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

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

#221

Post by dpc59 »

kohanz wrote: post #211
rqebmm wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve also has the prestige of being a high-profile gaming company, which brings with it choice pick of engineers. A "normal" enterprise app consulting shop doesn't have the luxury of every computer geek clamoring to work there. If you have first-pick of incoming talent, it makes sense that you can get away with giving those employees an extremely high degree of autonomy.

Is that really true though? I remember when me and my engineering peers were in our teens, some of us dreamed of working for a gaming company, but now that we're older no one does. Most actually have a very negative perception of employment conditions in that industry.

The reason why there is a negative perception of employment conditions is because employment conditions are not very good, and they're not very good because a lot of people want to work in the industry.

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

#222

Post by caminante »

georgespencer wrote: post #142
caminante wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Oh! Yeah, that (embezzlement/fraud) is why they got in trouble.

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

#223

Post by bzbarsky »

bduerst wrote: post #217
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still do it: https://get.adobe.com/reader/ (Checked today, Windows 10, while using Edge. Default checked on this page is to also install Chrome.) 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 t…

Isn't that because you're using Edge, which doesn't support ActiveX? You can't use acrobat with the browser you're trying to download it with. https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/display-pdf-in-browser...

What does that have to do with Chrome being default-installed along with the Adobe Flash plugin?

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

#224

Post by zardeh »

serge2k wrote: post #206
sahaj wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"All of Google's products are complementary products that create lock-in" I disagree. Chrome was created to be a standards based browser, Android to unify the different phone operating systems circa 2004. I picked Google products because they allowed me to get out if I needed to. Gmail provides IMAP, POP. Docs and Music let you take out your data as needed. Google intentionally creates a way to get your data out. All…

> Chrome was created to be a standards based browser Then why not give money to firefox? Why not start contributing more? instead they built their own, integrated it with google stuff, and pushed it heavily for years and years.

Why not Safari or Opera?

Competition is good. You can make a standards based browser and then add additional features that others can't or won't provide. Building it in house gives them more control. Do you think Mozilla would have developed V8 if google just threw money at them?

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

#225

Post by bitmapbrother »

PunchTornado wrote: post #215
dalbasal wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How/why are search margins shrinking? Is it getting more expensive to deliver search? Online ad spending is going up, not down.

a lot of it is going to facebook & others.

And yet Google is making record profits YoY. As for Facebook, it would seem they've been cooking the books.

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

#226

Post by tajen »

hkmurakami wrote: post #64
Periodic wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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 competitive bets because it can afford to just let people build things and see what happens. Google, as a company, doesn't really seem to have any idea of wha…

I didn't know – and haven't found – the 2 versions of Windows 95 you're talking about. Source? Is it Windows 93 vs 95? Is it 95 vs "Plus!" ?

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

#227

Post by kohanz »

dpc59 wrote: post #221
kohanz wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really true though? I remember when me and my engineering peers were in our teens, some of us dreamed of working for a gaming company, but now that we're older no one does. Most actually have a very negative perception of employment conditions in that industry.

The reason why there is a negative perception of employment conditions is because employment conditions are not very good, and they're not very good because a lot of people want to work in the industry.

Yes, but that demand isn't coming from everyone, it's coming from a certain demographic (young people that are into games). Having your pick from that demographic is far from having "choice pick" when it comes to the overall talent pool. And we haven't even talked about attrition.

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

#228

Post by Fiahil »

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…

Fired? Why is that always the go-to solution?

Firing someone cost money, affect teammates' motivation, and make people unhappy. "Hi Mr X, I saw you managed to extract a significant benefit from the travel allowance policy. Congratulations! Please don't do that again, or you'll have to go through Mr Y for validation next time. Have a good day!". Here you go.

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

#229

Post by bitmapbrother »

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.

Isn't that basically the job of the manager?

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

#230

Post by Locke1689 »

ravitation wrote: post #204
blackguardx wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an electrical engineer and know people who were on the first iPhone team. I think it was about as close to 0 to 1 as you get in a big company like that. I worked for a major RF test and measurement company when the first iPhone came out and everyone was blown away that a company could design and tool up production for a cell phone without tipping anyone off in the industry.

Compare Apple, a consumer electronics company, building a phone to Google, an ad tech company, building a self driving car. One seems to leverage the core competencies of an organization better than the other... One seems closer to starting from 0...

That's just because you don't understand Google.

It was a ML company going from building ML for the internet to building ML for a car.

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