r/AskReddit • u/DrCompenomics • 13h ago

Who’s the best real-life example of “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” and what happened?

4.3k Upvotes

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377

u/onewithoutasoul 8h ago

The founders of Google. Their initial company motto was "Don't be Evil".

Now, just look at em.

76

u/greeneyeraven 7h ago

I used to love everything google related, I remember getting my invite for Gmail at the beginning and having my 4 invited and give them away to people.

It is pathetic and sad what they have become.

13

u/onewithoutasoul 6h ago

Yeah, I'm working on migrating my stuff off of google and embracing GrapheneOS.

7

u/greeneyeraven 6h ago

I am about to throw my Samsung phone to the trash, I don't have the time or patience to sit down and figure out how to do GrapheneOS. I am praying someone will come out with something good oe maybe I'll gp back to a damn flip phone.

4

u/onewithoutasoul 5h ago

Graphene is easy to set up, though. Just plug your phone into a PC and follow the instructions.

You can still run Google Play Store apps, they just are run in a sandboxed environment. I have it running on an old phone to test stuff.

6

u/greeneyeraven 5h ago

Oh. We have an old phone! That's a good idea! Thanks!

4

u/coderstephen 3h ago

Same. Back then, Google was the spunky upstart who was upsetting the apple cart of slow megacorp behemoths like Microsoft by delivering real innovation.

In less than a decade, Google became that very thing they were fighting against, and now they are the most "big tech" of them all.

3

u/SafeForTwerking 3h ago

Google Wave was ahead of its time and I still miss how good Google Reader was.

2

u/13rice_ 2h ago

I still remember the counter of available disk space we had on the account that increased constantly, and one day it disapeared.

Now we have a banner every fucking week to remind me I'm above 80% of disk space and I need to buy a subscription.

1

u/greeneyeraven 1h ago

Yeah that pissed me off, well all the things they are doing.

5

u/kinky_boots 5h ago

Ugh Google Maps just renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America today.

5

u/onewithoutasoul 5h ago

That doesn't bother me so much. They get their information from a US Government database, so when changes are made there, it will be changed on Google Maps.

https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/maps/gnis-lake-ontario-lake-america-name-change/

•

u/JustaSeedGuy 16m ago

One might argue that when you know for absolute fact that your sources don't reflect reality, you have a moral obligation to get new sources.

In other words, don't use information from the US government when you know that anything they say may be a lie. Verify it with other parties.

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u/Silentrein 16m ago

Time to switch to Mapquest! They didn't capitulate to the orange fascist

3

u/Klayman55 6h ago

I remember an article trying to warn us back in 2019.

3

u/BUTTFUCKER__3000 5h ago

I started not giving a shit about them when I used the ol resource hog of the chrome browser. Everyone was felching them hardcore and I’m like “they kinda suck”

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u/Klayman55 11m ago edited 8m ago

I like Chrome but yeah that’s fair. For me it was SEO optimization, the amount of projects they killed (remember Google Glass, Google Hangouts, or Google Plus?), and especially Stadia that first made it apparent. AI was just the final nail in the coffin.

0

u/Osiris_Raphious 5h ago

Alphabet is the conglomerate now, with Google just one company. The founders don't really have much control when big money comes in, boards of directors and voting shares become a thing.

7

u/Main-Cheesecake3287 4h ago

Wrong.

The entire reason Brin has been fighting the CA billionaire tax is he owns a fuckton of Class B alphabet shares which come with 10X voting rights. Him and Page own a controlling interest in the company, the institutional investors cannot force anything and they can pick the board. The CA tax treats voting multiples as is it also multiplied the value, inflating his net worth significantly.

Even in single class share structures a founder CEO can still control the company so long as institutional investors see no good reason to step in and take an active role in governance, see Nvidia.

-1

u/donitdotis 3h ago

the billionaire tax is stupid though. even if you are broke you can see this.

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u/JustaSeedGuy 12m ago

No, it's not. Taxing the ultra-wealthy by staggeringly significant amounts, and closing loopholes that allow them to bypass it, is responsible for multiple eras of economic stability and flourishing throughout history. It invariably results in the wealthy still living lives of luxury, while increasing the quality of life for everyone else across the board.

If you can't be bothered to learn about taxes or history, don't make asinine appeals to fake common sense. Your position is based on nothing.

2

u/Specialist-Toe-4438 3h ago

Alphabet changed it in 2015 because they were being massive hypocrites, and Google kept the new version until 2018. So by the time COVID came around and all tech companies decided to make the world hell, Google was already a piece of trash and went full force with the rest.

-1

u/donitdotis 3h ago

Google is greedy, but evil is a strong word.

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u/JustaSeedGuy 11m ago

How else would you describe dishonest business practices, selling private information to the highest bidder, and colluding with fascists to receive special treatment and ignore or change laws that protect private citizens?