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Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

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Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#91

Post by wslh »

bla3 wrote: post #79
throwaw12 wrote: post #25

At this point, I think issue is not about products Google build, it is about how Google put their incentives in place. - Build new shiny thing -> promoted - Support shiny thing -> it's not difficult, everyone can do it This type of culture is influencing future direction of Google products, they put together awesome team, solve problem and get from 0 to 1, then team moves on, others don't have incentive to make 1 to…

I think this is both obsolete and subtly wrong. Big corps want products with global impact. When a product is new, it's evaluated for its potential. When it's been around for a while, it's evaluated on how well its growth is matching the estimated impact. Eventually, growth has stopped. If the product lands at an active base of a billion users or so, it's a success and people definitely can make a career out of maint…

We can analyze another course of action from companies such as Microsoft. Not saying that is better or worse but showing an alternative in big corporations.

Microsoft launched similar initiatives every time for decades even failing at prior tries. In the UI front they "play" with Silverlight, WFP, Windows Forms, MFC and a lot more. Try and retry.

I also think that these issues are worse when you are dealing with hardware: do they open the codebase to continue playing with the devices? I am on the European side of not only repairing youself but opening "dead" code or somethink like that. It is just an idea.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#92

Post by danpalmer »

largepeepee wrote: post #83
danpalmer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a meme that people love and there's some truth to it, but also a number of ways in which it's inaccurate. Sure you can get promoted for launching a new thing, but you can also get promoted for fixing a first pass implementation, for scaling something from a small user base to a large user base, and so on, as long as you can show the "impact" of the change – whether that's revenue, savings, productivity, impro…

Exactly why google sucks at it. You get promoted for launching hot new products, quickly scaling it or fixing obviously broken ones. The boring grind in-between them is much harder to show value so few teams are motivated to work on it.

I think you've missed my point. As you break down "the grind", it breaks down into projects like "fix this bug" or "speed up that API", and those are impactful and can lead to promotion. Sure, no director is going to be promoted to VP for fixing a bug, but it's useful stuff for a new grad to have completed and would feed into their promotion.

If there is "grind" that is truly not impactful, then why is it being done? I'm not talking about for promotion, I mean why would anyone make changes that have no impact?

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#93

Post by jpm_sd »

Glass just wasn't very good. Tiny low resolution display, poor quality camera, uncomfortable to wear, terrible battery life. Pivoting to "for Enterprise" was just a half-assed attempt to make back some of the $$$ wasted on development without putting much more effort into R&D. Not a surprise that adoption was limited.

(I worked at X 2013-2015.)

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#94

Post by danpalmer »

avereveard wrote: post #80
danpalmer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a meme that people love and there's some truth to it, but also a number of ways in which it's inaccurate. Sure you can get promoted for launching a new thing, but you can also get promoted for fixing a first pass implementation, for scaling something from a small user base to a large user base, and so on, as long as you can show the "impact" of the change – whether that's revenue, savings, productivity, impro…

> as long as you can show the "impact" of the change Which is far easier if the thing is brand new and didn't exist yesterday, then attribution is straightforward, and we're to square one.

Maybe, maybe not. Again I'm not thinking so much about the very top of the company as almost everyone is not in that position and never will be.

For me, it's not necessarily true that showing impact on a completely new feature is easier than showing impact in improving an existing one. It's a lot more work to measure new things as we don't have the tools to measure them yet, or as you have to introduce new measurements to colleagues and get buy-in that they are the right thing to be measuring. On the other hand, saying that I reduced an existing error rate by half is very easy to communicate, understand, prioritise, and even reward.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#95

Post by coolandsmartrr »

hobo_mark wrote: post #89
is_true wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Google should create Google Spinner. A division whose only purpose is to spin off projects

It sort of exists: Area 120. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_120 https://area120.google.com

I am a millennial, but I feel old when I remember Google Labs. They started GMail and Google Calendar there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Labs

Area 120 may try to revitalize that, but it seems to feature more Press Releases than actual demos.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#97

Post by KptMarchewa »

danpalmer wrote: post #92
largepeepee wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly why google sucks at it. You get promoted for launching hot new products, quickly scaling it or fixing obviously broken ones. The boring grind in-between them is much harder to show value so few teams are motivated to work on it.

I think you've missed my point. As you break down "the grind", it breaks down into projects like "fix this bug" or "speed up that API", and those are impactful and can lead to promotion. Sure, no director is going to be promoted to VP for fixing a bug, but it's useful stuff for a new grad to have completed and would feed into their promotion. If there is "grind" that is truly not impactful, then why is it being done?…

Because, especially now, we can see lack of it drastically impacting new Google products like Stadia. No one can trust Google to maintain their products at all.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#99

Post by luckylion »

danpalmer wrote: post #92
largepeepee wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly why google sucks at it. You get promoted for launching hot new products, quickly scaling it or fixing obviously broken ones. The boring grind in-between them is much harder to show value so few teams are motivated to work on it.

I think you've missed my point. As you break down "the grind", it breaks down into projects like "fix this bug" or "speed up that API", and those are impactful and can lead to promotion. Sure, no director is going to be promoted to VP for fixing a bug, but it's useful stuff for a new grad to have completed and would feed into their promotion. If there is "grind" that is truly not impactful, then why is it being done?…

> If there is "grind" that is truly not impactful, then why is it being done?

Because it's hard to measure and even harder to predict. E.g. Something that fixes Youtube's scam comment problem where scammers impersonate creators and lure viewers into telegram and whatsapp to scam them.

It won't be working immediately, so someone will have to work on it for a while and iterate against the scammers' countermeasures until it gets too costly for them and most of them give up. Should someone pick it up?

It's not immediately impactful as it won't increase engagement and ads, but it's probably going to prevent a big PR issue when some media company picks up the topic and highlights Google's inaction and their decision to tolerate the scammers and their crimes on their platform.

Fixing it has no direct impact on income, and the problem it mitigates hasn't happened yet, why would anyone work on it? And in the real world we see: they're not working on it (or it's taking them longer than a year, who knows).

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#100

Post by rtkwe »

avsteele wrote: post #98

What left out there similar to this? I want to provide remote instruction and see through a user's eyes to help them fix/debug hardware. 2D AR is good enough. Hololens is winding down. What's the next best thing?

Magic Leap? I haven't looked at it much to be honest they're far too expensive for me to play with.
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