G is for Google • Hacker News Board

Re: G is for Google

#411

Post by tmpforareason » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 1:50 AM UTC

diminish wrote: post #163

echelon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wondered if the reorg would have any impact on the stock price. Given this joke, now I really wonder. Are we sure it isn't April 1st? Are we sure this press release isn't a hoax? This is so wild I'm having trouble believing any of it.

Alphabet is only missing a startup accelerator, why wouldn't Sergey and Larry now focus on earlier stage themselves? All those ambitious things can be achieved better by a lot of startupa competing in parallel.

A - AirBnb U - Uber P - Pinterest or Palantir (they need to work hard) May be they should create a sub companies for the collisions.

Btw, i was thinking Amazon A2Z was doing this virtually.

Re: G is for Google

#412

Post by AndrewKemendo » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 1:58 AM UTC

Ologn wrote: post #393

ignoramous wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.xyz domains are selling at 90% discount, in case anyone is interested.

Yaa, $1 for a domain like hooli.xyz or Google, I mean Alphabet ( https://abc.xyz ). I'll try it out. Just snapped up prefi.xyz, suffi.xyz, picka.xyz, icebo.xyz, equino.xyz, mailbo.xyz, postbo.xyz, rolode.xyz, soapbo.xyz, toolbo.xyz, lunchbo.xyz, letterbo.xyz, chatterbo.xyz for about $15 total for all of them. I skipped on conve.xyz, laryn.xyz, proli.xyz, and surta.xyz, which were all open a few minutes ago.

Glad to see innovation in action. This is the kind of stuff that makes the web worse - domain squatting.

Re: G is for Google

#413

Post by lawl » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 2:00 AM UTC

gress wrote: post #214

tapsboy wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Video was merged into Youtube Orkut was wildly successful in Brazil and India, until they stopped building it for Buzz and Plus Reader was hugely successful, which is why the outcry on its closing Chromebooks are doing great, atleast on Amazon, the world's biggest retailer. Dart pivoted into a compile-to-JS language, but is still alive Motorola streamlined it's product lineup under Google and is doing fairly o…

Google Video, and Orkut, were complete failures and no longer exist. Successful products don't disappear without a trace. If they are closed by management when they otherwise might have succeeded, that is failure. Reader was a failure according to Google itself, which closed it due to supposed lack of interest. Once again, if the decision to close it was an error by your criteria, then they failed. The rest I would a…

If you watch a video on youtube today it's actually hosted on googlevideo.com or something (i know because uBlock). I assume they threw the youtube backend away when they bought it :) So in that sense google video is still alive, just a different name.

Re: G is for Google

#414

Post by SapphireSun » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 2:00 AM UTC

anjc wrote: post #386

001sky wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you are right in your comment, in so far as what you have written, the implication that [this] "reorganization makes no difference on the financials" is not strictly speaking true. Going forward, this re-organization may very well allow capital allocation to be done at various legal entities a-la project or structured finance. That way, the risk/return of the various projects can be traded on more efficiently t…

> That way, the risk/return of the various projects can be traded on more efficiently to the benefit of both investors and google/alphabet shareholders. How would this make any difference for the costing of projects (or businesses, now)? In terms of risks and returns. Its not like new businesses under Alphabet will be boostrapped, they'll still be the same drain/boon on resources that they always were.

Not if they allow sub-ventures to be financed semi-independently.

Re: G is for Google

#415

Post by mxuribe » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 2:01 AM UTC

rmason wrote: post #57

Am I the only one who came away wondering why they didn't buy the domain alphabet.com? The company that owns it, ascio.com, isn't even using it. Or perhaps they were a bit too greedy?

If their intent is to continue to be a non-traditional company then it makes sense to NOT stick to a predictable/conventional .COM domain. Specific to their chosen domain name, while I'm not crazy about this .XYZ domain extension, I give google...er...I mean, Alphabet awesomely big props for choosing a very different domain extension. Even though one might consider these guys Da Man, I feel choosing an alternative domain extension is a mild manner of "sticking it to Da Man". Since so many decent combos for a .COM are taken, its like having all new real estate created from next-to-nothing. I for one greatly favor having an internet with myriad and varied domain extensions. Kudos to Alphabet/Google for at least this seemingly small gesture!!

Re: G is for Google

#416

Post by joshstaiger » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 2:02 AM UTC

trhway wrote: post #383

S4M wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I guess the ones that are getting affected are the Google (not Alphabet) employees, since now it must be much more complicated for an engineer working on a Google project to be transferred to something more sexy such as the Self Driving Car. Disclaimer: I don't work at Google and don't know anybody who does, so I might be totally off.

i guess the employees will now also get a clear feel who of them is "maker" and who is "taker" :) By the way - who is inheriting the piles of money accumulated in the tax heavens? I think that is another elephant in the room. The GoogleX+Fiber+... is obviously a money hungry black hole, so would they be able now to redirect/invest this money from abroad straight into hat loss generating business without incurring the…

Only if it is invested offshore. If it comes back to the US, it will be taxed. Same situation as before.

Re: G is for Google

#417

Post by selllikesybok » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 2:05 AM UTC

tschuy wrote: post #39

dcosson wrote: post #25

Crazy they picked a name where they don't own the .com

Looks like Alphabet.com whois was updated on August 3rd through a domain holding company. Maybe they do?

B is for BMW.

Re: G is for Google

#418

Post by bla2 » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 2:09 AM UTC

hyperpallium wrote: post #117

At last, reversing Jobs' advice to combine everything, returning to the original idea of trying lots of things. Maybe 20% time will see a resurgence, too? Bonus: small, separate entities makes it easier to tackle new opportunities (which start small) that wouldn't move the needle for Google - as per Christensen. > We did a lot of things that seemed crazy at the time. Many of those crazy things now have over a billion…

Android was tiny and far away from launching when it was acquired. And the YouTube acquisition was definitely considered crazy at the time.

Re: G is for Google

#419

Post by keyle » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 2:12 AM UTC

cpeterso wrote: post #374

timrpeterson wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's amazing, better than the hooli.xyz Easter egg mentioned elsewhere in the thread.

abc.wtf looks like it really is Microsoft: http://whois.domaintools.com/abc.wtf Created on 2015-08-10 IP Location United States - Washington - Redmond - Microsoft Corporation ASN United States AS8075 MICROSOFT-CORP-MSN-AS-BLOCK - Microsoft Corporation

Read the whois. NZ is New Zealand, no?

Re: G is for Google

#420

Post by technofiend » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 2:23 AM UTC

Ologn wrote: post #357

bcantrill wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha -- the Sun planets experience was the first thing that occurred to me as well. In my experience, the planets model was a total, unequivocal failure at Sun -- and the answer to the question of whether those companies could stand on their own was actually "no" for all of them (SME, SMCC and SunSoft all needed one another; the value came from what they delivered together). And Sun customers should blame the planet mo…

> And Sun customers should blame the planet model for one of the worst decisions in the history of a company that had plenty of contenders for the distinction: unbundling the compilers from the operating system and separately monetizing them. Hear, hear. The only thing Sun did that is the running for being even dumber is blowing Solaris x86. They released a pretty (for the time) awesome Solaris x86 product back in 19…

Aaaaaaaggh. Solaris x86. I know of at least one firm with 30-40,000 instances of RHEL that had been a Solaris shop. The firm tried Solaris x86, Sun essentially abandoned the platform and the firm's internal engineering board said "Never again." I'm sure that story played out again and again. What a colossal mistake.