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Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

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Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#91

Post by ghaff »

scarface74 wrote: post #86
ghaff wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few people using it seems the very definition of withering. Yes, a lot of sites and blog software etc. still default to offering RSS feeds. (Which I take advantage of from time to time and it's presumably used behind the scenes for various purposes.) But that's hardly a ringing endorsement of the role of RSS in today's world.

Why do you care if other people use it as long as it is available?

Because when things aren't used, organizations such as, say, Google tend to stop supporting them over time.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#93

Post by scarface74 »

ghaff wrote: post #91
scarface74 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you care if other people use it as long as it is available?

Because when things aren't used, organizations such as, say, Google tend to stop supporting them over time.

It’s been over a decade since Google abandoned reader. RSS is just a check box in most CMSs.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#94

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

smt88 wrote: post #22
tssva wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I was very appreciative of the AMP version being posted. It made for a much better mobile viewing experience than the typical non-AMP experience from Bloomberg.

A forced redesign, in this case motivated by AMP, is what gave you that better mobile experience. It is not something inherent to AMP, and in other ways AMP is incredibly harmful. Most mobile browsers now have "reading mode" anyway.

The selling point of AMP is that it's a mobile-friendly web component framework. If someone uses AMP for their website, and as a result you get a better mobile experience, it's hard to see how that's not inherent to AMP.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#95

Post by spookthesunset »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #69
abalone wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> innovation has slowed to a crawl This is so typical of Apple criticism. They did do well with the iPhone and Mac that now any new innovations seem boring in comparison. It’s wrong. The Apple Watch came out under Cook. That is more than an “accessory.” It’s a new platform, new OS variant, etc. It’s dominating smart watches. The AirPods are pretty innovative in terms of the fine grained details that have made them su…

> The Apple Watch came out under Cook. That is more than an “accessory.” It’s a new platform, new OS variant, etc. It’s dominating smart watches. The Apple Watch is literally designed to be an accessory to the iPhone - you can't use most of its features without an iPhone. I wanted one for my Android phone but tough shit for me. If you like it as a product that's fine, but it is absolutely an accessory to an iPhone be…

iPhones were originally an accessory to iTunes. What you complain about is all software. Software is changeable.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#96

Post by krilly »

irrational wrote: post #11

The fact that you linked to an amp version of the page, instead of the real link, is deeply disturbing to me. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-04/alphab...

The share button is right there... How do people always miss it when copying links?

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#97

Post by drawkbox »

scarface74 wrote: post #89
drawkbox wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The low margin e-commerce led to massive innovations and improvements including their services architecture that became their biggest product and the first to market in the cloud. AWS was created out of the continual re-investment by Bezos back into Amazon. Amazon also has many acquisitions from it and associated to all their businesses: IMDB, Twitch, Zappos, Whole Foods, etc. Google with search, maps and mobile won…

Google didn’t “beat” Microsoft at Office by any definition. As far “winning” mobile. $23 billion in 7 years and they still pay Apple a reported $8 billion a year to be the primary search engine on Apple devices. Apple has made more money from Google than Google has made from Android. Android definitely didn’t “win” against Apple. The entire Android ecosystem is a profitless race to the bottom. As far as Google Drive,…

> Google didn’t “beat” Microsoft at Office by any definition.

They beat them to online documents, spreadsheets, storage by years. Google Docs launched after they bought Write.ly in 2006. Lots of teams don't even use Office anymore and use online office like Google.

Yes lots of places still use Office but there is no denying Google beat them online and it was Microsofts share to lose. Microsoft really just got their online offerings put together nicely finally in the last maybe 5 years, they didn't want to cannibalize desktop Office and that delayed them immensely.

Before Google Docs there was only Office, OpenOffice and LibraOffice but people really only used Office. That has changed, I rarely use it unless I work with a company that is Microsoft-centric. It may change now that Office 365 is finally decent but they still want large purchases of licenses that really only is enterprise focused.

> As far “winning” mobile. $23 billion in 7 years and they still pay Apple a reported $8 billion a year to be the primary search engine on Apple devices. Apple has made more money from Google than Google has made from Android.

There is immense value in controlling the platform which Google has. There is even more value in controlling the hardware and software platform like Apple.

Because they control Android they don't have to pay another mobile provider to be the search provider.

Don't leave out Chrome either, that was a big thing for a long time. That really came from Webkit and KDE that Apple open sourced to become Chromium and Chrome.

> Android definitely didn’t “win” against Apple. The entire Android ecosystem is a profitless race to the bottom.

Android won against Apple iOS and Microsoft Windows Phone in terms of market share. There is value in being the biggest market share, ask Microsoft with Windows.

> As far as Google Drive, like Jobs said about DropBox, storage is just a feature - not a product. MS gives away 6TB of One Drive space with the $100 a year Office 365 subscription. Office 365 has much deeper penetration that Drive.

Drive is still bigger than any effort of Microsoft. OneDrive did not compete for a long time. Dropbox even beat Microsoft. Google Drive and Dropbox pretty much own this space except for Microsoft Teams or enterprises that used Office.

Nadella fixed lots of issues in Microsoft and finally has Office 365 online in a good way, Teams, free IDEs/editors (VS and VSCode) and their new OS is really Azure which was his baby.

Microsoft is doing well in lots of areas, even Surface Pros/Books are probably beating Apple laptops right now in terms of growth. Apple doesn't want to cannibalize iPads so they don't have touch screens on their laptops still, Microsoft does and it is a solid device. Hopefully they re-enter mobile one day but right now they are too fat and happy off of profits from Android patents.

I like Microsoft, use them plenty and do lots of .NET. I also like Apple and develop on Macs/iOS devices. I also like Google and use Android and develop for that platform. They are all good in different ways.

However, you are really downplaying what Google has done.

Again we didn't even mention Chrome which did take the web by storm, which they are starting to abuse now with the ol' Microsoft embrace, extend, extinguish but they still did win the browser wars as well from an entrenched IE/Microsoft and over Firefox which was an early developer favorite of Netscape origin.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#98

Post by chooseaname »

drawkbox wrote: post #9
melling wrote: post #6

Google’s attempt to be a modern day Bell Labs was the one thing that set them apart. Make a lot of money in advertising and spend some of it to invent the future. Without the second part, the entire company changes. We need another company to take the mantle: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/innovation...

Looks like the product/engineering/creative focused time of Google is giving way to the metric/marketing/MBA/McKinsey people for a fully pedal to the metal push into their Ballmer phase. When will technology/product/engineering/creative companies learn that the value creation is more important than the value extraction? With value creation there is always the ability to value extract. With value extraction the focus,…

> When will technology/product/engineering/creative companies learn that the value creation is more important than the value extraction?

When MBAs stop thinking that every penny has to be returned to investors.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#99

Post by quantdev »

drawkbox wrote: post #27
endorphone wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market cap of Waymo is $0 because it has no market cap. [edit: note that the parent comment originally spoke to the `market cap' of Waymo before an edit, giving context to this reply] An analyst independently made up a number, likely to justify an outsized Google target number. There have been rumors that Google will seek outside investments in Waymo that might legitimize some valuation, but they haven't. And for…

Waymo is in the value creation phase, business/marketing/analysts may not value it as much but there is a goldmine under it. Waymo may not be a revenue behemoth currently but there is immense value there not only to self-driving but to maps improvement and more. I am not a fan of software patents but they have surpassed Toyota in patents [1] and there are hundreds of patents from Waymo [2]. Everyday in Arizona Waymo…

Some analyst at Morgan Stanley made up that $100B number. It has ZERO meaning and no one should take it seriously. The market cap of a company is what investors are willing to pay for it. Given that Alphabet wholly owns Waymo, there is no way the market is implicitly valuing Waymo at $100B given the present value of Google's advertising business and Alphabet's market cap.

Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment

#100

Post by scarface74 »

drawkbox wrote: post #97
scarface74 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google didn’t “beat” Microsoft at Office by any definition. As far “winning” mobile. $23 billion in 7 years and they still pay Apple a reported $8 billion a year to be the primary search engine on Apple devices. Apple has made more money from Google than Google has made from Android. Android definitely didn’t “win” against Apple. The entire Android ecosystem is a profitless race to the bottom. As far as Google Drive,…

> Google didn’t “beat” Microsoft at Office by any definition. They beat them to online documents, spreadsheets, storage by years. Google Docs launched after they bought Write.ly in 2006. Lots of teams don't even use Office anymore and use online office like Google. Yes lots of places still use Office but there is no denying Google beat them online and it was Microsofts share to lose. Microsoft really just got their o…

They beat them to online documents, spreadsheets, storage by years. Google Docs launched after they bought Write.ly in 2006. Lots of teams don't even use Office anymore and use online office like Google. Yes lots of places still use Office but there is no denying Google beat them online and it was Microsofts share to lose.

Being first is just a nerd victory like saying Apple was the first desktop operating system with a GUI. “Winning” in a for profit business is profit.

There is immense value in controlling the platform which Google has. There is even more value in controlling the hardware and software platform like Apple.

We know the value - $23 billion over 7 years. The fact that Google still pays Apple $8 billion a year shows that there is more value in a platform that attracts people that can afford to spend money than people who only spend $240 on a phone.

Drive is still bigger than any effort of Microsoft. OneDrive did not compete for a long time. Dropbox even beat Microsoft. Google Drive and Dropbox pretty much own this space except for Microsoft Teams or enterprises that used Office.

A “bigger effort” doesn’t put money in the bank and DropBox not only has never been profitable, they have repeatedly said that they don’t know when or if they will ever be profitable.

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