Everybody on here seems to be talking about the Google perspective, but what about the people and companies who were using the product? How do they feel? What is their take on this?
Must be weird.
Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
101–110 of 259 posts
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#102At 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…
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…
>> 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.
In many cases perception is reality, regardless of what the facts actually are.
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#103At 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…
The same mindset can be seen everywhere, even in opensource: -Build shiny new replacement -> HN front page, exposure, kudos -Fix bugs in existing thing -> No recognition Rewriting is so much more fun than hunting after obscure issues
That’s true, but in theory a professionally-managed company like Google should not be motivated by HN front pages and kudos; it should be about maximizing long term profits.
That’s exactly the meme/complaint: Google seems to value innovation more than success.
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would pur a starline in my home today if it were available.
Exactly! Absolutely phenomenal and I think we'll see this in many places. Knowing Google, it will start in the office and then end up dispersed elsewhere, potentially purchasable in the home, but just imagine finding these booths anywhere you could use. We used to have telephone booths! Imagine Starline booths.
Wouldn’t that take several years of investment with little to no return?
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Stadia failed as a business, not as a product or technical solution.
I work on Google Play, we've been going for a decade, no sign of stopping now. Much of what I and the many people around me do is maintenance – making things go faster, making things error less, etc. Some of that is done with new features, some is transparent to users (or app developers).
I don't see this culture that HN seems so convinced about. I can see elements of it at a very high level, as I said I'm not really commenting on the top leadership, but for most people at Google, new products do not appear to be necessary for progression.
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#106Glass 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 $$$ wasted on development without putting much more effort into R&D. Not a surprise that adoption was limited. (I worked at X 2013-2015.)
More reasons to iterate on it.
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you've missed my point. As you break down "the grind", it breaks down into projects like "fix this bug" or "speed up that API", and those are impactful and can lead to promotion. Sure, no director is going to be promoted to VP for fixing a bug, but it's useful stuff for a new grad to have completed and would feed into their promotion. If there is "grind" that is truly not impactful, then why is it being done?…
> If there is "grind" that is truly not impactful, then why is it being done? Because it's hard to measure and even harder to predict. E.g. Something that fixes Youtube's scam comment problem where scammers impersonate creators and lure viewers into telegram and whatsapp to scam them. It won't be working immediately, so someone will have to work on it for a while and iterate against the scammers' countermeasures unti…
I think you might underestimate the number of people working on this stuff. There are rarely trade-offs between, as you suggested, working on ad engagement and YouTube scam comments. Both will have teams working on them.
At a very high level you could argue that the number of people being allocated to each may not be right, but it's not that one or the other doesn't have any resources.
From what I've seen, people at Google are very cognizant of these issues, and the only real reason that the public may see progress come and go is that these are hard problems and the work against malicious content is sadly never-ending.
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#108Glass just wasn't very good. Tiny low resolution display, poor quality camera, uncomfortable to wear, terrible battery life. Pivoting to "for Enterprise" was just a half-assed attempt to make back some of the $$$ wasted on development without putting much more effort into R&D. Not a surprise that adoption was limited. (I worked at X 2013-2015.)
It was a first gen AR product released almost 10 years ago. They needed to keep working on it, but like all Google products, they stopped very soon after launch.
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#109At 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 was an ardent Google fan boy, but I'm not longer going to buy their stuff. Your comment articulates why, before I only had a vague feeling.
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - Support shiny thing -> it's not difficult, everyone can do it This is not a truism, even though many managers see it like that. Dealing with someone else's mess is way harder than to deal with your own.
> This is not a truism, even though many managers see it like that. Which is, I think, exactly the point that OP is trying to make. Incentives are defined by managers, after all.
Ye maybe he was paraphrasing.