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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

#361

Post by lobster_johnson »

hackcrafter wrote: post #146
ronald_raygun wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good blog post on what youre talking about https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

On a side note, I'm glad to see Joel has re-themed his blog posts but kept them hosted at the same URLs. Many of these posts seem timeless and often very prescient. In fact, at the bottom of this one, he points out the strategic dead-end Sun was heading down with commoditizing software while also making/promoting Java that commoditized their hardware...

He recently moved to WordPress, after having used his own blogging tool for years: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/rip-citydesk/

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

#362

Post by lobster_johnson »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #111
throwaway729 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's dominance in advertising couldn't occur without the product mix. This is absolutely accurate. Google is what it is because google.com is the best search engine in the world and because GMail is the best web-based mail client -- free or otherwise.

free or otherwise. Correct, which is why many people have gmail for personal use and google apps gmail for professional. I can't use Outlook or Yahoo Mail; that's not due to a lack of trying.

There are better alternatives. I use Fastmail.com.

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

#363

Post by technobabble »

Arjuna wrote: post #140
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…

"I hope the free sodas stay though." For those that are not aware of the reference here, you will enjoy reading Steve Blank's post entitled "The Elves Leave Middle Earth - Sodas Are No Longer Free." https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...

Wow, thank you for the article, I've never read it before.

This happened at the Bike Cooperative I used to work at; everything was informal, but we were able to focus on weird types of bikes and recycling projects that were interesting to us and subsequently we'd dedicate hours to do them. Unsurprisingly, the management came in, and we were wrench monkeys like everybody else; not so say that we were whiny because we didn't feel like "special snowflakes. We lost freedom to focus on our strengths in the cooperative.

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

#364

Post by tln »

voltagex_ wrote: post #308
Black-Plaid wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine that most people don't realize they are not Google customers. If you have paid Google money, then you are a customer. People using Google's 'free' services are not. Only customers will get good support.

>If you have paid Google money If you've paid Google enough money. I have to keep paying $6AUD/month unless I want to lose $300+ of Android apps forever (Google Apps for Work). No chance of transferring them to another account (I'd pay $100+ for this)

That is a curious situation. Have you really paid for $300 of apps for yourself?

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

#365

Post by tln »

toast0 wrote: post #334
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 (alt…

I was going to suggest something similar. Provide a way for employees to work part time or on a sabbatical, while on their own company. The incubator could take a small %age like YC, and Google would get to keep employees that would leave otherwise, closer to home.

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

#366

Post by jon-wood »

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.

My perception is that Valve are the exception to that rule. They've got the money on tap from Steam, meaning their game development side is more of a hobby than anything else, giving a lot of freedom to the teams working on new games. I could believe it's a bit less rosy working on new hats for their Avatar Dressup games.

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

#367

Post by morgante »

muninn_ wrote: post #153
jasode wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Many companies are able to get the perks, culture, and autonomy right without being a multi-billion dollar company. You're right but I understood what Periodic intended to explain. Unfortunately, he phrased it as "billions in ad revenue" instead of a less common metric of "profit-per-employee" . If the company generates enough profit-per-employee , it can afford to pay for lavish perks. Consider 2 different companie…

So I understand what you're saying here, and it makes sense. At the same time, I see career section after career section offering the same kind of perks with much smaller companies. Maybe it's not 3 meals of gourmet food, but free catered lunches, great 401k matching, unlimited vacation, great health and dental benefits. I'm not saying the perks are matched tit-for-tat, but I still stand by my statement that you don'…

I'm guessing you're mostly looking at career sections for technology companies. In general, tech companies have quite high revenue per employee.

You're probably also looking at startups, which don't yet have material revenue but plan to reach margins closer to Google's than Walmart's.

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

#368

Post by morgante »

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…

This is exactly what Alphabetization is meant to solve. A federation of companies can more effectively allow individual divisions to operate like startups. Additionally, it's a lot easier to push experiments when they're not attached to the Google brand.

Personally, I think Google should just funnel all the profits into GV.

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

#369

Post by swang »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #359
guycook wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

does this honor typos? i like spellcorrect changes but i hate all the other assumptions they make about my search terms.

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

#370

Post by morgante »

ScottBurson wrote: post #199
drcross wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> Self-driving cars also need to not have any accidents that humans would have easily avoided.

Why? If they're overall much safer, then that seems like a net win to me—even if their failure modes are not identical to human ones.

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