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What is Google doing with its open source teams?

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

#141

Post by yafbum »

spinningslate wrote: post #23

I've no inside knowledge on Google, so can't comment on the rationale for selecting those being let go. From the outside though, Google under Pichai increasingly looks like Microsoft under Ballmer in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Balmer was lauded for delivering good numbers from a dominant market position. That was fine - until it wasn't. Under his watch, Microsoft completely misjudged the internet and totally missed…

Pichai didn't completely inherit the cash cow? He led Chrome to quiet dominance, on the basis of a better product, in the face of entrenched and better funded competitors. That is quite different from Ballmer.

One difference with the previous leadership is how little decisive strategic action is going on. Google founders leaned hard on the company to steer it and "bet the farm" in clear areas. Pichai doesn't seem to.

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

#142

Post by shp0ngle »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #110
osigurdson wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple didn't write an OS from scratch either. iOS was really a fork of OS X, and followed on the experience Apple & NeXT had in porting NeXTstep around various architectures. Something that MS also had a lot of experience with, with NT. Apple won/created this market on fit and finish, excellent marketing, singular focused execution, and supply chain genius. With wince, Microsoft was running around farming out their O…

Apple had giant profit margins on Macs even back in the iPhone days.

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

#143

Post by bastardoperator »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #136
spinningslate wrote: post #23

I've no inside knowledge on Google, so can't comment on the rationale for selecting those being let go. From the outside though, Google under Pichai increasingly looks like Microsoft under Ballmer in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Balmer was lauded for delivering good numbers from a dominant market position. That was fine - until it wasn't. Under his watch, Microsoft completely misjudged the internet and totally missed…

The three Google products I use most frequently - Gmail, Search, Maps - have been underperforming heavily lately. Search is useless unless you really tailor your query to find organic results (throwing in "reddit.com" is almost a necessity). Gmail frequently lets harmful spam slip through, sometimes even tagging it with an 'important' label. The decline in Maps has been the most visible, mostly because it has negativ…

I've noticed the maps issue too. I like their reporting in terms of traffic but allowing it to decide where I drive is just a no go at this point.

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

#145

Post by shp0ngle »

morelisp wrote: post #103
spinningslate wrote: post #23

I've no inside knowledge on Google, so can't comment on the rationale for selecting those being let go. From the outside though, Google under Pichai increasingly looks like Microsoft under Ballmer in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Balmer was lauded for delivering good numbers from a dominant market position. That was fine - until it wasn't. Under his watch, Microsoft completely misjudged the internet and totally missed…

I mostly agree, but to be a little fair to Pichai: He didn't get a company that was really in a dominant (or at least not already rapidly declining) market position. Microsoft missing the boat on the Internet might have been inherited from Gates, but Google not missing but still absolutely fucking up social networking , immediately prior to Pichai taking the role, is all on former leadership. Whatever Pichai's failur…

I don’t think given all the shit Facebook is getting now, and Twitter in shambles, Google is crying that hard about missing social networks.

And they still own YouTube, don’t forget.

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

#146

Post by yazaddaruvala »

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.

AWS was re-built from the ground up. Based on systems Amazon knew it already had and how to do better.

S3 was built from the old image hosting designs, but better.

StepFunctions and SWF before it are re-designed based on the 5 internal workflow engines that existed (and still do exist).

SQS is a re-do of AMP.

DynamoDB is a re-do of Sable.

Redshift is a re-do of their internal partitioning and querying of Oracle databases but on non-Oracle databases. Their new iteration of Redshift is designed to replicate Andes + Dryad/Cradle.

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

#147

Post by diordiderot »

spinningslate wrote: post #23

I've no inside knowledge on Google, so can't comment on the rationale for selecting those being let go. From the outside though, Google under Pichai increasingly looks like Microsoft under Ballmer in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Balmer was lauded for delivering good numbers from a dominant market position. That was fine - until it wasn't. Under his watch, Microsoft completely misjudged the internet and totally missed…

Before 2018ish Android was steadily 3~4 years ahead of iOS feature wise.

That is no longer the case.

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

#148

Post by morelisp »

shp0ngle wrote: post #145
morelisp wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree, but to be a little fair to Pichai: He didn't get a company that was really in a dominant (or at least not already rapidly declining) market position. Microsoft missing the boat on the Internet might have been inherited from Gates, but Google not missing but still absolutely fucking up social networking , immediately prior to Pichai taking the role, is all on former leadership. Whatever Pichai's failur…

I don’t think given all the shit Facebook is getting now, and Twitter in shambles, Google is crying that hard about missing social networks. And they still own YouTube, don’t forget.

They could have done literally nothing and ended up in a preferable position to today. It blew immeasurable goodwill and burned whole teams of developers.

(And by some stories I heard, “literally nothing” might even have been Pichai’s approach had it been his choice.)

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

#149

Post by malinoal »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #136
spinningslate wrote: post #23

I've no inside knowledge on Google, so can't comment on the rationale for selecting those being let go. From the outside though, Google under Pichai increasingly looks like Microsoft under Ballmer in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Balmer was lauded for delivering good numbers from a dominant market position. That was fine - until it wasn't. Under his watch, Microsoft completely misjudged the internet and totally missed…

The three Google products I use most frequently - Gmail, Search, Maps - have been underperforming heavily lately. Search is useless unless you really tailor your query to find organic results (throwing in "reddit.com" is almost a necessity). Gmail frequently lets harmful spam slip through, sometimes even tagging it with an 'important' label. The decline in Maps has been the most visible, mostly because it has negativ…

maps missing main roads is a (relatively) new "feature", you have to disable "prefer fuel-efficient routes" in your navigation settings to get sensical routes back

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

#150

Post by mouse_ »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #136
spinningslate wrote: post #23

I've no inside knowledge on Google, so can't comment on the rationale for selecting those being let go. From the outside though, Google under Pichai increasingly looks like Microsoft under Ballmer in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Balmer was lauded for delivering good numbers from a dominant market position. That was fine - until it wasn't. Under his watch, Microsoft completely misjudged the internet and totally missed…

The three Google products I use most frequently - Gmail, Search, Maps - have been underperforming heavily lately. Search is useless unless you really tailor your query to find organic results (throwing in "reddit.com" is almost a necessity). Gmail frequently lets harmful spam slip through, sometimes even tagging it with an 'important' label. The decline in Maps has been the most visible, mostly because it has negativ…

> Gmail frequently lets harmful spam slip through, sometimes even tagging it with an 'important' label.

This is why I never liked labeled inboxes, and modern email clients' seeming insistence to use them (at least by default). Cool, I've got 3 or 4 inboxes I need to check now, and often the important stuff is still in spam and the spam is still in important. These automated solutions companies have been pushing since ~2015(?) have overall led to more work for me, and at least in my anecdotal observation, older people simply disconnecting and relying more on simpler services like phone calls. At this point, just give me one inbox and let me look at it myself. It's time we as a society put Cortana and Bixby down.

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