Live data from Hacker News

G is for Google

googleblog.blogspot.com

571–580 of 607 posts

Re: G is for Google

#571

Will Google split off Android as a "separate company" under Alphabet to try to hide it from the EU's crackdown? This is the most traditional-corporation definitely-evil move Google has ever made, whether their letter claims otherwise or not.

What's evil about it? The idea that they're "hiding" from the EU crackdown is ridiculous. They know perfectly well it doesn't work like that.

More of a loophole maybe than hiding. Like perhaps being one big company in the US, but somehow being "separate" companies that "don't collaborate" in the EU?

There's other suggestions as to why, either to prevent experiments from tarnishing Google's brand, or to ensure Google's separate products can survive the eventual failure of the ad market.

Re: G is for Google

#572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the Class B shares the major voting shares, with 10x as many votes per share as Class A (10 vs 1)?

Correct: Class C - 0 Votes (GOOG) Class A - 1 Vote (GOOGL ~4% higher cost per share) Class B - 10 Votes (Not publicly traded)

Can Class B shares be traded privately between individuals? Or do they have conditions attached (right of first refusal back to founders/company, etc)?

Re: G is for Google

#573
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

YouTube wasn't considered crazy at all by the time Google bought it. It was clear by then that it was a runaway success, so clear that even traditional media companies like Viacom and News Corp were bidding for it. It certainly wasn't some small company that Google grew from nothing into dominance; it was a billion-dollar company that had already won its space. Some articles from the time: http://money.cnn.com/2006/1…

So was Myspace when AOL acquired it.

Re: G is for Google

#574
The first thing that went through my mind (with some additional work, and all that is needed is illustrations and a publisher..):

A is for Asynchronous, the way our code should be

B is for Beta, the first stage of our code the user will see

C is for Capacity, for this planning helps our hardware not fail,

planning capacity helps our product meet our users at scale

.

D is for Datagram, which you may not get from me

E is for E-tag, for caching is key

F is for Freedom, the state information wants to achieve,

follow information through history if you want to believe

.

G is for Google, the advertising and indexing whale

H is for Hystrix, because Netflix Tools are for scale

I is for the Internet, for without it, many start-ups would fail

I is also for iPhone who's apparently in jail

.

J is for Javascript, with a new frameworks each week

K is for Kill, because scripts can misbehave and memory can leak

L is for LifeSize, for meetings about meetings must be

M is for Metadata, because tracking in bulk is (mumble, mumble, something, something), look! "privacy!"

.

N is for NoSQL, for relational data is dead

O is for Octocat, who houses our code so it is not in our head

P is for a Penguin named tux

Q is for Quiet, lost to the the tide of the open office flux

.

R is for Rabbit, because some problems require a Queue

S is for Secure, for we have our our user's data to lose

T is for the terminal, for how else can we see ascii Star Wars

U is for UTF-8, who's lack of handling makes bugs in our source

.

V is for Vitesse, never has mysql DBs been so easy to scale

W is for the 5 Whys, that guides us in post-motems when we fail

X is for Executable, which chmod can help our script to be

Y is for YCombinator, for many a start up, encubators are key

.

And Z is for Zsh, not your ordinary shell

These are the letters, remember them well

These are the letters, from A to Z

These are the letters, next time will you please say them with me?

[edit: format, typo]

Re: G is for Google

#575
post #280

They gonna fail cause they don't own the .com ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How can I upvote this to heaven? Made my day :-) I could write that I spilled my coffee, except I don't drink coffee.

Hahaha, you're welcome a lot of other people's comments tanked cause they mentioned that... I wonder why... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: G is for Google

#576
post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course if we go back to the original question, Orkut and Reader were hardly "moonshots" in the first place (and Google Video was arguably just a standard project launch).

Google's own canonical example of a moonshot is Android. By that definition, Orkut and Reader qualify just fine.

> Google's own canonical example of a moonshot is Android

Is it?

> By that definition, Orkut and Reader qualify just fine

If everything is a moonshot, nothing is, etc.

AFAIK both projects were just 20% time projects scaled up to three or four people[1]. A "moonshot" is obviously a wishy-washy term, but opportunity for success doesn't seem to be sufficient to call something that.

[1] http://massless.org/?archive=2007/05/about-google-readers-bi...

Re: G is for Google

#577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Dart never went anywhere adoption-wise, and even abandoned plans for its own VM in browsers (not to mention its purpose obsoleted by the announcement of WebAssembly -- since devs will be able to use ports of much more established languages for web programming). And since Google-made Chromebooks never sold well, and those by third parties (Acer, Samsung, etc) don't make much money for their manufacturers and no…

> since devs will be able to use ports of much more established languages for web programming Sure, they'll be able to use any language they like, as long as it's C or C++. :) There is currently no story for using any high level language (read: language that uses GC) like Ruby or Python as a web language by way of WebAssembly.

>There is currently no story for using any high level language (read: language that uses GC) like Ruby or Python as a web language by way of WebAssembly.

Actually that's part of the whole point of WebAssembly -- as Eich put it. It's not just to speedup emscripten style ports of C/C++ programs.

Eich's words: "Bottom line: with co-evolution of JS and wasm, in a few years I believe all the top browsers will sport JS engines that have become truly polyglot virtual machines".

Re: G is for Google

#578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube wasn't considered crazy at all by the time Google bought it. It was clear by then that it was a runaway success, so clear that even traditional media companies like Viacom and News Corp were bidding for it. It certainly wasn't some small company that Google grew from nothing into dominance; it was a billion-dollar company that had already won its space. Some articles from the time: http://money.cnn.com/2006/1…

So was Myspace when AOL acquired it.

Myspace was not acquired by AOL.

Re: G is for Google

#579
post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they are really saying with all of this is... "We are moving all of our profitable businesses under one umbrella that will be reported separately, and putting all of our money-losing businesses under another, in hopes that investors will basically ignore the unprofitable stuff and only focus on our profitable businesses." . Apparently the moonshots are diluting results from the mainstays, and they want a higher…

Or they're saying "so that the adults who supervise moneymaking won't bother the moonshot meetings at abc.xyz and spoil the fun with all their blather about next quarter's earnings".

Or they're saying "We're personally tired of the boring but profitable business of selling ads. Let's replace ourselves and focus on the cool stuff."

Re: G is for Google

#580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct: Class C - 0 Votes (GOOG) Class A - 1 Vote (GOOGL ~4% higher cost per share) Class B - 10 Votes (Not publicly traded)

Can Class B shares be traded privately between individuals? Or do they have conditions attached (right of first refusal back to founders/company, etc)?

Shares of class B can be converted 1:1 to class A and sold.
Post reply on HN