What is Google doing with its open source teams? • Hacker News Board

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#121

Post by coredog64 » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 7:47 PM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #99

adra wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft didn't miss mobile, they supported many or all verticals of mobile probably 10 years before it ever really took off. They absolutely bungled it and pulled 3-4 various strategies that all seemed to fall flat by miss-judging the market or self defeating strategies to protect their other products/partners. I do see some similarities with the companies though. It's hard to say or blame this on CEOs, but rather…

> Microsoft didn't miss mobile They missed mobile. Apple (and later Android) delivered what average consumers wanted. Average consumers do not want to have to be a personal IT department to upgrade their software and manage backups of their settings/apps. As someone who had a Windows CE iPaq and wanted to love it, the user experience was so frustrating. It was nicknamed Wince for a reason. For example, since Windows…

I had a succession of Windows CE devices (iPaq 3600, 3800, 4500, whatever the monochromatic one was, plus some Toshiba (?) that used an SH4, and 3 or 4 more that I could maybe pick out of a lineup but no longer remember). If memory serves, the Toshiba and the later iPaqs weren’t nearly so destructive on updates.

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#122

Post by compsciphd » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 7:47 PM UTC

osigurdson wrote: post #107

adra wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft didn't miss mobile, they supported many or all verticals of mobile probably 10 years before it ever really took off. They absolutely bungled it and pulled 3-4 various strategies that all seemed to fall flat by miss-judging the market or self defeating strategies to protect their other products/partners. I do see some similarities with the companies though. It's hard to say or blame this on CEOs, but rather…

I think Microsoft's strength was their weakness in a sense. They had so much O/S related experience and assets that no one could fathom not using Windows as the core. Imagine explaining to your MS middle manager that writing a new O/S from scratch is a good idea - especially with Balmer at the helm.

I believe WinCE was a "new" (or at least different) OS. it sort of had Win32 like APIs on top of it, but the core was fundamentally different than NT. They only sort of got things moving in the right direction (only to then abandon it) when they had their mobile platform on top of the "normal" (pared down) NT stack.

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#123

Post by vineyardmike » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 7:47 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #106

derefr wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does a company with huge datacenters do to reclaim OpEx from committed compute capacity sitting idle at non-peak periods, other than building an IaaS with idle-load-consuming services (e.g. spot instances, cloud functions, other short-lived workloads)? Do you expect them to mine Bitcoin?

This is a completely false take. AWS was built from the ground up as separate infrastructure. What do you think is going to happen at peak of Amazon needs it’s own excess capacity at the same time customers need access capacity? Even today, much of Amazon is not on AWS.

> Even today, much of Amazon is not on AWS.

They’re the same CPUs they just use an internal API to provision and not AWS APIs. I’m pretty sure the internal APIs also just wrap ec2 et al at this point (for backwards compatibility)

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#124

Post by garganzol » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 7:50 PM UTC

zengid wrote: post #9

Really curious about the Flutter/Dart team. It looks like great tech but its by google so its always at risk of abandonment.

I share the same sentiment on Meta's Docusaurus project. I hope that authors and maintainers of the project who were employed by Meta are ok.

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#125

Post by cmrdporcupine » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 7:51 PM UTC

mathverse wrote: post #29

pm90 wrote: post #7

It will be interesting to see amazing talent leave Google and build new companies and institutions now that it’s slowly being mismanaged to death.

It would be amazing to see but I am not sure we will see it happening. Google is the one that taught the whole generation that amazing products and services should be free. It will be very hard to compete against google and other big tech companies that are essentially using predatory pricing to kill any competition.

I hope at some point to see legislation passed that will break up Google's advertising aspects into multiple businesses.

They own the front, middle, and back of the whole thing, and strangle (even if they have to acquire) any other business that tries to break in and get a better deal for publishers, or advertisers both.

Take a read through this, it's a good read: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1563746/downl...

(It was especially disheartening/confirming to see them outright admit (in quotes the DOJ acquired) that they bought my former employer (AdMeld) explicitly to make it disappear from the "competitive landscape." When I worked at Google, I seem to recall having to take yearly training courses on how I should say stuff like that, but these people... felt free)

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#126

Post by jedberg » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 7:51 PM UTC

gretch wrote: post #120

jedberg wrote: post #67

> It has been widely reported that some of the firing was done by an algorithm. It's ironic that the people who have now been directly affected by Google's penchant to allow AIs to make decisions with no recourse no longer work for Google and can not fix that problem. Hopefully some of their colleagues finally realize that maybe having a human in the loop for termination decisions makes some sense, and we see fewer s…

The definition of algorithm is: > a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer. So yeah, I would hope that an algorithm was used. As opposed to what? "I like that guy more than the other guy". You seem to have the interpretation that some guy in finance wrote a script, it output some employee IDs, and then no one checked the output before layin…

First off, you know that "used an algorithm" in modern parlance means "was done by AI without human intervention".

And based on that, absolutely I think Google did that. They run everything with data and statistics without humans. That's how they are so efficient.

This is backed up by the fact that the managers who work there were simply told who they were losing and had no input into the process, and aren't even aware of who has been let go yet.

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#127

Post by garganzol » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 7:54 PM UTC

unity1001 wrote: post #94

So the problem with Google's earnings was that its exorbitant profit did not stay or grow at the same rate. During a pandemic followed by a global crisis prompted by a war. And they are laying off people. To make hedge funds and shareholders happy. ... What a destructive 'growth at all costs' economic culture. I guess those hedge funds and shareholders will pick up the slack in those open source projects...

It's always about the money. So nothing new here under the sun.

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#128

Post by sumeno » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 7:54 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #114

sombragris wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but then, why fire such rockstars as Di Bona and Allison?? These are not coasters. AT&T and whatever company inherited the Bell Labs might have done rounds after rounds of layoffs but never fired Dennis Ritchie, for example. People such as DiBona and Allison are assets to any company who can afford to hire them. This is simply unexplainable.

Because that in particular will freak everyone else in the company out, and .. most importantly... Google is no longer scared about those people going to their competition, because their competition is also flushing talent away. In the past, Google was willing to dump all sorts of cash into talent as long as it kept people from creating a truly competitive landscape. Now, they don't have to worry as much. The layoffs…

Random layoffs that affect high performers and low performers equally doesn't encourage performing higher. If anything it encourages performing lower because why bother if it's not going to even save your job?

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#129

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 7:56 PM UTC

Bloating wrote: post #19

civilized wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google was supposed to have the capacity to stick to a long-term vision because the founders retained preferred stock with (IIRC) 10x voting rights. By that same token, there is no one to blame but the founders now that Google has turned into another mediocre big corporation without vision.

Like Apple, they have a vision for $$$

Every for profit cares about money. The issue is that Google has struggled to try to come up with a new product that convinced people to give it money.

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#130

Post by eecc » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 7:57 PM UTC

Well maybe it'll be a renaissance for many different and new projects. With Google hoardning all this talent and cushioning them on non-strategic, prestige tasks the ecosystem became desolate (thus enhancing Google's role as beacoun of OSS).

It sucks for those fired but let's be honest, just a bit. They're household names in their respective industries, and they'll be welcomed in no time onto new projects.

It's like a fire sweeping in a forest, clearing the undergrowth and making space for a new growth frenzy.