Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet • Hacker News Board

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

#581

Post by snarf21 » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

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.

I don't think it was a failure at all. It was a hedge against slowing ad revenue growth. They didn't want the billions they spend on moonshots dirtying the books of the ad business. This was specifically to keep the stock price moving up and up. I think they should find someone new to be CEO of Alphabet so they can focus on the non ad business companies.

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

#582

Post by HelloMcFly » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

mrec wrote: post #557

HelloMcFly wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt Einstein cared what was on his business card, but I'm sure he cared very much about being in the right career position to do the work that interested him, and to have the ability to influence his work and others.

Sure, but GP's argument was about job titles, not about what work you're doing.

Typically job titles as noted in that post accompany some varying level of responsibility and leadership. If this is simply about what title is on your card then OK, sure. But in my experience, many (not all) are seeking the autonomy and influence behind those titles. Einstein had titles too, but it was the influence and work behind those titles he wanted. It's the same for many "careerists", a term I do not like.

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

#583

Post by nanoservices » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:22 PM UTC

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 is accurate form my perspective. I work for a company that made a big bet on Google Cloud and we spent the last 4 years building on it. We are now moving to Azure because of the number of times Google kept dropping support for things forcing us to rewrite our libraries. We should have never went with PaaS (App Engine) but thats a different issue all together. App Engine Flex was a nightmare to work with because Google couldn't help themselves with the constant urge to change things by ripping out things and replacing them instead of having a vision and improving on the existing offerings.

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

#584

Post by maxwell » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

hordeallergy wrote: post #574

auiya wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

YouTube Premium is great. I'm happy to pay Google directly, but I've moved away from most of their ad-supported products, including Search.

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

#585

Post by surewhynat » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

snarf21 wrote: post #581

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.

I don't think it was a failure at all. It was a hedge against slowing ad revenue growth. They didn't want the billions they spend on moonshots dirtying the books of the ad business. This was specifically to keep the stock price moving up and up. I think they should find someone new to be CEO of Alphabet so they can focus on the non ad business companies.

Plus they got to change the name that appears in investment portfolios, and take the opportunity to appear at the top, since they are almost always alphabetically ordered, and at the very least they would be appear above Amazon since l comes before m, and also above Apple.

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

#586

Post by tyre » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:30 PM UTC

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.

> 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.

This isn't entirely true. A major consideration was fear of anti-trust litigation. If all of these are the same company/orgs/departments, then you could reasonably say that this "search company" is far too powerful. If there's a search company and a youtube company and a self-driving car company (etc.) then you can make a (specious) argument that you're not vertically and horizontally a monopoly.

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

#587

Post by chenning » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:31 PM UTC

zaarn wrote: post #503

davidwihl wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except Google doesn't respect privacy.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but there certainly is evidence out there that suggests Google in fact does respect user privacy. For example, activity.google.com. They are also pretty up front about their privacy policy, how they use cookies, data retention policy, and so forth on policies.google.com. There is a lot of information there.

There's a case to be made that Google is trying to do the right thing.

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

#588

Post by SuoDuanDao » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:33 PM UTC

stallmanite wrote: post #358

nostrademons wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Company lifespans these days are a lot shorter than human lifespans. 25-40 years seems typical, making a company-year 2-3x a human year. By that yardstick, Google was in its young adolescence when it IPO'd (seems reasonable), was an idealistic young adult when I joined in 2009 (also reasonable), is now hitting a midlife crisis, and will die sometime around 2040.

So IBM is like a 300ish year old vampire then? They really seem like an outlier longevity-wise.

A better comparison is likely an old tree that is mostly dead tissue, but that dead tissue is solid enough to support its own weight.

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

#589

Post by mrec » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:35 PM UTC

HelloMcFly wrote: post #582

mrec wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but GP's argument was about job titles, not about what work you're doing.

Typically job titles as noted in that post accompany some varying level of responsibility and leadership. If this is simply about what title is on your card then OK, sure. But in my experience, many (not all) are seeking the autonomy and influence behind those titles. Einstein had titles too, but it was the influence and work behind those titles he wanted. It's the same for many "careerists", a term I do not like.

I think you're losing sight of the original argument I was responding to: that a main reason for spinning off bits of Google as separate Alphabet subsidiaries was to allow job title inflation for the same role.

There's only one CEO per company, so if you want more CEOs you need more companies. Being CEO of Waymo probably isn't that different from being Manager of the Autonomous Cars Division or whatever, but it sounds more impressive.

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

#590

Post by shadowgovt » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 4:36 PM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #434

shadowgovt wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The hack is (and I can't explain why because I don't get it) a lot of investors still look at Google and only Google and don't care how much money the 'bets are losing.