What makes $BigTechCompany’s products bad, anyway?

究竟是什么让 $BigTechCompany 的产品变得糟糕？

Steve Ballmer. Toggle original/dithered image Disclosure: I work for Google, so you should take everything I say with a grain of salt. All opinions in this article are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer. All sources used are publicly available. 史蒂夫·鲍尔默（Steve Ballmer）。切换原始/抖动图像。披露：我在谷歌工作，所以你对我的话应持保留态度。本文中的所有观点仅代表我个人，并不反映我雇主的立场。文中使用的所有来源均为公开信息。

I Imagine a saint. Imagine, if you will, Isidore of Seville, rumored patron saint of the internet clawing his way through scorching earth, stumbling to his feet somewhere in southern Spain. Rightly recognizing that the modern tech industry lost the mandate of heaven as the humble “program” turned into the devious “app”, he has come to set things right in the world. 一、想象一位圣人。试想一下，塞维利亚的圣伊西多尔（Isidore of Seville），这位传说中的互联网守护神，正从焦灼的土地上挣扎着爬起，在西班牙南部的某个地方踉跄站稳。他敏锐地意识到，随着谦逊的“程序”变成了狡诈的“应用程序”，现代科技行业已经失去了天命，于是他来到世间拨乱反正。

Imagine him discarding his tattered rags as the Catholic church clothes him in golden, flowing robes, and newspapers across the world announce the miracle. He sets out on foot, and as it becomes increasingly clear that his pilgrimage is taking him to San Francisco (supposed center of the modern world), tech industry titans begin to sweat. Saintly miracles? In 202X? Oh god, hasn’t he thought of the impact on the economy!? 想象他脱下破烂的衣衫，天主教会为他披上金色的长袍，世界各地的报纸纷纷报道这一奇迹。他徒步出发，随着他的朝圣之旅愈发明确地指向旧金山（现代世界的所谓中心），科技巨头们开始冒汗。圣迹？在 202X 年？天哪，他难道没考虑过这对经济的影响吗！？

Imagine, finally, that after fierce battles with CEOs, businessmen and lawyers, he emerges victorious. They hand over the keys to the “The Algorithm”, or some sort of executive control and veto rights, as long as he’s willing to sign hundreds of pages worth of paperwork outlining precise conditions for the use of saintly powers. 最后，想象一下，在与首席执行官、商人和律师们进行激烈的博弈后，他取得了胜利。他们交出了“算法”的钥匙，或者某种行政控制权和否决权，前提是他愿意签署数百页的文件，详细规定使用圣人权力的具体条件。

You never thought of yourself as a believer. But now, with a literal honest-to-god saint in charge of big tech, it might be the right time to start. He might be benevolent, immortal, principled and has zero interest in financial gain, but he’s a few hundred years old. Maybe he’d appreciate some advice from technically minded people across the world. 你从未认为自己是个信徒。但现在，既然有一位货真价实的圣人掌管着大科技公司，或许是时候开始信仰了。他可能仁慈、永生、有原则且对经济利益毫无兴趣，但他毕竟有几百岁了。也许他会乐于听取世界各地技术专家的建议。

A quick Claude-sesh later (“right pose for prayer”, “denomination isidore saint??”), you awkwardly drop to your knees in the living room and fold your hands. “Please. God. Whatever you do, please just make it such that uhm… such that $Website is good again. Also, could you take a look at—” 经过一番快速的 Claude 会话（“祈祷的正确姿势”、“伊西多尔圣人的教派？？”），你尴尬地在客厅跪下，双手合十。“求求你。上帝。无论你做什么，请让……让 $Website 变回好用。还有，你能看看……”

Suddenly, white light fills your eyes. For a moment, you believe that you’ve been raptured. Then—you’re blinking repeatedly—you realize that it’s just bog-standard cold-white office lights, illuminating a corporate-office hall. Dozens of monitors are lining the walls, flickering with dashboards and graphs. At your side, the saint. The man who, presumably, transported you here. He gestures at a counter in front of you. A myriad of buttons, levers and dials stick out, covered in inscrutable logos, symbols, abbreviations, and sticky notes with comments in different languages. He nods. 突然，白光充斥了你的双眼。那一刻，你以为自己被“被提”了。接着——你不停地眨眼——你意识到那只是平平无奇的冷白色办公室灯光，照亮了一个企业办公大厅。几十台显示器排列在墙上，闪烁着仪表盘和图表。在你身边，那位圣人。那个推测把你带到这里的人。他指向你面前的一个控制台。无数的按钮、操纵杆和旋钮凸显出来，上面覆盖着难以理解的标志、符号、缩写，以及用不同语言写着注释的便利贴。他点了点头。

You reach for something that looks like a gear stick pulled out of a 1991 Honda Beat, and cautiously nudge it eastward. For a moment, everything is silent. You stare at a giant counter with the word ENGAGEMENT written on it, and watch it wobble ever so slightly. Somewhere out there, the most wretched advertiser you’ve ever seen starts angrily twirling his mustache, and is shouting, hollering about falling engagement rates on ads for his blockchain sports betting deforestation baby shredder product. 你伸手去抓一个看起来像是从 1991 年本田 Beat 上拆下来的换挡杆，小心翼翼地向东拨动。片刻间，一切归于寂静。你盯着一个写着“参与度”（ENGAGEMENT）的巨大计数器，看着它微微晃动。在某个地方，你见过最卑劣的广告商开始愤怒地捻着胡子，大声咆哮，抱怨他那款“区块链体育博彩、森林砍伐、婴儿粉碎机”产品的广告参与度正在下降。

The algorithm shifts and, for the very first time in history, community-owned wikis reliably rank above Fandom.com™ wikis across all search engines. Finally. You nod to yourself. A split-second later, a siren goes off. To your right, a dashboard glows an alarming red as a graph titled “#grandmothers calling their nephews because they pressed a button and cannot figure out how to get back” spikes, for reasons inscrutable to you. 算法发生了转变，历史上第一次，社区拥有的维基在所有搜索引擎上的排名可靠地超过了 Fandom.com™ 的维基。终于。你对自己点了点头。一秒钟后，警报声响起。在你右侧，一个仪表盘发出警报般的红光，一张标题为“#祖母们因为按错按钮而打电话给侄子求助”的图表出现了峰值，原因你无法理解。

Another sound starts blaring, this time from your left, though it’s getting hard to tell where the sounds are even coming from. Pizza delivery latency in Boston is rapidly climbing. Another. Japanese chess streamers have lost 30% of their viewers, while Skat experiences a mysterious renaissance. You feel a bead of sweat running down your brow. Another. The Mark Zuckerberg grill video is trending again. Oh god. It’s too much. Before you have any chance to reach for the lever and move it back, you feel a hand on your shoulder. You’re pulled back. For a split-second, everything goes dark. You find yourself back in your living room. 另一种声音开始响起，这次是从左边传来的，尽管已经很难分辨声音到底来自何处。波士顿的披萨配送延迟正在迅速攀升。又一个。日本象棋主播失去了 30% 的观众，而纸牌游戏 Skat 却经历了神秘的复兴。你感到一颗汗珠顺着额头流下。又一个。马克·扎克伯格的烧烤视频又火了。天哪。这太疯狂了。在你还没来得及伸手去拨动操纵杆将其复位之前，你感到一只手搭在你的肩膀上。你被拉了回来。那一瞬间，一切陷入黑暗。你发现自己回到了客厅。

II Let’s look at a graph cobbled together from Alphabet’s, Microsoft’s, and Apple’s 2025 revenue data. If there’s a single thing you take away from this chart, it should be that these companies have vastly, and laughably different business models. Conflating them into a giant ‘big tech’ blob is not doing anyone a favor. 二、让我们看看一张由 Alphabet、微软和苹果 2025 年营收数据拼凑而成的图表。如果你能从这张图中得到什么启示，那应该是这些公司的商业模式有着巨大且荒谬的差异。将它们混为一谈，统称为巨大的“大科技”集团，对任何人都没有好处。

Corporations have control over how they break down their revenue in their financial reporting, so some careful interpretation is required when aggregating data like this. Example: Apple has advertisement revenue, but Apple reports it as part of its “Services” bucket, so we can’t split it off here. What you can figure out (by taking a closer look at the data) is that the iPhone dominates the hardware category. Google’s ad business breaks down into three categories: Search, Youtube, and the Display Ads Network (essentially, banner ads on third-party websites). The most interesting fact is that Search Ads dominate, at ~five times Youtube Ad revenue, and ~ten times Display Ads revenue. 企业可以控制其财务报告中营收的细分方式，因此在汇总此类数据时需要仔细解读。例如：苹果有广告收入，但苹果将其报告为“服务”类别的一部分，所以我们无法在此将其拆分。你可以看出（通过仔细观察数据）iPhone 在硬件类别中占据主导地位。谷歌的广告业务分为三类：搜索、YouTube 和展示广告网络（本质上是第三方网站上的横幅广告）。最有趣的事实是，搜索广告占据主导地位，其收入约为 YouTube 广告收入的 5 倍，约为展示广告收入的 10 倍。

What matters is the broad overview: Which part of the business dominates the revenue? Google is a company whose primary source of revenue is advertisements. Microsoft makes its money with enterprise contracts. Apple is a hardware company. 重要的是宏观概览：哪部分业务主导了营收？谷歌是一家主要收入来源是广告的公司。微软通过企业合同赚钱。苹果是一家硬件公司。

III Ask yourself, what is it that makes any Google product bad? Why is Search bad? Why is Youtube bad? Why and how are Gmail, Docs and Maps bad? What is the directionality of badness which all of these products have in common? Would you say that it is the same ’type’ of badness as Microsoft products? How about Apple products? Why or why not? The answer I keep coming back to is that Google products “suck” because they’re built for a “lowest common denominator” of all users, not for experts. What that means is that you—the expert user who cares to regex-fil 三、问问自己，究竟是什么让谷歌的任何产品变得糟糕？为什么搜索很糟糕？为什么 YouTube 很糟糕？Gmail、文档和地图为什么以及如何变得糟糕？所有这些产品共同的“糟糕”方向是什么？你会说这和微软产品的“糟糕”类型相同吗？苹果产品呢？为什么是或为什么不是？我不断得出的答案是，谷歌产品之所以“烂”，是因为它们是为所有用户的“最低共同点”而构建的，而不是为专家构建的。这意味着你——那位关心正则表达式过滤的专家用户……