Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 637 posts

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

#491

Post by hobofan »

airnomad wrote: post #487

Problem with google is that they are losing data game. They own the web but meanwhile web became only one medium among many and a lot of companies build their own "web" Instagram app is essentially a browser to use IG's private "web" of content google has no access to. Same goes for twitter, even Snapchat. So attention wise, google is loosing dominance as other companies are building their own protocols on top of web…

If you go with that kind of thinking, then I would say that they also mostly own location data. I'm more and more regularly seeing ads on my Google Maps, so it seems they are gearing up on monetizing that too.

Even with being locked out of that silos, I wouldn't be too worried about Google, as it seems that it barely hurt their income streams.

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

#493

Post by leadingthenet »

theferalrobot wrote: post #372
basch wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube and Gmail are massive social networks.

If you want to water down the definition beyond recognition then snail mail is a social network.

Snail mail is a social network. I think the OP meant online social networks, though.

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

#494

Post by narrator »

fjrufjfjfu wrote: post #447
Mikeb85 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know man. Doesn't that sound a little bit suspicious? If you were to create Google why would you just peace out? Look at Bill Gates. He still wants to do things but the google founders are all MIA. How do guys like that just lose all ambition and disappear?

Well Sergey did get mentioned in a Q drop 3644 the day before he resigned. If you don't know what that is, don't bother googling it.

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

#495

Post by jfim »

kendallpark wrote: post #444
chrischen wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Speaking of market opportunity, are there SDVs being tested in outside of California and Arizona? The rest of the US gets its fair share of rain, snow, and ice. Even if the Bay Area can manage self-driving cars, when would we expect a rollout in places like Minneapolis or Boston?

Yes, there are. Off the top of my head, in the US:

Las Vegas (Aptiv), Pittsburgh (Aptiv, Aurora, Ford, Uber ATG), Dearborn MI (Ford), Miami (Ford), Washington (Ford). There's also a retirement community in Florida that Voyage is testing in.

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

#496

Post by chrischen »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #483
jeffreygoesto wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or Mumbai? Or Jakarta?

Even if the answer there is "never", so what? Do we really need to set the bar at "replace all vehicles everywhere in all situations" for it to be a success?

No but there is an opportunity cost to the research on self-driving that could potentially be spent on other methods that seem less cool.

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

#497

Post by ddalex »

hos234 wrote: post #409
kyrra wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, ela…

> Which is hinting that global scale is counter productive to innovation

I'd say not Global Scale per se, but achieving own goals without further goals to work towards. I.E you've achieved everything there is to achieve, what can do you do more?

Bill Gates reinvented himself by tackling humanitarian causes. Googlers set up further missions, e.g. self driving cars or health improvement, but those seem unimpressive comparing to world dominance.

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

#498

Post by davidwihl »

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.

keeping it as separate entities meant that useful data could not be shared. Under one org, more data can be safely shared while respecting user privacy.

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

#499

Post by usrusr »

RivieraKid wrote: post #323
hnzix wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is that a mission for the new decade? It would be nice to see a focused mission from El Goog. From the outside it feels like they incubate a bunch of random semi-competing products which are arbitrarily terminated or boosted. There's a lot of talent that could be marshaled.

People find the thought of a company with a clear mission appealing but there's no clear advantage of having a mission other than maximizing financial value. The company mission is just one of the Sillicon Valley tropes, another one is the idea of "changing the world". Having a mission might be useful for focus and clarity in thinking but if it's taken as something more than that, it's just an artificial constraint.…

Corporate missions are valuable/futile tools for filtering investors: "we may occasionally compromise between that and Total Profit, don't act all surprised if we do".

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

#500

Post by TrickyRick »

Am I the only one who recoils when hearing "Nonetheless, Google’s core service—providing unbiased, accurate, and free access to information—remains at the heart of the company.". This is more or less the complete opposite of how I view Google (Apart from accurate maybe). Google delivers results which are highly biased based on what they think you will like and what they will make the most money from and you pay a high price for it, giving up all your personal integrity.
Post reply on HN