341–350 of 352 posts
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Vertical integration is function of size. At scale even the small efficiency improvements can make big differences, Facebook run their own DCs and design some hardware too coz it probably makes sense at their scale.
Vertical integration is a function of size and other variables. For example, I used to work for a solar power company that would install panels on the roofs of big box stores and then sell the power to the stores below grid prices. This company did not manufacture panels -- they bought them at market rate from various suppliers. The company got acquired by a major silicon wafer manufacturer. One of the things this wa…
In your ancedote the buying company seems to be benefit with increased sales for a non competitive product. Ofcourse they are doing at the expense of the eroding target , but they are deriving value not the way you see it perhaps or the best possible one but value nonetheless.
Google's shutdown of products and APIs seems to have led to critical level of trust loss amongst developers and influencers. It's time for Google to either fix this or get out of providing services and APIs to developers. Google doesn't seem to put any weight at all on the outcry every time its shutters another service/API. The trust must be restored. Google doesn't seem to understand that when they shut service X, t…
This is nonsense. Gmail is free. Inbox was free. Google Search is free. You can launch a profitable business on Google Cloud or Firebase in the free tier. They built Kubernetes and Go, for free, and it's very easy to port your Cloud infrastructure anywhere. You can translate text to any language, for free. What exactly do they owe you? Not enough people were using Inbox. It was an experiment and now they're moving on…
This is oversimplified. Google makes products expecting something in return: users provide it data and ad revenue. More directly, users invest time and thought into learning it and integrating it into their lives. Google invited people to depend on it, and after they did, it killed the product. That's real hours wasted for real people. It's not irrational for them to feel betrayed.
Yes, Google has the right to kill a product, just as you have the right to tell a party guest to leave your house. But don't expect them to love you afterward.
> Not enough people were using Inbox. It was an experiment and now they're moving on.
Why weren't enough people using Inbox? Speaking personally, I never tried it because I expected exactly this. I don't want to waste my time on things that will be shuttered.
Google seems to think that each product is an independent experiment. But it seems more likely that each "experiment" they end contributes to the failure of subsequent ones.
Google doesn't owe people products. But people don't owe Google goodwill, either. And without goodwill, it can't launch new products.
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Should have switched to bare metal, things like AWS cost a ton more than you realize, it just looks like a good deal because you have smaller cost up front. But in the long run managing your own systems at places like Softlayer can save you a bundle. EDIT: I don't care about downvotes, but if you are going to do it at least leave a comment of why you think I am wrong.
> EDIT: I don't care about downvotes, but if you are going to do it at least leave a comment of why you think I am wrong. That would defeat the entire purpose of using voting to manage the signal to noise ratio; in general, if a comment is worthy responding to, it shouldn't be downvoted, and vice versa.
If you upvote, and had to reply saying the same thing because you agree no new information is presented. Thus simply upvoting is needed.
But if you downvote, that means somebody has a differing opinion. Leaving it at a downvote only lets us know somebody disagrees and no new dialog can be had about what other ways something could be viewed.
That being said I think we mostly use the upvote and downvote feature on HN wrong but I could be wrong because I never really looked it up.
I think the intent is a upvote and downvote marks relevance, not agreement, but we often use it for agreement when upvoting. And downvotes seem to happen for both relevance and disagreements.
For example, replying to a post about what hosting provider is best with "I like chocolate ice cream", and "Rackspace is a good option" could both be downvoted for very difference reasons. One for being off topic, OR not liking chocolate ice cream" and the other for simply hating Rack Space.
So if you find you are downvoting something that has no comments that cover your settlement and the post is on topic then it would be helpful for many who may not share your sentiment if you explain why. I don't think that is too much to ask for.
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Hi (ex-googler here, although i wasn't on this project). Product usage isn't a one-way street. It requires coordination from marketing, customer support, and ongoing product development. Inbox was yet another product that Google spent years on internally, launched with a bang, and then basically forgot about while the PMs got their promo and moved on to new projects, and so on. To make a bad analogy (sorry) in respon…
Did you put Google and customer support in the same sentence?
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> EDIT: I don't care about downvotes, but if you are going to do it at least leave a comment of why you think I am wrong. That would defeat the entire purpose of using voting to manage the signal to noise ratio; in general, if a comment is worthy responding to, it shouldn't be downvoted, and vice versa.
I thought about this. Here is what I came up with. If you upvote, and had to reply saying the same thing because you agree no new information is presented. Thus simply upvoting is needed. But if you downvote, that means somebody has a differing opinion. Leaving it at a downvote only lets us know somebody disagrees and no new dialog can be had about what other ways something could be viewed. That being said I think we…
No, it doesn't.
Downvote means “this post is not a productive contribution to the discussion”.
Disagreement may be a reason for that, but it's far from the only reason.
> Leaving it at a downvote only lets us know somebody disagrees and no new dialog can be had about what other ways something could be viewed.
If a comment presents a productive platform for on-topic dialog, then comment and don't downvote.
Downvoting is for things that don't do that.
There is always so much vitriol on HN about these kinds of announcements. I've never understood why. Google presumably has lots of data and feedback from people using Inbox, and determined that it wasn't useful enough or widespread enough to justify ongoing investment. Why is this surprising or shocking? This happens all the time in commercial and open source software. The internet is great, but unfortunately has the…
How long did you spend with a thesaurus to construct this sentence, good god
Ugh, anyone remember the Latitude crap fest? Between dead, Google Plus and only available on Android.
I used to be a Google fan boy but am starting to dislike them more and more. This, they killed off reader and the creepy data collection they do is why I've started to look into alternatives for their products - anyone have any good suggestions?
After being a keen Google user in the late 2000s to mid 2010s, I’ve been in on a process of extracting them from my life now their true creepy colours are on display. YouTube => Deleted Google plus => Deleted Gmail => Deleted, switched to Soverin [0], works great, less than $4 per month for 25gb email hosting Drive => Deleted, moved to iCloud Docs => Deleted, use iWork for docs and Bear [1] for text Search => Duck Du…
What I'm trying to say is your data will be accessible by Google servers regardless of which email service you use -- so why the paid switch?
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I would argue that there's a huge overhead. At least if you make use of tools that these companies provide. And if you don't, then just go with dedicated boxes which you can get cheaper than cloud solutions.
I thought most people used wrappers. sort of like SQL in the '90s, and then you limited yourself to features that both of the providers used
Switching between cloud providers is much easier than going from on-prem to the cloud. So, once your systems are "cloud" ready you should be able to avoid vendor lock in naturally.