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Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

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Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#231

Post by jldugger »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #122
mikkergp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the name for it, but this seems like a "the market leader doesn't know what it's doing" fallacy. While I will concede that Google is not the market leader in many of these areas, It's Microsoft, not Airtable that's leading the way. To me, Google has always been a relatively "boring" company, it's just that boring in the early to mid 2000s was a welcome change of pace. There innovations were almost entire…

Google was the oppositive of boring: - GMail with "unlimited" (never-seen-before 1GB) of storage when everyone had 10MB quotas was a "holy shit" moment, and fast web mail was a fresh breath of air - Google Maps, yet another "holy shit" experience when you used Mapquest before - Google Translate, so much better than everything that came before - Google search - OK that's late 1990s but I remember the "aha" moment of t…

> You notice that all of these were more than a decade ago before their IPO.

I don't, and neither does wikipedia:

Gmail: April 1, 2004

IPO: Aug 19, 2004

Maps: February 8, 2005

Translate: April 28, 2006

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#232

Post by franze »

jldugger wrote: post #214
franze wrote: post #115

I had the "pleasure" to work with Ex-Googlers which had "Project Managers at G" in their resume. Honestly, I do not wonder anymore why Google nowadays s#ck as hard as they do. They made great presentations and a grand plans using some project management saas tools. But both of them neither understood the basics of projectmanagement (Who does what when and what do they need when?) nor could react when challenged. Both…

You tell a nice story with the data, but I cannot dismiss the potential selection bias: perhaps these PMs were not up to Google's standards and were invited to leave?

yes, i am aware of it. on the other hand which PR-ides itself with one of the hardest hiring selection process on the market it might be a statement about this process.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#233

Post by franze »

Axsuul wrote: post #206
franze wrote: post #115

I had the "pleasure" to work with Ex-Googlers which had "Project Managers at G" in their resume. Honestly, I do not wonder anymore why Google nowadays s#ck as hard as they do. They made great presentations and a grand plans using some project management saas tools. But both of them neither understood the basics of projectmanagement (Who does what when and what do they need when?) nor could react when challenged. Both…

Interesting how you are basing your assumptions on two ex-employees who no longer work there probably because of what you experienced, not to mention the small sample size.

yes, it's definitely anecdotal. so please see it this way.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#234

Post by throwawaygler »

hinkley wrote: post #205
EthanHeilman wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All organizations that grow rapidly face an "Alexander bias" where the sort of incentivizes, perspectives and people that allowed them to rapidly capture territory cause them to value capturing new territory even when it is no longer possible or in their organizational interest to do so. Even when organizations identify the problem, evolving from the cult of the new to the cult of incremental improvement is always ha…

One of my employers was spun out twice, after having been acquired years ago. It was sort of a joke to tell people who the owners were. It made no goddamned sense. Sure, we had customers in common, but so do Xerox and people who lease out coffee machines. The toner-flavored coffee jokes practically write themselves. They just got onto a growth tear and bought a bunch of things they shouldn’t, and eventually rounded u…

https://area120.google.com/

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#235

Post by Touche »

> Then something happened at Google. I’m not sure what. But they stopped innovating on cloud software.

What happened was they were printing money on the cloud software they already had. Classic innovators dilemma.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#236

Post by joshuamorton »

HenryBemis wrote: post #112
dleslie wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing of stuff just stagnating and no care to scrub the rough corners is crazy. On the outset, you might think with such ridiculously high compensation there would be an expectation of quality, but I think that's an error. Google operates as an ad-company that happens to employ ridiculous amounts of exhorbitantly compensated individuals to engage in market and technological research, particularly to open or exp…

> _open a new market_ for advertising, and to gather data for the same Yes, thank you. "When something is free then you are the product". And for the case of Google, someone pays Google shitloads of money to buy YOUR data. This applies to many companies, but to Google most of all. Also, the further they keep users away from Win10 (where MS siphons everything) and they keep them locked in Android/Chrome operating syst…

Who does Google sell your docs and drive data to?

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#237

Post by hinkley »

loughnane wrote: post #75

I get the desire to abandon google services, and have done so myself for email and search, but there isn't much to this article. An old gmail account being noisy is probably more a function of it being old than it being a gmail account. I suspect he'd see a great improvement just starting a new email address. Airtable has some nice functionality, but I don't think it's head-and-shoulders above sheets and this article…

Last spring I sat down to binge re-watch a TV series and just went back through my inbox looking for every mailing list I was on, unsubscribe, and then delete all previous messages. Probably took 8 hours total, but I deleted thousands of messages and now I get about 6 messages a day in my inbox, most of them from humans or services I just recently used. It’s worth my time to look at it again.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#238

Post by Axsuul »

MR4D wrote: post #183

Someone once described the big tech companies this way: Google is about solving tough/new engineering problems; Microsoft is about building software; Apple is about the consumer; Facebook is about your attention span; Amazon is about your wallet. I thought that summed up their personalities pretty well so thought I’d share.

The Microsoft one is kind of vague. Maybe...

Microsoft is about trying to extract more value from their business customers.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#239

Post by starkruzr »

thoraway1010 wrote: post #25

No kidding. Early adopter of gsuite for domains (work and personal email). The google home devices CANNOT get your calendar from your google calendar. My Alexa device can easily. The thing of stuff just stagnating and no care to scrub the rough corners is crazy. They have some things they keep on improving. I think youtube is there (after the dumped plus thank goodness). Chrome seems to be moving along nicely. I used…

O365 live collaborative document editing has been an absolute broken nightmare for us. We abandoned it in favor of Google Docs and everything has gotten a LOT easier.

Our general sense is that whatever MS is using for autoscaling the Sharepoint instances that run the service doesn't work. During busy work days Word loses its connection to the service constantly.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#240

Post by CobrastanJorji »

MR4D wrote: post #183

Someone once described the big tech companies this way: Google is about solving tough/new engineering problems; Microsoft is about building software; Apple is about the consumer; Facebook is about your attention span; Amazon is about your wallet. I thought that summed up their personalities pretty well so thought I’d share.

I agree with you for Google, Microsoft, and Apple, but I disagree about Amazon and Facebook.

Amazon's not about your wallet. They're frequently more expensive than other sites; they're about convenience and lock-in. If you need a Sprocket, you type sprocket into the search bar, click buy on the Amazon button, and you're done. The result will probably be a pretty good sprocket for an unobjectionable price. You don't need to worry about little details like who sold it to you or whether it's likely to show up functional. It'll probably work, and if it doesn't, you can return it. No need to do research, no need to drive to a store.

Facebook doesn't care about your attention; it just needs your eyes. That sounds like the same thing, but it's very different. If you're just scrolling through without really reading anything, that's absolutely fine with Facebook so long as you keep doing it.

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