Uber Hires Former Google Search Chief Amit Singhal as SVP of Engineering

Post by tyingq » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 9:49 PM UTC

gukov wrote: post #67

tyingq wrote: post #2

There's a number of things that have happened in the organic search area of Google that seem to suggest a declining interest in quality organic results. There's Matt Cutts' long leave of absence, his departure, and the announcement that he's not really being replaced. A much lower volume of communication from Google on initiatives in the space (they used to talk endlessly about Panda, Penguin, etc). Amit's original r…

You are getting attacked for simply stating your opinion. Do we really want another echo chamber of opinions here? Google might be still all in on search, but what's important here is the outside perception. They won the search war and desperately tried to recreate the success with other products. So far they haven't had another hit (some big misses, though).

Post by bduerst » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 9:51 PM UTC

snovv_crash wrote: post #49

kchoudhu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Marissa Mayer and her reports got poached Looks like Google dodged a bullet there.

Dunno, I think Yahoo! was basically unfixable. I mean, what would you have done differently? They just had too much dead wood, including the brand name.

Post by cbau » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 10:01 PM UTC

mlmlmasd wrote: post #53

maverick_iceman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think self-driving cars would be a major challenge for Uber. As long as ridesharing companies need human drivers network effects ensure that Uber will remain at the top. But when driverless cars become feasible Uber's moat disappears. What's stopping an upstart company to buy/lease 10,000 self-driving cars and let them loose on the street? There's no reason for customers to prefer Uber over them. (This problem beco…

> As long as ridesharing companies need human drivers network effects ensure that Uber will remain at the top. I think it is the opposite... Uber's only real way to turn a profit while staying competitive is to get rid of the cost of drivers. > What's stopping an upstart company to buy/lease 10,000 self-driving cars and let them loose on the street? The fact that Uber is already working on this, has a platform, has t…

Post by klausa » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 10:12 PM UTC

cryptozeus wrote: post #72

oculusthrift wrote: post #5

I'm really confused on what to think about Uber. My personal thinking/logic is really bearish on them, similar to the post on the front page yesterday [1]. However, I keep seeing extremely smart/accomplished people joining it which makes me second guess my intuition. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13437414

I have same feeling, one my friend worked at a flywheel (uber but with taxi cabs)...he said that uber dominates this industry. They have figured out the biggest obstacle which is government regulations. This is the big challenge for any startup trying to copy uber.

Post by congerous » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 10:17 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #55

congerous wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some baseless speculation in this thread about what's Singhal's departure meant for Google search. It's important to remember that Singhal was committed Google's knowledge graph, a painstaking, manually constructed graph of entities and relationships that surfaces the occasional answer (ask Google what the capital of Azerbaijan is and you will see a knowledge graph answer). Knowledge graphs are brittle, hard…

>Google doesn't care about organic results any more. That's BS, frankly. Do they care less than they used to, though? Their placement on the screen as opposed to KG, widgets, and ads..and how that's progressed over time, seems to imply it.