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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

#261
post #68

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.

I don't think that's quite right, though the message ends up being the same.

It's not the genetics that matter, it's the years of training leading up to the current workout routine, not to mention the pro athlete's knowledge and understanding of his/her own body, as well as the dedicated free time to put into a workout that needs that kind of attention in order to succeed.

When you have all day, and you like working out, you can do things that don't normally make sense and still see results.

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

#262
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I know many people at Google Boston (Cambridge). They are all bored out of their skulls.

One guy says how he works 30 hours in a busy week and uses his 20% time to hit the gym.

But in another's words: "how can I leave when they pay me so much?"

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

#263
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

""the magic is gone."" Not only is the magic gone, but the boring, day to day fabric of functionality is gone. Have you tried to really search for anything with google in the past five years ? I don't mean meandering, aimless, consumer-centric searches like "new fitness watch" where any result tangentally related is useful ... I mean a specific, meaningful, concise search with multiple keywords, all of which are key…

I just searched for "Calcifying Fibrous Tumor", and got exactly what I wanted, the most recent review article on that tumor. What are you looking for?

"best free credit card" :-)

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

#264

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…

You're absolutely right. There may not even be causality but they have to evolve together. You can't start a company and try to be like google. The food staff would be a primary expense and that would sink your company and turn off investors. You care so you conduct the M&M Project - things like that. It evolves with your success and keeps people around and interested.

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

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe Flash is directly built into Microsoft Edge, they collaborate on this. Chrome doesn't support ActiveX or NPAPI plugins either, and the Flash plugin also doesn't work with Chrome, because similarly to Edge, the Flash plugin is built directly into Chrome. Also, Adobe Reader is a standalone program, you don't install it to embed in the browser. (Both Edge and Chrome can display PDF files natively.) This has nothin…

Adobe Reader plugin doesn't work with Edge, because Edge doesn't support ActiveX. The Adobe Reader installer also installs the browser plugin. You linked to the Adobe Reader download page, which asks you to install chrome if you don't have a supported browser. Which you didn't. I get that you have an axe to grind here, but it seems like you're cherry picking an example of where Edge doesn't support something so Adobe…

Note that IE does support ActiveX, but Reader still not only tries to bundle Google Chrome, but the Google Toolbar as well.

You're creating an incredible work of fiction to avoid a long-standing well-known truth: That Google pays Adobe to bundle Chrome in their installer when the user is coming from a Microsoft browser. (If I come from Firefox, it offers McAfee's Security Scan Plus, which also pays Adobe for the privilege.) This isn't a technical or compatibility issue, and it never has been. This is where Adobe makes money on Adobe Reader downloads.

This started in 2011, long before Microsoft Edge existed: http://www.chromestory.com/2011/09/google-chrome-is-now-bund...

We don't know the dollar amount of the deal, as Google keeps those sorts of things confidential. But it is very similar to the figure an Oracle lawyer dropped, that Google paid Apple a billion dollars to keep Google as the iPhone's default search: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-22/google-pa...

Note that until recently, Google also paid to be default on Firefox, also rumored in the one billion dollar range: http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/20/technology/firefox-mozilla-g...

Some additional reading on this strategy, is that Chrome came about as a fear that Microsoft might disable or cripple the Google Toolbar, which was used to push people over to Google Search and collect their browsing data. (And was also heavily promoted as a bundle item in other installers like Java.) Sundar Pichai, now Google's CEO, spearheaded the toolbar and then Chrome: http://fortune.com/2014/10/27/google-rise-of-sundar-pichai/

If you believe Google got where it was by being "the best", it may be hard to realize this, or easy to overlook the facts. But Google's market share is largely a result of paying for other companies to push their products, with or without user permission.

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

#266
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…

They're just ad distributing products. Ever tried to install an adblocker on Android? There isn't anything you can do without rooting your phone. Seriously, it should be called Addroid. Ever tried to install adblock/ublock on Chrome? only to find out that it doesn't exist in the chrome store or was removed again.

I use an adblocker on Android all the time, and I've never bothered to figure out how to root a phone. It was not at all difficult. Maybe it's hard with Chrome but that's no big deal - just use Firefox.

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

#267

This is the killer quote: “No one wants to face the reality that this is an advertising company with a bunch of hobbies.” It's so brutal but (IMHO) sums up Alphabet in one sentence.

I would say that it's a search company that monetizes via advertising. The adwords product is so bad that you'd have a hard time arguing that they care that much about ads.

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

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>It's up to us in the tech community to protect people from companies that use dark pattern behavior like Google. Are you a self appointed privacy vigilante or were you elected by the people to protect them? Do you also protect people from Credit Card companies, ISP's, Cable Companies, e-Commerce sites and Cell Phone companies or are you just infatuated with Google?

I definitely also try to protect people from other types of predatory technology companies. When people ask me for recommendations, I generally steer people away from ISPs with poor/slow service, hardware manufacturers which produce low quality equipment, and cell carriers which use deceptive marketing.

I do speak about Google more than average, largely because the volume of fanboyism around the company is so massive, and their PR department generates so much fiction. I don't have to tell you AT&T is a terrible company, you already know, so I don't waste a lot of time doting on it. Combatting the sort of psychological warfare Google employs requires drastically more effort.

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

#269

“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…

> 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".

I don't agree that not developing a side-business is what cost Nokia their throne.

Very simply put, it was because they rested on their laurels. A Nokia executive told me the original iPhone is going to fail and used the Nokia N95 spec sheet as the only argument. It was the most impressive smartphone of the time but he completely failed to look ahead, as Nokia had a huge market share, large R&D budget, their own factories and no real competition.

Of course the new platforms crushed Nokia while they had several half-hearted attempts to follow them. They were completely setup to be crushed by any disrupter with money and a vision.

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

#270
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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!" ?

Might be referring to NT
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