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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

#431

Post by Mikeb85 »

endorphone wrote: post #390
footpath wrote: post #84

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.

It's not an admission of failure. Two businessmen created one of the most successful, influencial businesses ever and are passing the torch. They're rich AF and probably want to retire.

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

#432

Post by jillesvangurp »

perl4ever wrote: post #418
jillesvangurp wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share the sentiment that Sundar to me feels a bit like an invisible placeholder for leadership that I would argue is obviously lacking in Google lately. There's nothing wrong with its stock price and revenue and I'm sure from that angle a lot of financial people are pretty happy with the status quo of just milking that cow perpetually. However, looking at it from the technical angle, I see a company that is asleep…

"maybe not really the best for coming up with the next big thing" But does any huge successful company that ends up having a second act really do that, go and find a visionary* to rejuvenate the company? With Nadella, wasn't it more like, Microsoft did a lot of random things, and when one of them was particularly successful, then the leader of it (cloud, Azure) rose to the top? Not that they picked him and then he de…

I think Nadella is a clear case of MS getting lucky. They picked a leader from their own ranks that transformed the company in a few short years. Given the names that were circulating for that role at the time, I don't think they could have done better. It's current valuation would not have happened ever under Balmer. Not even close. That's why he was pushed out. MS was down a path of slow decline and now they are not. There are plenty of big tech companies that technically still exist but are shadows of their former glory. E.g. HP, Oracle, IBM to name a few. MS was on a track of joining that list of has-beens.

Google is in a much better shape than MS just a few short years ago when they replaced Balmer (certainly financially). But yet I'm calling out that now is a good moment to prevent Google from going down that path any further. Sundar is in my view simply not the type of leader Google needs to prevent that.

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

#433

Post by cwp »

gwking wrote: post #168
GauntletWizard wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this meme all the time. What does GCP lag on? What is it missing? I see a proliferation of AWS services, yes, but many seem to be replicating things that GCP has had since the start, in multiple different formats without clear direction. Bigquery covers most of the use cases of Redshift, Kineseis, Athena, EMR, and others. It is at once decoupled from and well integrated with their object storage, allowing reads…

My understanding is that GCP lags on developer trust, specifically when it comes to support. Several years ago I was excited about GCP, but have mostly lost interest after reading various stories about account lockouts here on HN.

This. Unless you are a big, important account, do not put anything you value on any of Google's platforms. There is a small, but non-zero, chance they'll randomly destroy it and ghost you.

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

#434

Post by notatoad »

shadowgovt wrote: post #89
rosybox wrote: post #7

Alphabet and Google being a separate company makes even less sense now.

It's a line-item hack, the way that Hollywood studios structure films to be separate sub-corporations with their own fixed budgets. So if a film crew, say, accidentally blows up a small town somehow, there's a firewall between the assets that were dedicated to making that one film and the entirety of, for example, Sony Pictures net worth and capital. I'm not sure that firewall is well-tested in American law, but it's…

Isn't it the opposite of a line-item hack? Instead of being able to hide the losses of their other bets in the profits of their ad division, the alphabet structure gives their investors visibility into exactly how much money the non-google parts of the company are losing.

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

#435

Post by chrischen »

Ragib_Zaman wrote: post #422
celeritascelery wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook was started by one college kid 4 years prior. Waymo has had the resources of one of the largest companies in the world for the last 10 years.

And their core goal of truly autonomous vehicles is a technical challenge that at this point seems like it will take at least several years more than what they originally thought 3 years ago. Their situation is not similar to FB in 2008 at all.

Even if they overcome this the bigger question is whether the market opportunity is worth the R&D costs, and whether or not bulky self driving vehicles are the best and most lucrative solution to mass transit.

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

#436

Post by headmelted »

numbsafari wrote: post #420
endorphone wrote: post #390

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.

Removing the “firewall” between Google and Google Health will prove to have been a big mistake. They should have stayed separate under Alphabet.

Yup.

Congress is already whispering about the Ascension deal and how it affects the Fitbit buyout with regards to them intervening.

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

#437

Post by libria »

greesil wrote: post #413
goosehonk wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally: Founders: Bring your whole selves to work. Employees: great! That one guy: what a relief, because I’m literally a Nazi. Everybody: no. Leave that part at home. Guy: my rights are being trampled by a liberal conspiracy! Other person: my gender expression is the most important aspect of large-scale software development. Anyone who disagrees must be fired. Everyone: that doesn’t seem all that relevant, actual…

Why is this being downvoted? Now it's flagged. This is ridiculous.

I think burying a comment may lend it some validity. Critiquing it is a better method of understanding or correcting it. Here's a censored version:

Founders: Bring your whole selves to work.

Employees: great!

That one guy: what a relief, because I’m literally an unpopular-party member.

Everybody: no. Leave that part at home.

Guy: my rights are being trampled by a popular-party conspiracy!

Other person: my unique identity is the most important aspect of large-scale software development. Anyone who disagrees must be fired.

Everyone: that doesn’t seem all that relevant, actually.

Person: my rights are being trampled by a majority identity conspiracy!

Everyone: frustration

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

#438

Post by emrehan »

xtracto wrote: post #170
emrehan wrote: post #128

Dear Larry and Sergey, Thank you for creating Google. Nobody could prove that without it the web would have been a better place. You couldn’t have known what’s to come when you were raising hundreds of thousands of dollars as two students in 1998. Maybe your leadership has been one of the least evil among the possibilities in the evil world we live in. However, we know what is it like to lose control of your company,…

That is something that I kind of admire about Bill Gates: As Microsoft's boss he was ruthless, and even anti-competitive, all to benefit his own company. But somehow, he is one of the "best type of person" that could become the richest man in our world. There are so many rich people that just look to be buried with their millions or pass it to their family. Hopefully Sergei and Larry will try to get the same type of…

They could help with their money, but if they could help with their visions, social capital and network that would set them apart.

I admire Brian Acton in this respect. He regretted the decision of selling WhatsApp and publicized it. Since then he has taken on the leadership of Signal while donating money into it.

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

#439

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

greesil wrote: post #425
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's an extremely dishonest take on a highly political issue.

Isn't the more appropriate response to respond to the comment rather than downvote it? It doesn't seem to be a personal attack, or some other violation of the community guidelines.

I'm not a moderator, but IMO, it was absolutely a violation of community guidelines. It was incredibly snarky, flamebaity, and was obviously written to start a political battle.

The fact that it got flagged shows I'm definitely not alone in this thinking.

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

#440

Post by taneq »

Spoom wrote: post #377
abbadadda wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wierdos whot spy on you LOL. I agree with a lot of your points but this one really hit home. On this one, the spying, I always wondered how odd or awkward it had to be internally to push new methods, techniques, or initiatives for "improving user experience" (I.e., spying). I interviewed for some Technical Solutions Engineer role at Google a long time ago. I really wanted the job but when asked a couple questions a…

I think it's very likely that they wanted you to question the ethics there. I don't know what your interview was like though. Googler, opinions are my own.

The one Googler I know personally and have talked to about this stuff seems to have a weird blind spot around privacy and data collection. They're super friendly and happy to discuss products and features, but any questions about keeping data on your own device, limiting data access etc. just gets a blank stare, as if the very concept of "data which Google doesn't track" is nonsensical to them.
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