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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?

#261

Post by riku_iki »

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...

> its exorbitant profit did not stay or grow at the same rate

I think their profit margin reduced, so company became less healthy and balanced.

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

#263

Post by fragmede »

Spooky23 wrote: post #166
bbor wrote: post #36

As a google employee (who obviously has no privileged info) I really don’t buy this whole activist-investor explanation for the layoffs. Besides the fact that the investors in question own I’m much more convinced by the argument that they saw this sector-wide wave of layoffs as an opportunity to scare their engineers and change the culture to be a more intense, hierarchical one. Google engineering culture has long be…

I’m not a Google employee, but can’t help to think that the injection of Oracle and Oracle diaspora folks into the Cloud division has to effect the executive culture.

Even before this most recent round, Google fired most of their internal IT staff, as well as the GCP support team, and replaced them with cheaper labor from a lower cost of living country, so I'd say yeah.

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

#264

Post by scarface74 »

chaboud wrote: post #51
bbor wrote: post #36

As a google employee (who obviously has no privileged info) I really don’t buy this whole activist-investor explanation for the layoffs. Besides the fact that the investors in question own I’m much more convinced by the argument that they saw this sector-wide wave of layoffs as an opportunity to scare their engineers and change the culture to be a more intense, hierarchical one. Google engineering culture has long be…

It’s much easier to lose trust that to gain it, and the ramifications of the move will be felt for a very long time. There’s the time before and the time after, and Google won’t ever really look the same to the industry. That said, Google probably now actually looks more like what Google is and has been for some time. The industry was just hanging on to goodwill forged over the last two decades. There’s still massive…

Yes I’m sure as one of the top paying public companies that issue stock instead of Monopoly money (equity in private companies) tech people are going to refuse to work for Google.

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

#265

Post by scarface74 »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #232
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yesterday I searched "apache kafka" on my phone because I can never remember if it's apache.kafka.org or kafka.apache.org (it's the latter, the former is registered by an Italian developer), and I had to scroll past five or six "sponsored" results from managed Kafka vendors to get the actual result. Nevermind the changes to the actual algorithm, it just blew me away that the actual result was below the cut.

How do you even view the web especially on mobile without an ad blocker?

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

#266

Post by pm90 »

scarface74 wrote: post #264
chaboud wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s much easier to lose trust that to gain it, and the ramifications of the move will be felt for a very long time. There’s the time before and the time after, and Google won’t ever really look the same to the industry. That said, Google probably now actually looks more like what Google is and has been for some time. The industry was just hanging on to goodwill forged over the last two decades. There’s still massive…

Yes I’m sure as one of the top paying public companies that issue stock instead of Monopoly money (equity in private companies) tech people are going to refuse to work for Google.

Their compensation isn’t that good (at least for non famous folks) within Big Tech.

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

#267

Post by scarface74 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #179
BakeInBeens wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the most monopolistic portion of Google besides search would be their hold on the ad tech industry (and even then you have other online giants Meta, Tiktok, Amazon, etc.) but I don't necessarily understand how you can say they have a monopoly on consumer products large enough to drive adoption of Android especially 15 years ago. Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Chrome and Android either have direct co…

Something like 70% of email is controlled by Google, and you cannot operate an email service if you do not meet Google's demands. If your business isn't listed in Google Maps, it doesn't matter what industry you are in, Google has killed you. Chrome and Android aren't open source (at least, not the version running on 99.9% of their respective install bases), and both operate as near complete monopolies. Chrome has us…

Gmail has a 23% market share

https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/most-used-email-clients

And “email is for old people”. How much important personal communication even goes over email?

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

#268

Post by biztos »

pjmlp wrote: post #174
cmckn wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m no expert, but the “eco” routes don’t usually pass the smell test with me. I’ll be routed away from a thoroughfare that’s mostly flat/downhill to take a slightly-shorter side street that’s a steep incline. It just seems like half-baked greenwashing.

In vacations on Mediterranean islands it took us through barely usable "roads" in the middle of a forest trail, thankfully nothing bad came out of it. Beats me how it was supposed to be a fuel saving road, other than doing that by virtue of destroying the car.

In the Canary Islands it took us down a utility road that was literally being used as a mountain mike trail. We were in an Opel Corso. Fortunately a beater, and my friend’s superior driving skill got us out, but just barely. We were resigned to abandoning the car… and Google had treated it just like a regular paved road.

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

#269

Post by ocdtrekkie »

scarface74 wrote: post #267
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like 70% of email is controlled by Google, and you cannot operate an email service if you do not meet Google's demands. If your business isn't listed in Google Maps, it doesn't matter what industry you are in, Google has killed you. Chrome and Android aren't open source (at least, not the version running on 99.9% of their respective install bases), and both operate as near complete monopolies. Chrome has us…

Gmail has a 23% market share https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/most-used-email-clients And “email is for old people”. How much important personal communication even goes over email?

That statistic does not mean what you think it means, it's about clients. That ignores the fact that people open their Gmail with Samsung, Apple, and Windows mail apps. 66% of folks are not running around with icloud.com addresses.

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

#270

Post by acdha »

Sunspark wrote: post #119
klodolph wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it makes perfect sense for Google to be in cloud. Cloud infrastructure services are a race to the bottom—storage, compute, etc. You get people into your ecosystem and upsell them on SaaS offerings that integrate with your IaaS offerings. You have to be able to scale without growing staff linearly, which is already Google’s model (although Apple and Amazon are better at it). Google’s main problem IMO is the lack o…

Google doesn't have the ability to speak with a customer at ALL. If there is a problem, basically the only recourse you have is to flail about on HN, Reddit or Twitter and hope that you are noticed by a random Google employee who feels sympathy for your plight and decides to try and help you. The ONLY official channel they have where you can talk to someone that I am aware of, is sales and restricted to sales only. T…

When Google released Anthos, we were in the market for something along those lines for Kubernetes on our own hardware (policy requirements). Talked to our reps, asked for some quotes … nothing. Tried again. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing. This left everyone wondering what it'd be like if we (as an existing GCP customer) needed support for any reason.

The only company I've ever dealt with which was worse at taking your money was IBM. In both cases, it was eerily similar: you could get a room full of people to do a demo but the salespeople seemed to assume their reputation meant success was inevitable and they didn't have to actually do anything like … eeew … work to close deals. In neither case were we the biggest deal in town but also far from the smallest, and in both cases the experience meant they missed out on larger sales later.

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