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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

#571

Post by bart_spoon »

tsimionescu wrote: post #457
kendallpark wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think the CEO of Waymo has already said that that driving in bad weather is likely much farther away.

That seems like a huge problem. Even places with idyllic weather like California can have bad days. I'm skeptical of anything purporting to be a revolution in transportation when it will largely limited to a few select areas and is prone to catastrophic failure based on something as common as snow or rain.

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

#572

Post by Mistletoe »

koheripbal wrote: post #540
dragonwriter wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. No, the idea was that they were high risk speculative efforts and that it didn't make sense to have their branding mixed up with Google, which is a stable, established industry leader.

That's a semantic distinction. All major corporations have highly speculative projects that they aren't certain will succeed. With (relatively) minor investments most don't form an umbrella corporation to distinguish them. In this case, I dont see anything else coming out of non-Google alphabet of meaningful significance, and this org change kind of highlights that. In my personal opinion, the Google founders probabl…

Google kills so many projects that they killed their own holding company.

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

#573

Post by jansho »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #108

Weirdly this feels like a non-issue. Google has not felt like it has a "personality" for some time - maybe it's a function of hitting mega-corporate size, but it also feels a bit like when Microsoft (a Computer on every Desktop) essentially achieved its goal, it then spent a decade in "goalless and soulless exploitation" mode - something that one suspects is the next step for the worlds largest personality-free platf…

> Edit: Just to emphasise - I hope they have fun spending their billions.

Meh (time for my socialist side to come out) they could try and do the Bill Gates Foundation thing. Don’t be cynical — it is making some much needed positive change!

Money = Power = Responsibility (with wisdom).

Exponentially true if you are a super billionaire.

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

#574

Post by hordeallergy »

auiya wrote: post #560
koheripbal wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a semantic distinction. All major corporations have highly speculative projects that they aren't certain will succeed. With (relatively) minor investments most don't form an umbrella corporation to distinguish them. In this case, I dont see anything else coming out of non-Google alphabet of meaningful significance, and this org change kind of highlights that. In my personal opinion, the Google founders probabl…

> I dont see anything else coming out of non-Google alphabet of meaningful significance YouTube. But in general I agree with you.

Does anyone know how the subscription YouTube is working out? They sure are putting a good effort into getting me signed up.

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

#575

Post by vonmoltke »

kelnos wrote: post #451
greesil wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose it did push some readers' buttons, thus ipso facto is flamebait whether or not that was the intent. I did not find it snarky (hyperbole is not snark), and it seemed to me its intent was to explain the situation as the author saw it. Of course, now that it's flagged I can't even re read it to check if my initial impression was off.

I would consider hyperbole worse than snark, when considering if a post has value under the site guidelines.

I disagree, despite how much the hyperbolic posts I see on this site annoy me.

Assuming good faith, hyperbole is at worst intellectually lazy. It is, however, sometimes a useful rhetorical device.

Snark, on the other hand, is directly disrespectful of the content it is replying to. This signals that the snarker is not going to discuss the subject in good faith and disincentivizes further discussion.

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

#576

Post by throwawayhhakdl »

mrec wrote: post #539
londons_explore wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original reason was that smart people like career progression. Money alone isn't enough to keep them - they want something good on their business cards. Otherwise some will leave to become CEO of another company. By making a group of companies, you can have many CEO's, more directors, more VP's, etc. and therefore keep hold of more smart people who are after external recognition more than money.

Careerist people like career progression. I think that's largely orthogonal to smarts or lack thereof. I doubt Einstein cared very much what was on his business card. Patrick Bateman certainly did.

Theory of Relativity - Albert Einstein, Senior Executive Patent Clerk

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

#577

Post by JohnFen »

ixtli wrote: post #373
JohnFen wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> something like "conveyed without the intention to deceive me, especially politically/financially/etc...") That isn't even close to the definition of "unbiased" that I use. To me, something is "unbiased" if it based on facts without being interpreted in accordance with some preexisting belief or worldview.

For what it's worth i agree with this. A realistic example of what i would describe as unbiased is, say, telemetry data from a radio telescope, or a neutral reading of a poem or story. Tools are unbiased. I think the real danger is actually in the notion that "bias" is something done to deceive, and I have encountered people who imply this quite a bit in real life By way of example: I have a strong bias towards the n…

> I think the real danger is actually in the notion that "bias" is something done to deceive, and I have encountered people who imply this quite a bit in real life

I agree entirely. Bias is typically not something that is intentionally done in an attempt to deceive. It comes naturally to people because they look at the world through the lens of their own experiences and beliefs.

Everybody has a bias. The trick is to understand what sort of bias people (including ourselves) have, so we can properly understand what they're saying.

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

#578

Post by inlined »

dragonwriter wrote: post #564
koheripbal wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a semantic distinction. All major corporations have highly speculative projects that they aren't certain will succeed. With (relatively) minor investments most don't form an umbrella corporation to distinguish them. In this case, I dont see anything else coming out of non-Google alphabet of meaningful significance, and this org change kind of highlights that. In my personal opinion, the Google founders probabl…

> That's a semantic distinction. No, separating branding and separating management are substantively different ideas, not a matter of semantics. > All major corporations have highly speculative projects that they aren't certain will succeed. With (relatively) minor investments most don't form an umbrella corporation to distinguish them. That doesn't support your argument that it's a semantic distinction, it instead s…

Don’t the companies now also give different financial reporting? Alphabets companies have wildly different expected growths and margins expected. It totally makes sense to be clear with investors that Google’s margins aren’t suffering, Alphabet is just investing upfront capital in Verily or Fiber

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

#579

Post by jeremyfranco »

jhanschoo wrote: post #570
jeremyfranco wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evidence wasn't hard to find though... https://www.wired.com/story/the-dirty-war-over-diversity-ins...

Then this should have been the comment. But this article isn't evidence of Google having a liberal orthodoxy. It supports instead the claim that Google is a politically charged workplace, and that diversity advocates working at Google were facing harassment.

> Then this should have been the comment.

I simply noticed that it took literally a single search on Google to get to know about it.

Not trying to defend the OP.

> But this article isn't evidence of Google having a liberal orthodoxy

Or the opposite, if literally members of unpopular party work there and have that kind of power.

It supports the poster thesis (phrased in a provocative way) that this kind of issues are not unknown at Google, either one way or the other.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/crenshaw-calls-googl...

I guess the part of the original comment (now dead) that says (quoting)

> 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!

is exposed here https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/google-sued-bias-clai...

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

#580

Post by raisedbyninjas »

kamaal wrote: post #474
rjvir wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a money sink right now, but has an obvious path to becoming a juggernaut.

Time will tell. But the more you sit on it, the more easy it gets for other people to catch up. By now even companies like Tesla and Volvo can do most of what any one can do. And they actually have usable cars. Google inventing AGI will be a great deal though.

TBF, doing most of what a Waymo car can do is the easy part.
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