabet makes a good chunk of revenue from advertising, and re-invests it. Verily is not an advertising company, even if they get some money from advertising.
Furthermore, Verily has its own profit streams, and isn't doing anything with mosquitos that increasing advertising streams to Google. The projects are unrelated. If I work on software and work and later clean my toilet at home, you wouldn't say the gloves I wear are my IDE and that I'm programming. However, I bought the gloves using money from my software development job.
Google makes the bulk of its revenue from advertising. Google generates substantial profits. The non-Google parts of Alphabet are, as a group, running at a loss. Google's advertising profits are used to subsidize Alphabet's "other bets."
Yes - you're right. I already understood that, but thanks for the patronizing comment that actually side-steps any point about how Google is not the company fighting mosquitos in California.
Google is busy trying to maximize advertising profits.
Verily is focused in Life Sciences.
Different companies, with different goals. Verily isn't trying to maximize advertising profits for Alphabet.
And you're side-stepping the point that many people are making here, which is that being an Alphabet subsidiary means that they're subsidized by Google's ad business. It's concerning that massive public health projects -- of the sort that used to be undertaken largely by governments and non-profit NGOs -- are now undertaken by a company that got rich off advertising and the owners have decided to reinvest in such ventures. Ostensibly, if the US government goes out and decides to eliminate malaria, they are accountable to people for how they do this. As long as Verily is under the Alphabet umbrella, it's not even a private firm, it's a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet. They can write all the mission statements they want, so long as Google continues to provide advertising revenue in sufficient quantity to cover the losses of Alphabet's "other bets," the only accountability for what Verily does is to advertisers and the shareholders of an adtech firm.
> you're side-stepping the point that many people are making here, which is that being an Alphabet subsidiary means that they're subsidized by Google's ad business.
I'm not side-stepping that point. I literally conceded it multiple times.
> It's concerning that massive public health projects ... are undertaken by a company ...
You're concerned that a public health project is being undertaken by private industry...but what concern is there? What are you worried about? I'm happy to discuss that. I probably share concerns regarding the same thing.
However, if a private company invests in public health, I tend to see that as a good thing. I also agree that such private companies should be accountable. This necessitates government regulation on private companies. I am for that, to the extent that the company can still do things in the interest of the public.
However, if your point is actually that there is limited accountability for private companies working in the public interest (or their own interest), then why conflate Google and Verily? It doesn't make your point more or less valid and contributes to a fundamental misunderstanding of the context around a given issue.
If that's really your issue from the start, then just say you think these types of things should be done by entities which are held accountable to the public.
Nobody's _conflating_ Google and Verily. Verily is owned by a holding company that was formed for the express purpose of allowing Google's profits to subsidize projects that Google's founders want to pursue.
It's the ownership that matters. Ownership matters because that is where the decision making and control is. Verily is a 100% owned subsidiary. If Alphabet decided to amalgamate Google with Verily, could they? Can Alphabet pull money out of Verily? Can Alphabet decide to shut down Verily? Yes, in all cases. Who does Verily CEO report to? Your claim that it a separate, stand-alone company is false.
Both companies can informally be referred to as "Google." One because it runs the search engine. The other because it was known as Google until a few years ago, owns the search engine, trades as "GOOG," and a variety of reasons. It would be more misleading to refer to them as Alphabet, as everybody knows them as Google.
"everyone"? I suspect of the non-echo-chamber populous that is not on this website, 99.9% of them would "know" the search engine Google as "the company" Google.
I think you've misunderstood the parent. Everyone knows the search engine is Google. If you say "Nest" or "Waymo" or "Verily", people think of those as... Nest and Waymo and Verily. The same way when you say "Instagram" or "Whatsapp" the average person certainly does not think of Facebook.
>If you say "Nest" or "Waymo" or "Verily", people think of those as... Nest and Waymo and Verily.
Yes, and if I said the company that owns those was Alphabet, almost nobody would know what I was saying. Everyone would understand if I said Google owned them, though they actually don't.
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.
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.
> It's legally a subsidiary and must have 'co mingled' accounting.
Which is the point. They have much more in common than being simply owned by the same owners. They're a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet. And when Verily needs to raise money to cover losses, they don't go to the bank, they don't sell shares, they go to Alphabet.
" And when Verily needs to raise money to cover losses, they don't go to the bank, they don't sell shares, they go to Alphabet."
No.
The sub is totally independant: governance, liability, stock holders etc.
Alphabet just has to report the sub on it's balance sheet, but otherwise it's like owning stock.
Now, Alpha does have a deeper relationship with it's companies, but they are still independent.
Google does not share information, money, talent, office space or much else with most other Alpha companies, so they are essentially separate companies with little to do with on another.
Do you happen to work for Google/Alphabet or have you in the past? I imagine that the distinction is actually pretty meaningful and important for people who work there, but pretty meaningless to everyone else in the world who doesn't.
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.
Great question. I'll look into it later, but you should do the same. I'm fairly certain they have their own profit model, and don't cover all costs strictly from Google's advertising business.
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.
Nope - I'm not an employee and don't own stock, but I have spent a good deal of time trying to understand how Google makes money, as well as how their company is structured.
I tried to understand Alphabet and Google because I use Google products and care about what they do with the data.
Given an understanding of how they work, I see a lot of misrepresentation of their business model and lack of understanding around it. So I try to help with that.
On HN in general, there is a ridiculous level of mistrust for Google. I think it's good for everyone to be critical, but to be critical, people need to actually think and understand what they are being critical of. Instead, they often skip past all the thinking and go straight to worst-case doomsday scenarios. In this case, that means only reading the clickbait title of an article and assuming Google has some nefarious plot to destroy the ecosystem worldwide.
That type of behavior is dangerous.
People should be critical of Google. There are real issues with advertising revue, how that industry is motivated and incentivized, damage that can be done by the industry and powerful players, etc etc. When people don't think about and engage with the topics they are discussing it causes more harm, because it distracts from real problems. People in this thread are looking at the article's headline and questioning why an advertising company would try to kill mosquitos worldwide, which is a far cry from what the article is actual talking about.
These problems arise in a number of topics, I just happen to see it a lot in Google related articles and say something because I know more about Google than other topics.
Alphabet never was “only Google” even on day 1. Google was long a conglomerate containing Google and “Other Bets”, other companies such as Nest etc before the alphabet shuffle.
Google was more or less just as much a holding company for a diverse range of other companies such as this Verily then as Alphabet is now, which is why the distinction between the two is considered so artificial by many here, an idea further compounded by the fact Google stock was converted to Alphabet stock and still uses Google’s ticker symbols.
> And what business does an ad company have in getting into this?
Yes, instead of applauding the effort of solving a very difficult problem that could help people in real meaningful way, I am just going to go for cheap potshots to show how elite I am.
1. This is Verily, not Google, owned by Alphabet.
2. They are releasing male mosquitoes (that don't bite) in the area, where the species is not native. They are attempting to remove the species only from their unnatural habitat.
3. The headline is clickbait, as Google is not involved and no one is trying to eliminate mosquitoes "around the world."
In all cases I've seen of countering mosquitoes in any way, all researchers are aware of risks and take them very seriously. The goals tend to be similar to this one or have to do with eliminating the spread of malaria and other mosquito-transmitted disease.