Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#141

Post by halomru » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 7:27 PM UTC

thearn4 wrote: post #97

matwood wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The endless spigot of cash from Steam is something that does enable Valve to take some very experimental leaps (VR, Steam machines, SteamOS, etc.) 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…

Valve's platform full of shovelware is due to (perceived) consumer demand, not because of size or cost reasons. Steam used to be very selective in who gets in, and people complained that a lot of small developers were left out. So Valve added the greenlight system to let the community find the gems that Valve should let in. People still complained that too few games got in. So instead valve made major changes to improve recommendations and reviews and to establish a community of curators, and then opened the floodgates.

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#142

Post by georgespencer » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 7:28 PM UTC

caminante wrote: post #134

georgespencer wrote: post #112

There's an interesting fiscal corollary of having unbridled ambition matched by enormous firepower which brings the world's smartest engineers and hackers together: a Xoogler who was early in the business once told me about how engineers would hack/exploit the travel allowance policy. Google allowed folks to book their own flight and accommodation, and had an algorithm which determined rewards for folks travelling wi…

> After a while someone realised that a group of engineers were consistently booking shitty travel around the same time, and then travelling first class the rest of the year. How's that different than having an annual travel budget? Sounds like they sacrificed to feast later instead of holding accommodations constant at "above average." I think you did a good job telling the story, but maybe I'm missing how gaming tr…

Crucial point which I didn't communicate properly: they were block booking spurious/unnecessary travel well in advance (by years).

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#143

Post by user5994461 » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 7:31 PM UTC

Afforess wrote: post #38

Google has a fundamental problem with solving challenging issues, especially those in the realm of physical "meat-space". Really hard problems, problems that might reveal that Google is not omnipotent, where Google might not succeed, Google pulls back from. In areas where Google is, Google dominates the landscape. In all others, Google does not deign to participate. If Google can't dominate a market, it is not intere…

> If Google can't dominate a market, it is not interested.

It's a problem for all big companies, not specific to Google.

For instance, there used to be a policy at Microsoft, that only projects aiming at over $100M of revenues would be attempted.

It doesn't make sense to go for smaller than that when you operate at that scale.

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#144

Post by user5994461 » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 7:33 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #84

Afforess wrote: post #38

Google has a fundamental problem with solving challenging issues, especially those in the realm of physical "meat-space". Really hard problems, problems that might reveal that Google is not omnipotent, where Google might not succeed, Google pulls back from. In areas where Google is, Google dominates the landscape. In all others, Google does not deign to participate. If Google can't dominate a market, it is not intere…

> Really hard problems, problems that might reveal that Google is not omnipotent, where Google might not succeed, Google pulls back from. I've heard this phrased as "Google has the good fortune to be operating in a field where being 90% right 90% of the time is more than good enough" If the search result you want is number 3 instead of number 1, that's totally acceptable. If your ad-targeting is good but not perfect,…

> "Google has the good fortune to be operating in a field where being 90% right 90% of the time is more than good enough"

I don't think it's an accurate view.

It was good enough when they started. Now they are doing a lot better than that. The results are moved dynamically per user over hundreds of criteria.

It really is not a dumb search/ad engine that anyone could replicate easy. They have evolved to be damn efficient at what they do.

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#145

Post by nunez » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 7:35 PM UTC

Periodic wrote: post #11

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…

To be fair, that applies to many more things outside of Google:

- "Why can't everyone stop being poor and get a job; it's not that hard!"

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#146

Post by hackcrafter » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 7:35 PM UTC

ronald_raygun wrote: post #107

bad_user wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of Google's products are complementary products that create lock-in. For instance both Chrome and Android have been created with the purpose of controlling the underlying platform that people use, in order for them to not be at the mercy of the other platform owners, like Apple or Microsoft. And it worked. This is very obvious to anybody with an interest in how microeconomics works. For example this is why open s…

A good blog post on what youre talking about https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

On a side note, I'm glad to see Joel has re-themed his blog posts but kept them hosted at the same URLs.

Many of these posts seem timeless and often very prescient.

In fact, at the bottom of this one, he points out the strategic dead-end Sun was heading down with commoditizing software while also making/promoting Java that commoditized their hardware...

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#147

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 7:37 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #118

Periodic wrote: post #11

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…

This is exactly correct. If you have a printing press that is dumping a couple of billon dollars into the basement every quarter in spite of what you're spending, you have the luxury of trying all sorts of novel things from a business perspective. That said, the margins on the search advertising business are shrinking, and have been for years now. You can cover for that by eliminating profligate spending and then eve…

[deleted]

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#148

Post by nunez » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 7:37 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #118

Periodic wrote: post #11

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…

This is exactly correct. If you have a printing press that is dumping a couple of billon dollars into the basement every quarter in spite of what you're spending, you have the luxury of trying all sorts of novel things from a business perspective. That said, the margins on the search advertising business are shrinking, and have been for years now. You can cover for that by eliminating profligate spending and then eve…

I hope they strip the stupid tape over their fridges that cover the sodas "because a 200-calorie coconut water drink is SO MUCH BETTER for you than a ZERO CALORIE soda."

Who am I kidding; that will never happen

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#149

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 7:37 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #118

Periodic wrote: post #11

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…

This is exactly correct. If you have a printing press that is dumping a couple of billon dollars into the basement every quarter in spite of what you're spending, you have the luxury of trying all sorts of novel things from a business perspective. That said, the margins on the search advertising business are shrinking, and have been for years now. You can cover for that by eliminating profligate spending and then eve…

[deleted]

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#150

Post by euyyn » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 7:39 PM UTC

Periodic wrote: post #40

muninn_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy it. Many companies are able to get the perks, culture, and autonomy right without being a multi-billion dollar company. It does enable Google to do certain things (like moonshot projects) that smaller companies can't do, but a lot of the perks I've seen are replicated in other companies. In fact, I think your comment "Google doesn't do what it does to be successful, it does it because it is successful" is…

I tried to clarify the wording. I'm specifically trying to call out the structure of Google's management and the general way they approach problems. For example, even within the profitable Google portion of the business, they often have many competing projects. There will be competing search features, competing chat applications, competing cloud services. Google will make big speculative bets or internally competitiv…

> Google, as a company, doesn't really seem to have any idea of what most individual engineers are doing week to week.

This isn't true. Even I, as a software engineer, can look up with ease what the majority of other people work on.