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Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

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Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#131

Post by Judgmentality »

CydeWeys wrote: post #89
nostrademons wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Through Chrome, which was started internally in 2006 and launched externally in 2008. Though that also was one of those projects where Larry sponsored a couple of talented engineers behind Eric's back and they put out something awesome.

Behind Eric's back? A company that has tens of thousands of employees and you think the co-founder would have to hide a small initial implementation of a project he believed in?

There's no way Google had tens of thousands of employees in 2006. Although it was probably large enough (between 5,000 and 10,000) that your point still stands.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#132

Post by bouncing »

dekhn wrote: post #9
anyfoo wrote: post #5

This is of course extremely subjective, and I have no knowledge of what Google was and is on the inside except for a short internship almost 10 years ago: I somehow always felt that Google with Eric Schmidt as a CEO was a much different Google than later on. Under Eric Schmidt, Google seemed like this extremely innovative company with the brightest minds in the industry. Afterwards, it seemed to instead grow into jus…

The other big thing was Larry pushed social on the company without really understanding social as a product, and was absolutely unable to handle the huge negative response both internally and externally to that push. This all happened at the same time Microsoft and Amazon committed to Cloud (which Google has only tepidly adopted). The one time I met with Schmidt to explain my cloud project, he was delighted and encou…

I'm sure Larry Page is a smart guy, and Page Rank was clever, but I'm not really sure there's any particular reason to believe he knows where any industry is moving. Schmidt could predict technology trends well, while Page seems to just throw acquisitions at a wall, see what sticks, then sunset anything that doesn't.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#133

Post by nostrademons »

Aeolun wrote: post #121
nostrademons wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The set of companies & foundations centered around blockchain, cryptocurrency, distributed ledgers, and related technologies. Coinbase, Binance, CoinMarketCap are doing great, Bitmain would be doing great except they made a terrible bet on Bitcoin Cash, a number of other organizations (VeChain, IOTA, Ripple, Stellar, Ethereum) are doing "we'll see", and still others (Bitfinex, Tether, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV) are im…

Looks like the only ones doing well are the traders.

Nah, it's the folks who sell shovels to the traders.

Just like every other gold rush in history. Fortunes get created, but often not for the folks who think they're going to get rich.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#135

Post by throwawaytoday5 »

minwcnt5 wrote: post #99
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google could fire 30% of their workforce with no disruption in service/revenue. Isn't that true for a large amount of large tech companies? I was under the impression that a large amount of the workers are working on incremental improvements to existing services or working on new features/services entirely. If those people stop working that shouldn't disrupt the service and you shouldn't see the revenue fall until…

I think it's more that there are a large number of employees who don't actually contribute much and treat it like a retirement gig. I've seen people who are only in the office from 10-5, take long breaks for lunches, socializing, working out, massages, etc. and regularly "WFH" one day a week on top of that, and clearly aren't very productive (note: there are people who keep that kind of schedule and do get a lot done…

Why is it hard to fire employees? Workers have extremely weak protections in the United States. I never buy this argument. If google wanted to clean shop they can, other tech companies do it regularly (IBM, Oracle, etc).

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#136

Post by zapzupnz »

z92 wrote: post #127
philsnow wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "trouble" with Orkut was the large majority of those users were outside the United States. Brazil and later India made up the majority. Those eyeballs weren't worth as much to advertisers, and I don't think Google valued the product highly because of it.

That was because you couldn't "sign up" for Orkut. You had to receive an invitation from someone who already has an account. Therefore it spread in regions where people knew one another, instead of spreading smoothly. The reason why they kept it like that was because of the processing power that was needed to serve the pages. That was more than search. Every individual had to be served a different page. And computing…

> Facebook was the first social network where you can actually go and signup an account on your own

Myspace, Friendster, Bebo…

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#137

Post by jacksproit »

mrb wrote: post #74
manigandham wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cryptoverse What exactly is this and what business is doing well in it?

Cryptocurrencies. For example Coinbase is doing well—raised $300M on a $8B valuation: http://fortune.com/2018/10/30/coinbase-series-e-funding/

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/04/how-a-major-cryp...

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#138

Post by scarface74 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #94
mancerayder wrote: post #58

Google seems to be falling flat on its face growth-wise. Its ad revenue is down, its Pixel 3 platform fell completely flat, it shuttered Google + and had a security breach? How can you have a large scale security breach with a brutal tech hiring process, sky high salaries and a whitepaper-producing workforce? Hell, when you interview at much smaller firms, the tech groups copycat the Google hiring techniques, that's…

> Its ad revenue is down Ad revenue is not down. Ad revenue is growing slower than in the past. > How can you have a large scale security breach with a brutal tech hiring process, sky high salaries and a whitepaper-producing workforce? Security is stupendously hard. It is also not a stable state. Software engineering as a discipline does not have methods of turning dollars into security with confidence. There is no c…

Well let’s look at the more important number that is down. Net income is down year over year as are margins.

https://9to5google.com/2019/04/29/alphabet-q1-2019-earnings/

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#139

Post by mr_toad »

perl4ever wrote: post #124
paganel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Page had the right idea, because if you look nowadays at people under 30 for them the Internet is represented by social networks, be it Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or even Snapchat, the internet/web represented by the browser and by visiting different websites via Google is no longer that important. I think Page realized that if Google doesn't hop on the social train they'll end up looking from the outside…

"if you look nowadays at people under 30 for them the Internet is represented by social networks, be it Facebook" I'm not under 30, and can't really say, but I've read frequently in the media that young people don't use Facebook. I use it to a limited extent, and I think everyone I know that uses it is 30-40ish.

Young people use it to interact with family. Their friends are all on other networks.

Re: Eric Schmidt Steps Down from Alphabet’s Board of Directors

#140

Post by vkou »

throwawaytoday5 wrote: post #135
minwcnt5 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more that there are a large number of employees who don't actually contribute much and treat it like a retirement gig. I've seen people who are only in the office from 10-5, take long breaks for lunches, socializing, working out, massages, etc. and regularly "WFH" one day a week on top of that, and clearly aren't very productive (note: there are people who keep that kind of schedule and do get a lot done…

Why is it hard to fire employees? Workers have extremely weak protections in the United States. I never buy this argument. If google wanted to clean shop they can, other tech companies do it regularly (IBM, Oracle, etc).

> Why is it hard to fire employees?

Because when you are billions-of-dollars profitable, and you go ahead and fire a lot of people, it tanks morale, and good performers start looking for the door. (Note: This does not hold in the middle of a recession. We aren't in the middle of a recession, though.)

Because a company could be just as successful without XY% of its workforce, but nobody can correctly identify which XY%. (This one still holds in the middle of a recession.)

Because a lot of that XY% would be more productive, if they were instructed to do something that's more useful to the bottom line.

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