My wife is Ukrainian. I will leave it at that.
I have also a colleague from Afghanistan, for example, guess what their opinion is (and the list could be long, I just happen to have a colleague from there).
I remember Yandex being brought up during the Brave debacle, and I don't remember them claiming anything of the sort. I think they simply stated the position that choosing search providers based on moral claims would simply lead to them being able to use only the niche search providers.
Are you referring to using Yandex?
I think they did explain that implementing turn off and on of specific engines per user is a complete rewrite of their querying system, so it is an expensive and complex change.
Removing yandex is OTOH not a great move as results in Russian language often come from there. Also morally I would generally agree, but then - especially now - you could argue about "giving money to US companies", and that means they need to shut down, they can't use bing, google, yandex.
You said "if your product is not interesting enough for users to use".
The product has to be useful, and the user growth for a obviously premium service I think is a good testimony of that.
Have you considered that they might be a healthy business that doesn't bleed money (like most tech companies) and therefore doesn't need to rely on trapping users in subscriptions hoping they won't use the product?
Also what's with the passive aggressive tone? We are talking about a search engine, chill.
The user growth has been bigger than usual in the last months, they have live stats. Not to say they were breaking even at around 25k users, they now have 38k.
Also their product shouldn't be interesting, should be invisible. It's a search engine, not a toy.
If you really want to see malice, I would say it's more of a marketing move because very very few users will not make any search at all in a month. And those users have indeed no cost for them. Giving them credit still means you are getting the money eventually.
I get the racial stereotypation, but at least it should be funny.
Btw, taking a hunting license requires a medical exam (including psycho-physic evaluation), a basic zoology exam to recognize species, an exam on laws around hunting, one about nature preservation and one on weapons handling. It has to be renewed every 5 years.
Nothing too complicated, tons of idiots have it, but still quite a process.
If you likes it takes two, in march the same studio should release "split fiction".
Other titles that come to mind: cuphead, untitled goose game, overcooked (!), valheim.
But you try to make it seems like it was an intricate and nuanced position.
No, I integrate it with the thoughts he expressed. He didn't back down from his opinion (on reddit), he simply elaborated more. Quite common for a tweet that due to the idiotic limitation on characters is very easy to write in ways that don't fully express what you want to say.
I understand why some people are pissed. But some people see politics in the same way football fans see the sport. So even a tiny, indirect praise for an action that Trump does that might be actually positive (even for the wrong reason) is seen as a capital sin, because you can't be nuanced, you can't have specific opinions, either you are against or you are a supporter, like in football. And I fully, wholeheartedly, disagree with this attitude, at least for external observers (in this case, non US citizens), and especially once the elections are over (my judgment on this tweet would have been different if the election didn't happen yet).
I disagree. I for sure will keep using the service, this has nothing to do with it.
I genuinely can't see any issue with his statements, I read them in context and - while I don't have an opinion on the subject - I think they are totally reasonable personal opinions.
Also lumping together "tech CEOs" is another (in my opinion) completely wrong generalization.
So yeah, I disagree even with this part of your interpretation of the situation.
I don't think there is any way to find a common ground. Personally I find your interpretation really forced and therefore exaggerated. Context, track record and most importantly the words of this guy do not seem to point out at all to a "mask off situation" in my opinion.
Edit: I really dislike meta-comments. I am commenting based on what interests me, whether other people do other stuff is not something I can do anything about. Please refrain to use the "people like you..." type of statements. You have no idea who I am or what I think besides this conversation.
The same garante blocked chatGPT in March 2023. They are acting based on the law. One thing that half-works in Italy, please, leave it alone.
In Europe data protection is an inalienable right. There is no freedom to do something that violates fundamental rights.
It was, I think it has been unblocked (https://www.garanteprivacy.it/home/docweb/-/docweb-display/docweb/10085432#english).
I am repeating data points they shared during the community event.
BTW buddy, you can cool it with the passive-aggressiveness. Not everyone on the internet is out to get you.
The info about them breaking even at 25k was shared in the discord channel (which I very rarely look). The rest are stats that are published on their website and as I said shared during the yearly community event.
I work in tech, and I would be blind to not acknowledge that a company which:
Might be a healthy business, different from 99% of tech companies that generally bleed money even with millions of users.
You seem completely sure of the opposite, whatever, don't use their service lol