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Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

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Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#151
post #25

I see a few comments praising Sundar. As someone who doesn’t follow closely, but feels that Google has deteriorated dramatically under his watch, does someone mind explaining the reasoning for said praise?

He's a good businessman, but that "deterioration" that you (and me and many many others) see is because he's not driven by the same morals and beliefs that Larry and Sergey had when they were running the company. The "old Google" everyone loved was the pre-Sundar Google.

I can't really blame Larry and Sergey for wanting to do something else, and leaving the company in the hands of someone that they know will maximize profits. But that doesn't change the fact that modern Google does a lot of scummy and downright evil stuff today that likely wouldn't have happened during the "old Google" days.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#152
post #120
post #25

I see a few comments praising Sundar. As someone who doesn’t follow closely, but feels that Google has deteriorated dramatically under his watch, does someone mind explaining the reasoning for said praise?

He's Ballmer-ing steadily forward, that's all that is really needed at this point.

Perhaps Tim Cook-ing forward is a more modern/relevant way of describing the phenomenon? (Pichai and Cook are both competent empire caretakers. Innovation is suffering though...)

Ballmer wasn't competent.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#154
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it there is more behind the scenes, the letter is basically saying: We don't want to deal, or like/enjoy dealing with this pesky employee stuff. We don't have the time, energy, or enjoy it, and they'd rather do something else with their time and money. They are in a position where they either crack-down on their culture to more of a corp like, and appear to go full evil, or be even more lenient, and risk small…

I think that's a cynical view of the situation. These guys have grown a college startup into one of the world's most valuable companies. They're rich beyond imagination. More importantly, they're getting close to being 50. Would you want a day job if you could retire 15 years earlier than most, especially considering Google has served as a vehicle to explore a ton of other projects they've been interested in (since m…

> I think that's a cynical view of the situation.

I think it's impossible to be cynical enough about a guy who blacklisted a company from his search engine because they used his service to show a picture of his backyard as a way of illustrating the privacy violations his company enabled.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they will regret it. Google was once a real special company. Their IPO filling, their stance on China, those were principled, courageous stands that came straight from Larry and Sergey. To see their beautiful baby turn into another mega-corp, as hypocritical as any, colonized by activists and careerists bent on distorting the social fabric to advance ideologies and profits? Contemplating that turn of events w…

I think what they learned in the intervening 15 years is that there are very strong structural forces pushing corporations towards the "traditional company" form that everybody hates, and that even as CEO, even as controlling shareholders, they were powerless to stop them. At least, that's what I learned, having worked at Google during the period where "Don't be evil" was still taken seriously, engineers could still…

You're right. One of these forces is how in a sufficiently large organization you're practically guaranteed to attract a critical mass of bad actors, people with rare but extremely harmful personality types. In an open culture, these bad actors can find each other and coordinate, creating massive problems for the whole organization. Traditional big companies are robust against these bad actors --- unfortunately at the cost of many other desirable characteristics. Smaller companies (maybe up to 10k headcount) can get without the necessary safeguards because, due to their small size, they don't attract a critical mass of rare but extremely harmful personalities.

Google tried to remain an open, high-trust place well beyond the point when it became obvious that the company had attracted exactly this sort of toxic element. Now the company is paying the price.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#156
post #41
post #20

Buried in a paragraph 2/3 of the way down: > ... Going forward, Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet. ... Not knowing the internals of Google, it seems as if this is the announcement that Page and Brin are stepping down. Is this correct? If so, what an incredibly subtle way to announce a high-profile pair of resignations.

Yes, this is the announcement that Page and Brin are stepping down. I wouldn't really call it "incredibly subtle" - most similar announcements are wrapped in a bunch of corporate language as well. This is a pretty standard way to announce this sort of thing.

Do you know what they will be doing next?

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#157
post #41
post #20

Buried in a paragraph 2/3 of the way down: > ... Going forward, Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet. ... Not knowing the internals of Google, it seems as if this is the announcement that Page and Brin are stepping down. Is this correct? If so, what an incredibly subtle way to announce a high-profile pair of resignations.

Yes, this is the announcement that Page and Brin are stepping down. I wouldn't really call it "incredibly subtle" - most similar announcements are wrapped in a bunch of corporate language as well. This is a pretty standard way to announce this sort of thing.

I guess I just don't believe this. Google is one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world. Having both people step down like this is incredibly strange.

I mean, neither of them even tried the ol' "I'm stepping down to spend time with my family" thing.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#158
post #20

Buried in a paragraph 2/3 of the way down: > ... Going forward, Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet. ... Not knowing the internals of Google, it seems as if this is the announcement that Page and Brin are stepping down. Is this correct? If so, what an incredibly subtle way to announce a high-profile pair of resignations.

This paragraph seems pretty straightforward: >Today, in 2019, if the company was a person, it would be a young adult of 21 and it would be time to leave the roost. While it has been a tremendous privilege to be deeply involved in the day-to-day management of the company for so long, we believe it’s time to assume the role of proud parents—offering advice and love, but not daily nagging!

From the outside, it feels much more like the company is hitting a midlife crisis (feeling unsettled, not as agile as they used to be) than a young adult.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#159
post #144
post #35

The whole thing reads like it was written by a PR person.

It is literally the job of PR people to write things like these. I’m confused by your statement. This is effectively a press release, of course it was written by a PR person.

That doesn't mean it has to read like it was written by a PR person.

Re: Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a cynical view of the situation. These guys have grown a college startup into one of the world's most valuable companies. They're rich beyond imagination. More importantly, they're getting close to being 50. Would you want a day job if you could retire 15 years earlier than most, especially considering Google has served as a vehicle to explore a ton of other projects they've been interested in (since m…

I think you are misreading it, I am not judging Sergei and Larry negatively.... What I am saying is that their decision makes total sense, and there is no reason to chide on them on 'why they are not dealing with the employe' problems, but quitting' as the OP did. Really, this is just a: Peace out guys, we are moving on... And there is nothing wrong with it, as google is not really dealing with an existential threat…

I judge them pretty negatively. People like Bezos, Jobs, or even Gates never really spent so much time building this PR image of being for the greater good, holier-than-though, "making the world a better place." Everyone knows "don't be evil", but how about their recruiting catch phrase "do cool things that matter." Even the "not a conventional company" tag line is relevant here.

Hypocrites just irk me more than people open about their intentions and motivation, and to me Larry and Sergey belong in the hypocrite category. They ultimately were billionares with total control over Google, this idea that somehow things just got out of their control is absurd. It didn't get out of their control, what happened is that whenever push came to shove on difficult issues, they always went with the decision that they felt would lead to the higher stock price. After years of telling everyone who would listen they were non-conventional leaders interested in more than just money, they always purely pursued the lucre. And why? They are literally amongst the world's richest people already.

I was at the TGIF where Sergey tried to sell the company on Maven, and then what happened was, internal google groups are a bit like public URLs, in that they were basically visible to all full time employees if you knew the link. So Sergey would say one thing on stage and then someone would stumble up on the link about the real strategy, and that what they said on stage was "messaging" to appease dissenters. It was total dishonesty, and it was all for big fat contracts, that's it. They did not care one bit about the dangers of weaponized AI or the dangers of being an international company building military technology for one company, or the general growth of the military industrial complex and how the biggest tech company becoming part of it it could snowball its size and dangerous impact on society. And Maven is just one example, but censorship in China is another, and there's many more. I do get that they struggle with some truly difficult decisions that are ethically ambiguous and they can't please everybody, but there are plenty of spots where it was abundantly clear that the only thing Larry and Sergey cared about was filling their already overfilling coffers with more gold. And when Bezos does that, at least he never pretended otherwise, but when Larry and Sergey do it, they are totally backtracking on a public image they spent years selling to people.

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