Live data from Hacker News

Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

blog.google

401–410 of 637 posts

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

#401

https://abc.xyz/investor/news/releases/2019/1203/ Slightly more organized info in the intro bullets. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the CEO and President, respectively, of Alphabet, have decided to leave these roles. They will continue their involvement as co-founders, shareholders and members of Alphabet’s Board of Directors.

In a way this seems like an admission of the failure of the "Alphabet" thing. The idea behind that originally was that all of these other projects were going to become so significant that it wouldn't make sense to have them or their management coupled with Google. But a half-decade later, it's still 99.9% Google, so just double-up the Google guy to lead both tiers. Same as it ever was.

I think Waymo still has a solid shot

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

#402

John Legere is stepping down from T-Mobile. Perhaps he might be asked to step in for Sundar if Sundar can't turn it around in the next 18 months.

Google should buy a hardware company and a carrier company to have a big impact on hardware business

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

#403
post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's there on paper, but is is really still there?

I am a Googler, opinions on my own. The problem with the phrase is that it is very relative depending on your meaning of evil. It's a shifting over time and varies by person. At the same time it provides a good guiding principle for Google as a whole. You need to think about users in different parts of the world with different ideas of what is good and evil, and try to cater to all of them. It's a really hard problem…

I'm a Xoogler myself, I understand the struggle.

And I agree that I've never known any individual Googler to be evil, or intend to be evil (Although I've seen questionable decision making at times).

But whilst no one Googler is evil, the larger body that is "Google" has turned slightly further towards evil (In my personal definition of the word evil).

It's still nowhere near what I would consider true evil, I would probably go back to Google one day if the opportunity presents itself. But I would argue the Google I see today is less "good" than the Google I saw 5 years ago.

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

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way this seems like an admission of the failure of the "Alphabet" thing. The idea behind that originally was that all of these other projects were going to become so significant that it wouldn't make sense to have them or their management coupled with Google. But a half-decade later, it's still 99.9% Google, so just double-up the Google guy to lead both tiers. Same as it ever was.

I think Waymo still has a solid shot

How much money is waymo making?

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

#407
post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Larry and Sergey are basically best friends. Their involvement with Google, as a pair, has been receding for quite some time. Today's announcement was foreshadowed by the creation of Alphabet Inc. as a parent company in 2015.

After Brin’s affairs came to light, Page was so pissed off, he didn’t talk to him for many months. They might not be best friends at this point.

Details in Sergey Brin and Amanda Rosenberg: Inside the Google Co-Founder’s Romance with the Google Glass Marketing Manager | Vanity Fair http://archive.is/kQvuR Febr 2015

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

#408

https://abc.xyz/investor/news/releases/2019/1203/ Slightly more organized info in the intro bullets. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the CEO and President, respectively, of Alphabet, have decided to leave these roles. They will continue their involvement as co-founders, shareholders and members of Alphabet’s Board of Directors.

In a way this seems like an admission of the failure of the "Alphabet" thing. The idea behind that originally was that all of these other projects were going to become so significant that it wouldn't make sense to have them or their management coupled with Google. But a half-decade later, it's still 99.9% Google, so just double-up the Google guy to lead both tiers. Same as it ever was.

Even if your observation is correct, it's not a bad thing. A failed experiment is hardly a failure. I doubt the legal border between Alphabet and Google won't prove useful in the future.

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

#409
post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's there on paper, but is is really still there?

I am a Googler, opinions on my own. The problem with the phrase is that it is very relative depending on your meaning of evil. It's a shifting over time and varies by person. At the same time it provides a good guiding principle for Google as a whole. You need to think about users in different parts of the world with different ideas of what is good and evil, and try to cater to all of them. It's a really hard problem…

"but when you have billion user products, some people are always going to be pissed at you"

The problem with this narrative (which has been the official line for almost 7-8 years now) is it doesn't cause exaptation or adaptation. It is good enough to hold on to, if the goal is stagnation (which is what has happened with Search - you can point at things like wolframalpha, alpha go, stackexchange, quora, wikipedia, elasticsearch etc etc and ask why if the goal was to organize the worlds info, these things failed to develop internally - Similarly with Youtube - why did they missed being netflix or twitch, how did they not become the default platform for disney). The answer is the Scale has worked against that goal. So you stagnate.

The initial goal was to scale globally. That goal was achieved. After that new goals had to be defined. That did not happen because its hard to define achievable goals at that scale. The only default goal was empire defense - i.e. hold on to scale by hook or crook. For what? Well no great answer to that has been found. Which is hinting that global scale is counter productive to innovation whether technical or moral.

Its kind of like a football team winning the game and then staying on the pitch. Not playing any new games or restarting play. Then saying but guys we won leave us alone now.

I don't blame Google. But I expect Google to lead not to react and be defensive. And to do that the narrative requires honesty.

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

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much money is waymo making?

people asked the same thing about facebook in 2008

Facebook in 2008 had a singularity of users, so people were more comfortable with the answer.
Post reply on HN