This thread being here today is rather ironically timed, given that Google announced internally today it isn't giving its employees any Christmas gift for the first time in its corporate history, presumably because of the financial impact.
Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
351–360 of 463 posts
Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#352Earlier 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…
Are you kidding me about Google customer support? They're the only company that ever solved my problem with a Linux question, and later helped me when I purchased a movie on YouTube on an account I didn't intend to purchase on. They might not provide great customer support to some market segments, but when it comes to the end-consumer, they go above and beyond.
If the op was talking about AdWords, he is wildly correct
Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
"All of Google's products..." and there are many "create lock-in." so very true How have there been no anti-trust related issues here?!
Because antitrust law is made of words that mean things. There is no field, anywhere, in which Google has the monopolistic position necessary, or has been shown to be in an oligopolic group necessary, to invoke antitrust law against the company. Not search, not ads, not mobile, not e-mail, not anywhere . They have competition, and healthy competition, in literally every field.
You didn't need to be an asshole. But, you went and were.
Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#354So 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 true. Google founders were extremely thrifty in the early days, before they started making money. They didn't compromise, but they didn't spend lavishly either.
Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because antitrust law is made of words that mean things. There is no field, anywhere, in which Google has the monopolistic position necessary, or has been shown to be in an oligopolic group necessary, to invoke antitrust law against the company. Not search, not ads, not mobile, not e-mail, not anywhere . They have competition, and healthy competition, in literally every field.
You didn't need to be an asshole. But, you went and were.
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Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because antitrust law is made of words that mean things. There is no field, anywhere, in which Google has the monopolistic position necessary, or has been shown to be in an oligopolic group necessary, to invoke antitrust law against the company. Not search, not ads, not mobile, not e-mail, not anywhere . They have competition, and healthy competition, in literally every field.
You didn't need to be an asshole. But, you went and were.
I answered the breathless and silly question you asked here instead of punching in your surely-not-Google search engine of choice with exactly the level of seriousness with which I regarded it. HTH. HAND.
Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#357“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 beca…
One more reason because of which Nokia failed, I think, is because they had a platform which was somewhat successful. Symbian. They stuck with it too long rather than jumping the Android ship. If they had embraced Android whole heartedly, I think they could have competed with Samsung for the Android supremacy. Their hardware was good and they had loyal customers, at least in India.
Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#358I think this article is trying to unnecessarily create issue out of something very obvious. It's very clear that Google's main source of revenue is ads. But that is backed by very strong products which are an integral part of billions of people's daily lives. Search, You Tube, Android, Gmail, Maps and a few others. As long as they maintain their lead in these products, their ad revenue is not going to go anywhere.
What's even more encouraging is that most of these products are improving with great speed every year. They are fighting the Cloud Battle very hard. So I think it is OK that some of the big dreams they have tried like Google glass and autonomous cars have failed. One needs to take big risks to get big wins. I think if they stopped these moon shot projects then it will be a thing of big concern, then they would have stopped innovating. Innovation is what give the Google "brand" it's aura, which makes people believe that whatever Google produces must be good. It gives them the edge.
Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#359Earlier 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 know exactly what you mean. "Half" "of" "my" "searches" "look" "like" "this" "these" "days". I can understand throwing out one of many keywords when I'm down on page 6, but when I search with only 4 terms and the very first result has 2 words s̶t̶r̶u̶c̶k̶ o̶u̶t̶ I start to wonder who exactly this search box is for.
Under "Search tools", click on "Verbatim". It will cause the query to actually honor the words you typed.
Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 think you and the parent commenter are missing a critical points. These companies were successful because of what they were, and they continue to be successful because of what they are. It is a virtuous circle living on money, people, management and many more characteristics that go together.
Except, Valve's cabal system was in use for the development of HL1, and of course they didn't have buckets of money before HL1.