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

#331

Post by baccheion » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 3:41 AM UTC

nunez wrote: post #27

Yup. There was SOOOOOOOOO much bullshit work being done there that could ONLY be done because Google can afford so much top-notch talent to work on research, even if it reinvents the wheel. It was a big part of the reason why I left. That being said, at least they didn't invest their dollars on loads of red tape, though to be fair it isn't like all of Google is incredibly regulated unlike many other multi-billion dol…

If you actually have a worthwhile idea or something you're working on starts going somewhere, the masses will descend trying to stall it out. They'll also magically try to slap their face/name on it, while trying to push you out.

Also, it's funny how many random things are being worked on, as it seemed impossible to get time or support to work on anything. I wonder what process/reasoning goes into deciding who gets to work on their own thing.

This company is so typical regarding many things that most of their PR/marketing sound like outright lies.

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

#332

Post by oxide » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 3:50 AM UTC

halomru wrote: post #141

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…

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 impr…

Over 40% of the titles on Steam have been added in the past year alone.

The floodgates need to close, now. As someone who has voted on hundreds of Greenlight titles, Greenlight is an abject failure IMO. It's flooded with garbage, the first few waves of approvals gave us some great titles that otherwise would have never seen the platform, but now it's a nightmare. There are no more approval lists. What's worse, it's the only way onto Steam. Your indie gem is just as likely to be lost in the shovelware noise as the latest idle game ported from mobile.

Anyone with $100 can post games there. Anyone with more than $100 can purchase a service which votes their pre-purchased unchanged asset pack "game" through Greenlight. It's ridiculous.

Tags and abandoned curator lists are not a solution to hundreds of shovelware titles clogging up the new releases section IMO.

Unfortunately, nothing will change until something comes along to replace the current system entirely. Valve will act when they are forced to act, not before.

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

#333

Post by fineline » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 3:50 AM UTC

drvdevd wrote: post #328

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 interesting thing about Google though, is their seemingly humble roots and how quickly they rose to billions in ad revenue. I still remember when they didn't exist. I believe that kind of quick, meteoric rise is a relatively new phenomena. A company of Google's scale would've taken 100 years to build, 50 years ago.

So if they'd started in 1966 it wouldn't have been built until 2066? Good job they waited until the nineties so they could leapfrog their alternate destiny.

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

#334

Post by toast0 » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 3:54 AM UTC

GCA10 wrote: post #57

Big companies seem to step in the same puddle, every time they try to set up one of these "breakthrough incubator" projects. They pick fascinating projects. They hire lots of smart people and give them great autonomy. But they inadvertently set up incentives that lead to the repeated creation of LINS (lavishly impractical non-solutions). And then the plug gets pulled. I think the key problem is that the research team…

Google could allow a small group to work on something with use of Google's full software stack, and HR etc, but host it in google cloud (or proxy through google cloud so it looks like it's in google cloud) and don't mention it's from google (and segregate the user data away from google) If it gets traction, you can reveal it's a google project or fold the learnings into appropriate google projects or spin it off (although spin off is more complex if you did build it on top of the usual google stack)

Allow something like ten people years and a reasonable amount of hardware, and when you run out of that, come back for more budget or make revenue.

I haven't worked at google, but from experience at large companies, having the basics set for huge scale helps a lot (and avoids choice paralysis) so you can concentrate on doing the thing you wanted to do.

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

#335

Post by bane » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 3:56 AM UTC

nkkar wrote: post #314

bane wrote: post #313

One of the problems with companies that have cash cow revenue streams is that it sometimes doesn't matter what kinds of decisions the executives make, poor or good, the money will keep rolling in...until one day it doesn't and nobody has a clue how to actually manage the rapidly sinking ship. I've been studying Atari for quite a while, there's so many interesting pieces to the company and their success and failure, a…

Any reading recommendations?

Business is Fun (Vendel, Goldberg) is part one of hopefully a multipart, incredibly researched, history of the company.

https://www.amazon.com/Atari-Inc-Business-Curt-Vendel/dp/098...

The ANTIC podcast also has some absolutely incredible interviews with folks form the era: https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/

"Racing the Beam" is a more technical analysis of some of the early Atari platform development for the VCS/2600. This platform was Atari's cash cow and they failed to really pivot away from it. https://www.amazon.com/Racing-Beam-Computer-Platform-Studies...

These are probably good starting points.

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

#336

Post by gniv » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 4:00 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #242

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.

What Punch said, basically its a maturing of the Internet Advertising market, the early enthusiasm for lots of metrics on engagement being dampened by a gradual understanding of click fraud. This is reflected in Google's financials as a falling 'cost per click' (what Google gets for an ad click). The other factor is that Google search has been slowly losing its quality edge on its competitors and so services like Mic…

> This is reflected in Google's financials as a falling 'cost per click' (what Google gets for an ad click).

But what is not known is the cost of a _similar_ click. Since the number of clicks increases dramatically quarter over quarter, it could be that it's the new clicks that are bringing the cost down.

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

#337

Post by drvdevd » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 4:01 AM UTC

fineline wrote: post #333

drvdevd wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing about Google though, is their seemingly humble roots and how quickly they rose to billions in ad revenue. I still remember when they didn't exist. I believe that kind of quick, meteoric rise is a relatively new phenomena. A company of Google's scale would've taken 100 years to build, 50 years ago.

So if they'd started in 1966 it wouldn't have been built until 2066? Good job they waited until the nineties so they could leapfrog their alternate destiny.

Actually, yes. That's exactly correct. You can probably directly correlate their growth with the rise of widely available broadband internet access for homes in the 90s.

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

#338

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 4:01 AM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #309

Really? "Never" What about 18 months ago? > Google Earnings: Profits Soar As The Company Reins In Cost http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2015/07/20/goo... > Google shares surge on talk of cost discipline http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/07/16/google-earning... Whatever, keep the narrative.

[deleted]

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

#339

Post by bzbarsky » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 4:02 AM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #233

bzbarsky wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because Edge doesn't support the Adobe Reader plugin, and to avoid a support nightmare Adobe seems to recommend downloading a browser it does work with. I visit that same link using Firefox on Linux and don't get a Chrome install checkbox on the page, but maybe someone else is?

The Chrome distribution deal with Adobe was always Windows-only, as far as I know. So I'm not surprised you're not seeing it on Linux. That said, Adobe is just showing whatever they were paid to show, for whoever the target audience is. With Firefox on Windows as of today it shows checkboxes for some antivirus programs instead of Chrome; I assume McAffee outbid Google here.

With IE11, which does support ActiveX, it shows ... a Chrome download checkbox. And the Google toolbar.

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

#340

Post by baccheion » Fri, Dec 09, 2016, 4:03 AM UTC

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'm not a fan of "cost discipline." It sounds more like stingy, conservative, short-sighted, and backward.

My problem isn't with Google spending tons of money on "far out" things, it's with those "far out" things not actually being far out.

If they were spending billions to develop teleportation, anti-aging (both internally and skin/beauty-wise), intelligence/fluidity increasing drugs, disease cures, etc, then I'd be all about it. Especially if they were making progress, as another problem is setting out to develop teleportation, making no progress after 5 years, then continuing anyway.

There are also nearer-term things to work on like wireless charging, batteries with increased capacity (and/or more efficient/passive energy usage), solar/wind/nuclear power to add variety to energy sources, lower cost Tesla Model S equivalents (rather than the brute force approach being used by Tesla with the Model 3), etc.

There also more relevant education in schools (actual knowledge and skills, rather than an indoctrination with "smile, show up on time, conform, and do what you're told"), streamlining/elimination of politics (government), elimination of middle-management and company politics, ending hunger, getting rid of prejudice and inequality, minimizing crime (especially violent crime), etc.

In the grand scheme of things, they are really doing nothing, going nowhere, and spending endless amounts of money doing it.

Also, there are the crap products they keep releasing. Something needs to be done to put an end to that crappiness.