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

#281

Post by jondubois » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 11:33 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…

I think a lot of tech companies are like this.

Most tech companies by far succeeded because they were in the right place at the right time - But post-rationalization can make anyone look like a genius; and the illusion can last forever.

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

#282

Post by paulcole » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 11:35 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #231

ChuckMcM wrote: post #118

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…

""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…

> meandering, aimless, consumer-centric searches like "new fitness watch" where any result tangentally related is useful

I would wager that this describes a shockingly high percentage of the average person's searches. I know it's true for me.

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

#283

Post by legolas2412 » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 11:39 PM UTC

drcross wrote: post #181

euyyn wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Never understood this argument "s getting tedious when put in context of the the vast number of regular deaths on the road."

What are you comparing? a 70,000$ car with better safety standards to a 10 year old car! A car that's aimed to be completely autonomous (with driver assistance features) compared with a car completely human driven?

Can you not think beyond extremes? Here's a simple example. An always-on "Autopilot" (or any other driver assistance system) that only intervenes if the driver does a tragic mistake. We still have the important general intelligence of a human and the faster and reliable response of a machine.

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

#284

Post by legolas2412 » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 11:42 PM UTC

nojvek wrote: post #232

ScottBurson wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, a human driver wouldn't have had any trouble avoiding that accident -- the truck was visible for some distance. It's not just about the overall fatality rate per mile. Self-driving cars also need to not have any accidents that humans would have easily avoided. Until they demonstrate that, they're not going to be widely accepted.

Teslas don't come equipped with a LIDAR, that cruise, uber, udacity and google have been adding as a very important sensor. Lidar sees a 3D cloud around the car with almost a cm accuracy. Better sensors could have most definitely prevented the accident. However, to add to tesla's point. I have a car with adaptive cruise control. Not having to constantly check distance with car head has probably saved me once or twice…

Yup, but I hope you see that an always-on driver assistance system is really different from a completely self-driven car.

I see so many people (like the one two replies above) push the argument for the latter using the advantages that even the first would give.

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

#285

Post by sib » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 11:44 PM UTC

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…

"You get what you measure"

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

#286

Post by legolas2412 » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 11:48 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…

"explained by the driver getting bored and complacent. "

I think it's more than that. I think driving requires a general level intelligence, and not a rule based AI.

For example, driving in the suburbs, you see a ball bounce in front of you. Expecting a chasing kid or a dog, you come to a stop. This isn't something a completely self driving car will do.

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

#287

Post by euyyn » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 11:55 PM UTC

legolas2412 wrote: post #286

euyyn wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"explained by the driver getting bored and complacent. " I think it's more than that. I think driving requires a general level intelligence, and not a rule based AI. For example, driving in the suburbs, you see a ball bounce in front of you. Expecting a chasing kid or a dog, you come to a stop. This isn't something a completely self driving car will do.

On the other hand, from the demos I've seen of "what the car is seeing", it looks like the car would probably know the child is running in his direction even before the ball passes in front of it.

We use general intelligence to deduce what we don't see. But the car sees much much more than we do.

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

#288

Post by sib » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 11:57 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #98

gph wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wouldn't feeding an employee every day qualify? 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 ~$…

The fact that employer-paid health insurance premiums are not taxed as income is a direct result of the wage-and-price controls established in the US in WWII.

"Employer-sponsored health insurance plans dramatically expanded as a direct result of wage controls imposed by the federal government during World War II. The labor market was tight because of the increased demand for goods and decreased supply of workers during the war. Federally imposed wage and price controls prohibited manufacturers and other employers from raising wages enough to attract workers. When the War Labor Board declared that fringe benefits, such as sick leave and health insurance, did not count as wages for the purpose of wage controls, employers responded with significantly increased offers of fringe benefits, especially health care coverage, to attract workers."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_in_the_United...

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

#289

Post by npunt » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 11:57 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.

This. Discovery is a rather unique activity that has a wholly different set of details / constraints / etc. Way more social and content driven. Every store & platform out there does its best to accommodate discovery (and sometimes succeeds), but this is secondary to things like maintenance/updates/cust svc, providing relevant product information, and managing transactions.

Steam isn't bad at discovery, but because they're not creating much original content and their UI is janky, they're also not that good at it.

Source: created comprehensive database of education technology products [1], and while we made best attempt at discovery, we learned pretty quickly it was secondary in importance to having comprehensive info.

[1] https://www.edsurge.com/product-reviews/

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

#290

Post by legolas2412 » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 11:58 PM UTC

photogrammetry wrote: post #241

MicroBerto wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they make money along the way Only killing a few people in the process, but hey who am I to judge?

Are you implying that Tesla killed the (1 person, not people) who decided to let his car slam into a tractor-trailer on cruise control? It's not a problem to you that, say, Apple has "financed the suicides of dozens of Foxconn workers," or that GM killed 140 people by suppressing information on a defective ignition switch, or that Lockheed Martin and Halliburton buoy their stock by selling weapons to kill hundreds of…

I'm going to ignore the whataboutism you spew.

Also, Elon musk has done amazing work with electric cars, sustainable energy and space travel. No doubt about that.

But this is about Autopilot, a collection of driver assistance program. Not sure about OP, but my spite with Tesla is that they are pushing the above-mentioned driver assistance programs as self-driving features. This over-selling is going to kill people.

And for your information, lane keeping assist, lane driving assist, automated cruise control (which is pretty much AP1.0) have been present in several cars. Even self parking has been demoed by several cars. Add in automatic lane changing (which doesn't sound difficult to me), it wraps up Enhanced AP1.0.

Does that sound like a completely autonomous self driving car? Because that's what the public perception is like.