91–100 of 463 posts
Without some sort of feed back cycle - usually given by the market, things grow in strange and perverse ways fast.
The trick is to develop a feedback cycle that isn't as harsh as the open market (manage by quarters!) without giving absolute free hand.
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> Google doesn't do what it does to be successful. It does it because it is successful. Those things aren't mutually exclusive and almost certainly are both true
The most pointed quote in the article is “No one wants to face the reality that this is an advertising company with a bunch of hobbies.” But without search, without Gmail, without Chrome, without Android, without the moonshots and all the "hobbies" Google's brand would wither, and its access to data at massive scale would be crippled, and its access to eyeballs would be curtailed, and the talent would walk. Others ha…
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The IRS rule is that these kinds of perks are allowed if it is for the company's benefit. For example, if a free lunch allows an employees to have a lunch meeting, the IRS considers that for the company's benefit. Whether all of Google's perks actually satisfy that test is a different issue, but that is the IRS's rule.
Interesting, even if you give them the lunches it would be a huge stretch to say a fitness center and massages benefit the company. Sounds like a rule that is hard to impossible for the IRS to enforce. I hate rules like that, we ought to create a better rule or get rid of it altogether. Because I'm guessing if a factory lowered their wages while providing the same perks as google the IRS would probably say something.
You'd be amazed how much exercise helps with concentration and reduces stress.
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Yet, free markets beat out top-down managed economies because they have competing teams seeking to provide the same services. Tech is, to an extent, a winner-takes-all market. If you build out two competing products internally, in the long run, it will cost you less then building one product, and having an outside competitor fight you for market share, by building that second product. Case in point: I'm sure that Fac…
They don't seem to play free market. They seem to play "new guy takes all". For example, Google Voice was put in maintenance mode and Hangouts took off. Then Allo, then ... ? They very rarely actively push two products with the same purpose.
But you can get some of the benefits of a free market by having teams work on multiple solutions to one problem. You can also squander them by making the wrong high-level decisions.
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The problem is that Google's target market is largely people who are unaware of what the risks are, unaware of the extent of what Google does with their data. It's up to us in the tech community to protect people from companies that use dark pattern behavior like Google. yuhong: Responding to your question as an edit to my own comment since two -4 comments is probably enough for one day. Silently implementing opt-out…
What dark patterns are you referring to?
Or making Android Location History on by default and then using it for things like http://searchengineland.com/hood-google-adwords-measures-sto... -- yes, they're reporting anonymized data to the advertisers, but of course they're storing your actual location data, with a well-hidden knob to turn it off.
Doing things people probably wouldn't like done to them if they knew about them with a well-hidden knob to turn it off is fairly dark-patterny as far as I'm concerned.
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You must be a joy at parties. How is any of the data private when you willingly use their tools, sites, servers, etc? You open up google.com and type things in, what privacy do you expect? Or am I missing something you are referring to?
And the people who ended up with Chrome installed and set as their default browser because they installed some other application (like Flash) were using Chrome willingly, right? Yes, Google was doing that sort of thing for Chrome distribution for a while. They've stopped since, which is better than nothing, I guess. [Edit: apparently they haven't stopped, according to ocdtrekkie's comment! Or maybe they have started…
It's worth noting that Sundar Pichai's claim to fame at Google, prior to Chrome itself, was getting the Google Toolbar installed on everyone's PCs whether they wanted it or not. The CEO of Google isn't just a fan of software installation dark patterns like this, he's the guy responsible for it at Google.
So many companies try to emulate how Google works. There are multiple books, hundreds or thousands of articles. People speculate on the perks, the review structure, the hierarchy, the autonomy. However, when other companies try to imitate Google they always fail because they're missing a crucial piece: Billions of dollars in ad revenue Google doesn't work the way it does to be successful. It works that way because it…
Reminds me of Valve's no manager management style: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-27/why-there... When you have a lot of money, a lot of things work because you have a lot of money. You often see the same thing with people trying to emulate pro-athletes training methods. A genetically gifted pro-athlete can often succeed in spite of their training, and not necessarily because of their training.
In my opinion, Valve also has the same shortcomings as google: practically zero customer support, and an un-curated app platform full of shovelware (finding gems on the Steam and the Google Play & Chrome Web Stores can be tricky).
But there is still a ton to admire in both organizations.
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A lot of that stuff although is cheaper for the corporation to provide than for the employee to pay for themselves in money and time. The corp has a tax advantage and a bulk purchase advantage. Not having a payment infra probably adds a little bit of efficiency too.
Which does seem like sort of a loophole. Don't companies have to add perks over a certain amount to the employees pay so that it gets taxed? Wouldn't feeding an employee every day qualify? It would be sort of weird if we turn back into having sort of 'company towns' where your employer provides a lot of what you need except they pay for it. It's not just Google this would be beneficial for, even if you run a factory…
Meals on the business' premises for the benefit of the business are not taxable income for employees (but are a deductible expense of the business). This is a black-letter IRS regulation; https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b/ar02.html#en_US_2016_p...
Meals are a sideshow, though; healthcare is where the real action is. If work buys you a Playstation you get taxed on ~$300 in imputed income; if work pays $12k~$25k a year for your health insurance, that isn't taxed.
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True. That said, Apple's phone was successful against established manufacturers, and Android won without having to build a phone at all.
iPod to iPhone was certainly not 0 to 1.
The first iPod Touch wasn't until September 2007, 3 months after the first iPhone.
When the iPhone 1 was released, the iPod range didn't have much on any other MP3 player. All the things that make an iPhone an iPhone - the touch-screen, multi-touch, iOS, didn't come from the iPod.
Perhaps iPod to iPhone wasn't quite 0 to 1, but it wouldn't have been much more than 0.001 to 1.
It's funny to me that investors and biz press are surprised that Brin & Page meant what they said in the 2004 letter.