Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation • Hacker News Board

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#541

Post by nix23 » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 9:52 AM UTC

jkaplowitz wrote: post #200

nix23 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search and Streetview is the only true Google-Product, everything else was copied or a buy from others.

Gmail started as an internal 20% project too, I think. The key elements of GCP were also developed in-house. But yeah, a lot of their good stuff started as an acquisition. (Disclosure: I was a Googler for a few years, joining through an adtech-related acquisition, and a Google intern one summer several years before that. But I haven't worked for Google in over five years.)

But Gmail was just Email with a counting Storage timer (which was really exiting at times where 30MB was a normal Free-mail quota).

And GCP...well nothing new after Heroku and Amazon.

It just feels that google is always two steps behind from new inventions, then they try to half heartily implement it, or buy another corporation. Google should sell itself for free to Elon (Joke...but also not really)

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#542

Post by menybuvico » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 9:53 AM UTC

0xfaded wrote: post #302

menybuvico wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. A common European first language would start a process which would result in a terrible loss of local cultural tradition. Cultural suicude for the common good has been suggested before, but I can't imagine that there would be a lot of people who'd agree with it.

I disagree, I live in Denmark where the majority speaks very good English. There's no shortage of Danish media. On the other hand, economic suicide is assured by insisting on a high standard of living while doing everything possible to prevent innovation.

As a Swedish-speaking Finn, I can confirm that a culture can end up on the decline even if there's powerful legal backing to preserving it (including forcing the remaining ~90% of the population to learning Swedish in school). Incidentally, I'd say there's a large correlation with English being more and more accepted in Finnish society, but I suspect the actual root cause simply is that cultural production is mainly taking place in the first language (Finnish) and that it leaves less for the others.

The same would happen if you managed to get the entire EU to agree to switch to one single language (remember, it's likely that it would be French or German instead of English). As a result of pushing adoption of the new first language, it would mean increased cultural output in that language, and a reduced output for the others. After a while, the differences will start showing.

I've lived in Denmark for quite a few years and I agree that people in Copenhagen and the other larger cities wouldn't notice that much of a difference to begin with, but remember that this would mean a cultural shift that will take multiple generations. Ask the German speakers in southern Jutland in another 24 years, and compare how their culture thrives compared to how they did before the war and you will probably have a pretty decent view on how the situation would be for many, many of EU's minorities 100 years after the switch to a single European first language.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#543

Post by menybuvico » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 9:54 AM UTC

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #297

menybuvico wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. A common European first language would start a process which would result in a terrible loss of local cultural tradition. Cultural suicude for the common good has been suggested before, but I can't imagine that there would be a lot of people who'd agree with it.

I'm sure that some wouldn't mind other's cultural suicide, however.

Definitely not. There's probably no shortage of people promiting their own culture's demise either.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#544

Post by etripe » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 10:58 AM UTC

88840-8855 wrote: post #248

fvdessen wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was still not that long ago an incredible amount of innovative companies and products in Europe. But at that time companies were still built for their home markets first and on that regard the USA is big and unified. Since software is mostly winner takes all it means that when the USA companies came to Europe they had already won the USA and could steamroll the local competition There is for example no way a sw…

I like your points and agree on your conclusion. Further, I would like to add a few ideas: - innovation in Europe can only scale if we achieve a higher degree of unity in Europe, including one common language, one common jurisdiction and law framework. Localization is just too expensive in Europe and hinders scaling. - a certain degree of protectionism is good. I am a big fan of how China made it. They have a really…

> innovation in Europe can only scale if we achieve a higher degree of unity in Europe

Interesting, I hadn't seen the term localisation used beyond language. IMO, the major hindrance to European unification is nationalistic reflexes together with too many voluntary projects: EEC vs EU, Schengen, human rights, immigration, the euro... the instigators of such projects thought the success of these projects/goals would encourage more countries to opt in at a later date, which never happened, as a general rule. This resulted in more ways to slice and dice what "Europe" means, instead of contributing to unification.

A frequent occurrence is national politicians pretending they played no part in the council of ministers and blame-shifting towards Europe in order to gain or maintain domestic popularity. This actively undermines belief in EU institutions.

The facts seem to indicate the individual countries want to keep the systems they have in place, which can include vast differences in labour law, bureaucracy, remuneration schemes, pension plans, sick leave regulation and workplace safety, despite a basic common regulatory framework. As far as I'm aware, US states don't have as much variance between them.

As a result, a would-be tech giant has higher startup costs if it wants to employ people throughout Europe. I would say actual language localisation is a much less prohibitive cost.

As a German, do you see greater unification happening any time soon? I'm not sure I do, as one of your smaller neighbours.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#545

Post by etripe » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 11:30 AM UTC

R0b0t1 wrote: post #400

specialist wrote: post #386

Late to this thread, sorry. I have two tangental questions. #1 In general terms, what's China's commitment (investment) in higher ed? Compared to the USA and other economies? USA's tuition, loans, student debt is always good for an argument on HN. Almost no one mentions that the USA decided to privatize higher ed some decades back. So I was wondering if China and others made the same mistake. #2 How does current Chin…

The problem with making higher ed only a public service is you run into rationing. If all positions have to be government funded there tends to be fewer positions. There are plenty of people on HN who likely would not have made the cut in a EU country.

Hmm. I didn't think so previously, but outcomes at least seem to support your theory (0).

I would be very interested to see any research discussing the reasons for this difference and whether cultural expectations account for any of it (expecting a degree on the employer side driving up demand).

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/tertiary-education

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#546

Post by saalweachter » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 12:18 PM UTC

anoncake wrote: post #539

saalweachter wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the best part! Modern languages already have words for things like a mouse, a screen or the Big Bang, but it's all stupid stuff like an analogy to how a computer mouse looks like an animal because of its long cord-tail, a reference to the white screen a projector casts it's projection on, or a vulgar put-down of a theory being like God's orgasm. If we take a dead language and start adding in vocabulary, we can…

Alien species: "So you remodeled your language, removing all traces of history and culture from it, because you were worried about the impression you'd make on aliens you didn't know, you didn't even know existed ?" "You're the most pathetic people in the known universe."

I mean, we'll try, but we can only do so much. Even in ancient languages, every word for "tool" is also slang for "penis", and twenty percent of the verbs can also be used to refer to a sex act.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#547

Post by jen20 » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #520

jen20 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware - but Google Fi offers 4G roaming at no extra charge across a much wider range of countries (importantly for me, most of Europe).

It is an “extra charge”. Don’t you pay for every gigabyte of data that you use? It’s all bundled with T-Mobile. What’s the advantage of that over just getting another sim while you’re out of the country? Especially now with e-Sims being a thing.

They have two packages, one with per GB charging up to a cap and one bundled.

The advantage of using a primary plan (possibly augmented with local services from time to time) is that you have a stable phone number, and a lot less screwing about. For a casual traveler that may not matter. For someone who is in a different country every other week (pre-pandemic) it makes a substantial difference.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#548

Post by TheCoelacanth » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 1:33 PM UTC

ploika wrote: post #316

0xfaded wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English may be more acceptable once the UK excited, leaving no favored EU state.

The UK has already left the EU (it's in the transition phase now) and Ireland and Malta both have English as an official language.

Ireland and Malta are both small enough that no one would mistake them for a dominant force in the EU.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#549

Post by take_a_breath » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 6:00 PM UTC

NalNezumi wrote: post #531

take_a_breath wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

==But it also has very conservative capital and tax and employment systems that make entrepreneurship difficult.== The rate of new business creation is higher in Europe than the US. I would guess that the US has more venture-backed entrepreneurs, but more businesses are being start by Europeans than Americans. “The net rate of business creation among the EU economies has been over three times faster than in the USA a…

I haven't fully checked that source but whats the filtering criterion for "new business creation"? I remember someone used to call Sweden an "top innovative country" and when I took a closer look, he based that argument on amount of new business creation (weighted with population) Taking a closer look, it was evident that they didn't sort the business by size, or how long they stayed, revenue or amount of employer. A…

== hiring and income are heavily taxed, but not the same can be said for businesses.==

Same is true in the US. We just changed to tax code to make it even more beneficial to be a business over a salaried-employee. Did you apply the same skepticism for the US numbers?

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#550

Post by AsyncAwait » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #530

AsyncAwait wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waze was acquired by Google, am not sure that counts.

If Waze couldn't compete against an incumbent Google Maps, why would Google ever have bought it?

I didn't mean from a technological perspective, but from a sustainability one.

These kinds of startups can often compete/outcompete on tech, in fact that's their premise, but they're looking for an ASAP exit, rather than running something sustainably for decades.