[deleted]
Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment
101–110 of 219 posts
Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment
#102Google’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...
It's possible that the idea of a Bell Labs is outdated, because individuals now have more access to information and cheap resources than they did in the 50s and 60s.
Instead of needing a big company to bring the best minds together and give them money, random people in garages can have good ideas and build proof of concepts relatively easily.
Maybe.
Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment
#103It has always seemed strange to me that Google become part of Alphabet, instead of vice-versa. It seems like a much more honest approach would always have been for Google to be one company... for Alphabet to be a separate one... and for, say, Google to own 33% of Alphabet, for Larry and Sergei personally to own another 33%, and outside investors to own the rest and be the ones principally determining its own, separat…
Given that Alphabet was basically Larry and Seigei's personal pet projects and the goal was for Google to fund these projects, it's easier to funnel money up instead of out.
Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 wit…
> 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.
Before Google Docs / G+ suite there was really only Office. Now everything is Google vs Office 365. Most small/medium even startups use Google Docs as it is good enough. Yes like I said, entrenched Microsoft companies use Office and Office 365 is finally good and is winning in businesses because business/marketing like Office. But Google made it to 'versus' level with Microsoft.
We also glossed over Gmail, that has been immense for attracting people to Google apps.
Apple is also in this space but the desktop market share is so low that they don't compete here.
> 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.
If Google has to pay Apple $8 billion for mobile search. How much would they have to pay another mobile platform if they didn't run it? Probably $5+ billion or more since it is bigger, there is still value in the platform. I can't even believe I have to state that. Apple also shows this by what Google has to pay them, platforms are value as they bring in revenue opportunities.
Android OS and devices were shoddy for a long time, but they are immensely better now. Apple does own the high-end market but that won't always be the case and there is value in the market share even if it is less per phone.
> 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.
Dropbox is probably in a more precarious situation than Google or Microsoft in terms of storage competition. To compete they probably can't make a profit for a long time and will probably end up getting purchased maybe.
You can simply not deny that Google Drive was first and is mostly winning the storage battle.
OneDrive is rarely used even in enterprise settings even at Microsoft shops. Yes entrenched Office based companies probably use it like they used sub-par Sharepoint.
For storage though, most are in Google Drive or Dropbox. Branding/usage also creates value in marketing and cross over products, obviously more for Google than Dropbox as the latter is boxed in and can only raise prices or push people to business plans.
Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment
#105The 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?
Why should I use a special share button when my browser already displays the URL and my operating system already enables copy/paste?
Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment
#106Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment
#107Google’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...
It's possible that the idea of a Bell Labs is outdated, because individuals now have more access to information and cheap resources than they did in the 50s and 60s. Instead of needing a big company to bring the best minds together and give them money, random people in garages can have good ideas and build proof of concepts relatively easily. Maybe.
How many problems can be solved in a garage with little to no infrastructure?
Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Nonsense. MBAs believe the money mostly has to be returned to management--who get paid massive salaries and benefits for often mediocre results.
Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment
#109Earlier 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.
In this case, AMP doesn't help much...it's still downloading a ton of crap. 464 requests and 12MB of garbage for an AMP hosted article. https://imgur.com/tPHaHIO
That's because you are running in a simulator and not doing ad-blocking. Here is the real deal, 1.9MB and took 12 seconds to load completely: https://imgur.com/a/XcsNEsp
The actual Bloomberg page was 5.3Mbytes and took 30 seconds to load completely: https://imgur.com/a/zBaOzeD
If 3X improvement in loading time and data transfer is not much of a help, I don't know what it is.
USERS like AMP because it is an actual improvement of the UX. The industry complaining over AMP is like the music industry going after the MP3 in the early 2000s.
Re: Google management shuffle points to retreat from Alphabet experiment
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems way more idealistic somehow. More likely, with a more standard corporate governance Google will begin to rot from within. Apple certainly made more profits under Cook than Jobs, but innovation has slowed to a crawl and he has failed to diversify Apple away from having one product (instead he just added a bunch of accessory products and services). The last thing Google needs is to double down on ads, it tak…
> 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…
// Their innovations are more around key details and hardware/software integration that makes the whole system work like magic.
That philosophy was Steve Jobs' key insight back than. Today many companies excel at magical ux design.
And sure, their control over iOS and their rich clients allow them to do stuff others cannot. And definetly, it's incremental innovation.
But that's very little innovation, considering their size or compared to their competitors - Google AI and moonshots, Amazon(where do i even begin), or Microsoft(Cloud and their research efforts).