Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looks like they're on abc.xyz.
I actually tried registering that domain some months ago. It was taken. Dammit.
Ditto, registered abcetc.xyz instead ... who better captures the idea of alphabet now ?! :)
G is for Google
181–190 of 607 posts
Re: G is for Google
#182Just a stray observation, but now Microsoft and Google are both run by Indian born CEOs.
Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Pepsi, Nokia, Mastercard, Deutsche Bank
Re: G is for Google
#183[deleted]
I doubt that very much.
Re: G is for Google
#184One of the big dangers of being Google is using the profitable advertising arm to subsidize unprofitable side-ventures that don't materially affect the advertising arm of the business. This same problem lead to the decline of the Ottoman Empire - they used the profitable Balkans to pick up albatrosses like Egypt and the Levant, and then collapsed when they lost the Balkans and could no longer subsidize ruling those a…
What made egypt and the levant albatrosses? Source? I'd love to learn more.
I could be remembering things incorrectly. It's essentially geopolitical - they're far from the Ottomon's economic core, and don't have free capital from navigable rivers through arable land (like the Danube gives the Balkans).
I unfortunately don't remember any sources for this, I just lifted the analogy.
Re: G is for Google
#185This sounds a lot like Berkshire Hathaway's structure. Buffet + Munger at the top, mostly as advisers and fund managers, with individual companies given autonomy. I like it but it all depends on whether Larry & Sergey can hire well.
Re: G is for Google
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
They were absolutely pitched as huge ideas that would change everything we know about email and social networks. Bearing the scars of their public failures, Google started calling new projects moonshots to shape perception of the programs as chasing ideas, while preemptively deflecting any criticism of their readiness or desirability to large markets. They are not materially different from moonshots except in present…
What huge ideas? Social network inside a browser was never a new idea, no matter how hard Google was pitching.
Circles for different messages to different groups, as well as the universal profile for logging into all your favorite Google services. It's not my fault these were harebrained ideas, but they were presented as revolutionary. The ideas are still arguably revolutionary (Slack delivers where Wave failed) but Google's execution was lacking. Same fundamental issue facing so many of their other programs.
Re: G is for Google
#187Does this mean that running high-risk project inside Google started to damage the reputation of Google? Many (most) of the moonshot projects failed (which is normal), and I have the feeling that these events had a somewhat bad fallout on the image of the whole company (questioning its invicibility to some extent, mostly in the eyes of the press).
I think you're right. Google was devolving into a fragmented corporation with no direction or vision. Alphabet helps the Google brand by de-fragmenting it and turning it into the "internet services" arm and putting Google X, Life Sciences, etc etc into their own, protected, sandboxes.
Re: G is for Google
#188Wow, they are doing letters? Really? Letters? Hey is Eric Schmidt still in the building somewhere? Ask him how well Planets worked out for Sun Microsystems. Interesting strategy, hard to second guess from the outside of course. Sun's motivation was to figure out whether the other parts of the company could stand on their own[1], it also makes it less fiscally complicated to discharge an entire group into the void. Th…
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Re: G is for Google
#189The day I call Google "Alphabet" is the day I refer to the rapper as "Snoop Lion."
Re: G is for Google
#190They just changed the name of the global entity, I wonder why people are surprised by this move, I think nothing will change for the users or in the company, they will just try to create next companies by filling the letters of their alphabet which is a silly move.