Why I Left Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Left Google

#151

Post by gurkendoktor » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 7:39 AM UTC

nextparadigms wrote: post #75

CurtHagenlocher wrote: post #56

As a Microsoft employee, I wish this hadn't been posted to a Microsoft-branded website. Other than that, I thought it was an interesting perspective and I loved the money quote: "I couldn’t even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, “social isn’t a product,” she told me after I gave her a demo, “social is people and the people are on Facebook.”"

But "the people" were on Myspace, Hi5, Friendster and other social networks before Facebook - hundreds of millions of them. So clearly it's something about the product, too.

Interestingly enough, I see lots of people around me moving to WhatsApp, undermining FB's undermining of E-Mail. (My uneducated guess: because FB is absolutely TERRIBLE at mobile.) So nothing is cast in stone, it is just that G+ simply failed.

Re: Why I Left Google

#152

Post by xtracto » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 7:51 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #139

6ren wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" was motivated by DEC getting killed. He claims that DEC was a victim of a disruption: a new technology that offered something that didn't seem to be a threat, become successful in other markets and eventually improved enough that it was threat - then it was too late. There, the old technology was minicomputers; the new technology was workstations. The new technology isn…

Here are my thoughts as an engineer at Google. These are my own thoughts, not Google's :) I don't think Google is fighting for its life; people are not defecting away from search to use Facebook's search or Bing or whatever. Right now, Google+ is something like, "let's see what happens if we build a social component and integrate it with our products". It doesn't seem like much right now and it's certainly not killin…

> Rather than ensure that everything we push is an epic success on day one, we're putting it out there for people to try. Some people don't like Google+, some do.

Oh, I got bitten by this before by Google. I was a heavy Google Notebooks user which used it until the last days. They stopped supporting it some time ago and now will be shut "anytime soon".

The problem I see with a lot of the 20% projects (labs, or microsoft Garage) is that all of them are wasted business opportunities stalled by the corporate aspects of the companies. When a new technology is created on the side (such as say, Wave), there should be a way to create semi-independent "startups" which tries to make bring the technology to the market on its own (making it mature,etc). Later, if it is good, Google (or Microsoft) could then buy it and integrate it to their stack.

Re: Why I Left Google

#153

Post by mhansen » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 8:43 AM UTC

xtracto wrote: post #152

jrockway wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are my thoughts as an engineer at Google. These are my own thoughts, not Google's :) I don't think Google is fighting for its life; people are not defecting away from search to use Facebook's search or Bing or whatever. Right now, Google+ is something like, "let's see what happens if we build a social component and integrate it with our products". It doesn't seem like much right now and it's certainly not killin…

> Rather than ensure that everything we push is an epic success on day one, we're putting it out there for people to try. Some people don't like Google+, some do. Oh, I got bitten by this before by Google. I was a heavy Google Notebooks user which used it until the last days. They stopped supporting it some time ago and now will be shut "anytime soon". The problem I see with a lot of the 20% projects (labs, or micros…

Interesting that you choose Wave as an example, because Wave was run as a semi-independent startup, and it ended horribly.

Re: Why I Left Google

#154

Post by discreteevent » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 9:05 AM UTC

arkitaip wrote: post #18

I think people here are being ungenerous towards the author. Too me this story sounds genuine and not like a pr move dictated by Microsoft. It strikes me to be a personal account by someone who's trying to make sense of the past and actually mourning what he believe is the death of old Google. This deserves our respect as professionals because inevitably we are all going to find ourselves in a similar situation, tryi…

So he complains about advertising and then he complains when they try to make a more honest living with app engine. At the end of the article you would conclude that this guy has had enough of rampant commercialism and was off to joing something like MSF. But it turns out to be MSFT. I know its harsh to say it but the guy comes across as a spoiled child.

Re: Why I Left Google

#155

Post by acqq » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 9:26 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #67

Ouch. Not enough people think about year 10. You know, that's when you're 10 years old as a company and you've got a lot of huge successes behind you. Kind of like teenagers when they realize that finding a job is suddenly not an 'optional' thing in their lives. James' rant here reminded me of a similar rant I read (internally) at Sun on its 10 year anniversary. They had published a book all about Sun's first decade,…

But I think at some point the operating committee at Google looked at monetization of all the things Google has done and if you included search advertising the in the bar graph everything else looked like zero. And you ask yourself "We've got all these smart people doing all these projects and not a single one even comes CLOSE to the income that search advertising does? Give me one good reason I shouldn't just fire all of them?"

Funny nobody mentioned until now, but from what I've read, that's what happened to Yahoo. Apparently years ago they were so successful with the ads on their "portal" that not much more could matter. Maybe somebody has good links at hand? The similarities seem to be really big.

Re: Why I Left Google

#156

Post by vibrunazo » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 9:29 AM UTC

danielhunt wrote: post #147

jrockway wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are my thoughts as an engineer at Google. These are my own thoughts, not Google's :) I don't think Google is fighting for its life; people are not defecting away from search to use Facebook's search or Bing or whatever. Right now, Google+ is something like, "let's see what happens if we build a social component and integrate it with our products". It doesn't seem like much right now and it's certainly not killin…

Actually, speaking as an android user who LOVES that I can auto upload my pics to the GOOG, I absolutely hate that Google has any social platform at all. Because G+ exists it makes Facebook a competitor. Can I easily share my auto uploaded pics with my Facebook friends? Not at all. Can I change where I upload my pics to? (Ie : not picasa) not at all. Picasa is about lock in. Not about user experience.

You can upload all your pics from your phone to facebook with a couple of clicks from the Android Gallery app. A lock in would be if you were not allowed to, or at least if they went out of their way to make that harder for you. But instead they go out of their way to put the share button and inter-app communication (intents) to allow you to easily share your pics with third parties.

I understand your frustration, and I too would like some kind of API to let us better control auto-upload. But "lock in" seems a bit of a stretch. You're asking to go out of their way, again, to better support competitors. When there's already a lot of support for them in place.

Re: Why I Left Google

#157

Post by thomasdullien » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 9:36 AM UTC

vibrunazo wrote: post #71

rickmb wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Please enlighten me, what is Google+ (or Facebook for that matter) about if it isn't about advertising? Because as far as I know, every service that isn't about being so great people would pay for it is about advertising and nothing else.

It always seemed to me that social is the evolution of search. And google knows this very well. Social signals are very important for finding what you're looking for. The idea of g+ was always to implement something like the new "google + your world" on a larger scale on all google products. If they didn't do this, they would fall behind to the competition. They felt forced to. Erick Schmidt once said something like…

I'd rephrase this: "Social is the more general form of PageRank". If you think about PageRank in it's original form, it harnessed a social signal (linking to a site) to provide better search results. Degrees of pages in the graph-of-all-pages are easily-machine-readable manifestations of social signals.

Re: Why I Left Google

#158

Post by danmaz74 » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 10:17 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #139

6ren wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" was motivated by DEC getting killed. He claims that DEC was a victim of a disruption: a new technology that offered something that didn't seem to be a threat, become successful in other markets and eventually improved enough that it was threat - then it was too late. There, the old technology was minicomputers; the new technology was workstations. The new technology isn…

Here are my thoughts as an engineer at Google. These are my own thoughts, not Google's :) I don't think Google is fighting for its life; people are not defecting away from search to use Facebook's search or Bing or whatever. Right now, Google+ is something like, "let's see what happens if we build a social component and integrate it with our products". It doesn't seem like much right now and it's certainly not killin…

But it is Google itself that is creating the impression that Google+ is critical to its future, just look how much you're pushing it everywhere.

By the way, I use G+ and like it more than facebook, but I also think that there is only one serious way for Google to differentiate it enough from Facebook to make it a compelling alternative in the long run: Make G+ the open alternative to Facebook; ie, make it THE platform on which other websites, services etc. want to build their social features, without being afraid that by doing so they'll contribute to the construction of a walled garden that, in the end, could destroy the (free) internet as we know it.

Google is already the biggest winner with the free internet, so, defending that model would be in its best interest. Trying to beat Facebook at its own game, on the other hand, doesn't make so much sense to me. By winning over third parties, on the contrary, they could make it so diffuse and useful that even "common users" will see a real reason to use it.

Re: Why I Left Google

#159

Post by revorad » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 10:19 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #139

6ren wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" was motivated by DEC getting killed. He claims that DEC was a victim of a disruption: a new technology that offered something that didn't seem to be a threat, become successful in other markets and eventually improved enough that it was threat - then it was too late. There, the old technology was minicomputers; the new technology was workstations. The new technology isn…

Here are my thoughts as an engineer at Google. These are my own thoughts, not Google's :) I don't think Google is fighting for its life; people are not defecting away from search to use Facebook's search or Bing or whatever. Right now, Google+ is something like, "let's see what happens if we build a social component and integrate it with our products". It doesn't seem like much right now and it's certainly not killin…

Personally, I'm working on a new product at Google that will make computers do something that they've never done before, something that many people have wanted for a long time.

There are 2 things I've wanted for a long time:

A search engine for stuff in my house, so that I never have to sift through drawers for hours ever again.

A cheap robot for cleaning dishes, washing clothes, cleaning the house. The current solutions are expensive and don't work very well.

I hope you're working on one of them.

Re: Why I Left Google

#160

Post by megablast » Wed, Mar 14, 2012, 10:29 AM UTC

danielhunt wrote: post #147

jrockway wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are my thoughts as an engineer at Google. These are my own thoughts, not Google's :) I don't think Google is fighting for its life; people are not defecting away from search to use Facebook's search or Bing or whatever. Right now, Google+ is something like, "let's see what happens if we build a social component and integrate it with our products". It doesn't seem like much right now and it's certainly not killin…

Actually, speaking as an android user who LOVES that I can auto upload my pics to the GOOG, I absolutely hate that Google has any social platform at all. Because G+ exists it makes Facebook a competitor. Can I easily share my auto uploaded pics with my Facebook friends? Not at all. Can I change where I upload my pics to? (Ie : not picasa) not at all. Picasa is about lock in. Not about user experience.

I think Google and Apple already see the facebook threat, and are trying to limit helping it grow any further. Even without G+, you may not have had this sort of FB integration to Google. The only reason Microsoft is sidling up to FB is in an effort to get some traction in mobile and the web space.