Google's Go

[Bane]

> I don't understand all the criticism behind Google's product. Of 
> corporate software producers, Apple and Google are the two ones making 
> products that work reliably and are carefully designed.
> 
> Besides, there's not much conspiracy going on. People at Google go off 
> and do their own projects all the time. I don't see Go part of a careful 
> ploy. (For one thing it would be much more polished in that case.) It is 
> also known inside Google circles that Go's authors are not language 
> designers, and that is visible in the quality of the language. (That 
> could change any time; Google does employ quite a few good language 
> designers who may contribute to Go in the future.)
> 


I naively and firmly believe, from my standpoint as a individual, that any large corporation is evil. Google is no exception.

My understanding is that maybe when they were startup, they were idealistic. Once they grew to a certain size, and amounted certain cash, everything goes the same way as with M$ or any other company. Lots of money comes with lots of power, people attracted to it etc. Game is to stay on top, which means eating smaller fishes and expanding to other areas (Google burger anyone?). If not so, then they would not be No1 and some bigger fish would eat them. Thats capitaljism, as Arnold from Red Heat would say.

There is a silly movie I watched long time ago, with a big evil corporation named EES (Everything Except Shoes). They did just that. Wonder what will Google do in 10 yrs.

Anyway, Go might be one few-good-ideas-but-lots-of-crap-recognized-from-the-beginning language, and that would not be problem itself, there are many languages like that, more or less known. But it is the 'Google' prefix that hurts my eyes. Does this makes Go any better? Nope. More advertised? Hell yes. It doesn't matters if author is doing it in their spare time.

Similarly, there was Chrome pushed by Google as better-than-rest-but-nobody-asked-for-it-browser, as 'we make world better place with this'. But there were some issues with privacy and copyright for people who use it, and after reading enough about it, i decided not to use it.

So, what we have here, i think, is one powerful corporation, advertising itself as 'we are not evil as M$', with lot of influence, pushing lot of things and recruiting lot of people for their projects, for their goals.

Somebody finances all that. And I bet they have some long term plans with it. And I don't think they plan to lose money doing it, and i think that is theirs priority.

So, conspiracy? Maybe.

As far for Go being crappy because its designers are not good enough for the task, and possibility that Google will at certain point say 'ok, enough embarrassment, here comes our crack team of developers to help fix it' - I don't think its likely. If something is crappy from the begining, it is easier to start again from the scratch than fix it much latter.