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

#181

Post by drcross » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 8:27 PM UTC

euyyn wrote: post #177

espadrine wrote: post #37

Contrast Google's old way of managing bets with Tesla. When Google started working on self-driving cars, they went about it academically. They did not plan a sequence of stepping stones that they could sell. They meant to have a product in an indeterminate future which should be immediately perfect and better than a human, essentially not needing a wheel. Tesla went about it with an engineering perspective. First, ca…

> They meant to have a product in an indeterminate future which should be immediately perfect and better than a human, essentially not needing a wheel. This isn't what happened. The first iteration of Google self-driving cars, the modified Lexus', had wheels alright. What Google found and told the industry was "almost autonomous seems to be more dangerous than not autonomous at all", explained by the driver getting b…

Ugh. The sooner Tesla pass by the "we're safer than human drivers" mark the better because hearing stories about how a single guy who died, while absolutely tragic, is getting tedious when put in context of the the vast number of regular deaths on the road. My heart only bleeds so much for a guy I never met, who took a chance that he knew the risks of, when considering the grander goal at play here.

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

#182

Post by euyyn » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 8:29 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #161

user5994461 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 effici…

> It really is not a dumb search/ad engine that anyone could replicate easy. I'm not saying it's simple or could be replicated easily. I'm saying that the marginal improvements they've made don't really matter that much to users. I mostly use DuckDuckGo these days, and its native search results are markedly inferior to Google's, but it basically doesn't matter because I still almost always get what I want on the firs…

That doesn't sound like good fortune for Google.

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

#183

Post by BoysenberryPi » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 8:33 PM UTC

shuntress wrote: post #162

thearn4 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You don't use steam to find gems. Steam is just where you go to buy them.

Someone said this on another forum and I disagree with them as I disagree with you. I've found plenty of games through Steam that I wouldn't have known about otherwise.

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

#184

Post by dworin » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 8:34 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…

The best business practices to emulate come from successful in boring and fiercely competitive industries, where you can see if those practices are really making a difference. When a company has a single massively profitable product that's mostly protected from competition, it's hard to know if anything they're doing makes sense at all. But boring companies don't make exciting Fast Company headlines.

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

#185

Post by jrochkind1 » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 8:36 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #166

dispose13432 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google Voice, previously Grand Central, was in maintenance mode from when it was first acquired. Google never improved it much.

Pretty much _every_ google product is in maintenance mode from when it is first released, and never improved much.

This may be part of the strategy, those that somehow turn into 'profit' are the ones that actually have full-time engineering assigned to them, and get improved? I couldn't say.

For example that I ran into recently, Google Custom Search/Site Search theoretically _has_ an API for creating/modifying custom searches... but it's completely inaccessible, because the only auth method it supports is one that no longer exists. I suspect it is still running on a server somewhere with zero traffic though. If you Google around, you can see for at least a year, _some_ people (prob those with the paying 'Site Search', not the free 'Custom Search') have managed to get answers from this from google support -- the answer is "There is an internal feature request ticket to add OAuth 2 support to this API, but I can't give you an ETA".

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

#186

Post by euyyn » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 8:36 PM UTC

DamnYuppie wrote: post #163

VeejayRampay wrote: post #46

That Porat person is a serious contender for buzzkill of the year. Google makes tons of money with ads and spends it on geeky experiments to try to push a futuristic envelope (and create an environments where they can sell more ads, like a self-driving car) we'll all benefit from eventually and she gets to be the person that locks the toys away because "financial discipline".

I don't think that is necessarily true. I am hard pressed to think of anything out side of search that Google has released that has really pushed a futuristic envelope. I feel their current approach is sensible. Research at a for profit organization has to have a path to profitability. Long term this will enable them to more efficiently distribute their funds to projects that will see the light of day, generate reven…

> I am hard pressed to think of anything out side of search that Google has released that has really pushed a futuristic envelope.

You might not remember how life was before Google Maps or GMail then.

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

#187

Post by cobookman » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 8:37 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #164

“No one wants to face the reality that this is an advertising company with a bunch of hobbies.” Remember Nokia. They produced mobile phones with excellent quality, extreme ruggedness, good battery life, and good voice quality. Their manufacturing was highly automated and their costs were low. They focused on their core business. Recently, their CEO said "We did everything right, and we lost anyway". On the other hand…

what about cloud & gsuite? Hardly a failure.

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

#188

Post by shmulkey18 » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 8:39 PM UTC

__derek__ wrote: post #15

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…

We humans have a hard time reasoning about correlation and causation. Superstition comes so naturally.

"We are pattern-seeking story-telling animals." -- Ed Leamer in "Macroeconomic Patterns and Stories"

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

#189

Post by bgilroy26 » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 8:40 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #164

“No one wants to face the reality that this is an advertising company with a bunch of hobbies.” Remember Nokia. They produced mobile phones with excellent quality, extreme ruggedness, good battery life, and good voice quality. Their manufacturing was highly automated and their costs were low. They focused on their core business. Recently, their CEO said "We did everything right, and we lost anyway". On the other hand…

Maps was certainly advertising driven, but it also changed many, many people's lives

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

#190

Post by nir » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 8:42 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…

Do people in Google still think the magic is there? It seems like a great place if you want stability and a nice salary, but obviously (unless you're in the comparatively tiny X dept) you're going to be a very small cog in a huge machine?