Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google was founded 25 years ago today

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 232 posts

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#151

Post by paulpauper »

whack wrote: post #145
paxys wrote: post #99

Without commenting on the direction of the company in recent years and where it is today, I'll be forever grateful to Google for setting the standard for how tech companies need to treat their engineers. People who have entered the industry in the last decade or two may not realize it, but the sky high salaries, stock grants, benefits, flexible work hours, free gourmet meals, stocked pantries, gym memberships and lot…

Google does indeed deserve kudos for being an early adopter of great benefits, WLB, cool offices, etc. But I'm not sure how much credit they deserve for "sky high" compensation. I had a classmate with competing offers from both MS and Google back in 2007 - the Google offer was pretty close to MS's offer, both at the time and over the prior decade. A big reason why silicon valley comp rose so much in the last decade w…

it also exploded due to the growling size of such companies and dominance relative to overall US economy, especially post-2008 in which there was a void filled by the collapse of the housing, auto, brick and mortar retail, and financial sectors (except for Walmart, biotech, payment processing, and information tech, everything else weas hurt badly). such companies play a much bigger absolute and relative role, whether it's shopping, cloud and data infrastructure, advertising, AI, etc.. Companies need to pay top dollar for top talent to get products to market before an equally-sized trillion-dollar competitor does. Due to network effects, speed is of upmost importance.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#153

Post by no_wizard »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #123
Retric wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By 1998 many of the things you mentioned where common in Silicon Valley. So, Google was hardly the first company to pay very well or have great perks. Historically a huge range of perks have been tossed around including some that have gone away like company cars due to tax code changes that eliminated the benefits. There’s long been ebb and flow around what perks are common, and which ones stick around as the company…

I'm curious about this. Was it true that engineers in the Valley made good money before Google and the like? I joined the industry after the dotcom boom, and I got the impression that older companies such as IBM were very very mediocre in pay, nothing like Google. Was that not always true? You see that many people who joined after the IPO were able to retire after 15 years at Google (or Amazon), did that really happe…

IBM wasn't Silicon Valley. IBM was IBM, and then there was Silicon Valley.

IBM is cut from a very different cloth than Silicon Valley companies that were actually founded and ran in SV in the 80s / 90s. I wouldn't use them as the measuring stick.

Microsoft was pretty well known to pay really well too (granted out of Seattle / Redmond, but they grafted the SV culture really well). They also had perks and bonuses and big stock grants. Netscape, Yahoo! etc. They all had some variation of this going on.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#154

Post by throw_awy_1 »

crazygringo wrote: post #120
throw_awy_1 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here's 20 Billion dollars that disagrees with you. If switching was just a "click away" why would Google pay Apple $20B per year to be the default search for iOS etc. https://macdailynews.com/2023/02/21/google-pays-apple-20-bil...

Competition being a click away is what keeps quality between Google and Bing comparable, and what keeps Google always trying to invest to stay a step ahead. But once quality is close like that, defaults matter, which is why Google pays Apple. If Bing wasn't there (or barely worked) and there was no competition to Google, then Google wouldn't need to pay Apple, because Apple would never consider Bing as a default in t…

In this case we have two ad supported search engines that deliver a very similar experience. As you note the differentiation is not great and thus, defaults matter. So in this case they are no longer competing on product quality, but on distribution. A high barrier to entry ($20B is high) but at There is also brand competition and Google has done a fantastic job building very strong brand preference. Honestly no one has even tried to build an alternative search brand for over a decade in any meaningful way (DDG and Bing combined is the closest we could probably come and that's like Fresca competing with Coke).

Google Chrome has ~63% market share and that's not up for auction. They pay for ~23% or so at the $20B discussed thus no one is going to be able to out-distribute Google any time soon.

Furthermore no one, including Microsoft, is going to risk $20B on overcoming Google's brand preference. It would take years and probably $100B or more to play this game for an uncertain outcome. Better to invest in OpenAI than take that bet.

Credit to Google; they have built a very strong business with a strong moat. But no, real competition is not a "click away."

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#156

Post by tmpz22 »

paxys wrote: post #99

Without commenting on the direction of the company in recent years and where it is today, I'll be forever grateful to Google for setting the standard for how tech companies need to treat their engineers. People who have entered the industry in the last decade or two may not realize it, but the sky high salaries, stock grants, benefits, flexible work hours, free gourmet meals, stocked pantries, gym memberships and lot…

> sky high salaries, stock grants, benefits, flexible work hours, free gourmet meals, stocked pantries, gym memberships and lots more that you enjoy every day

Most of us never have and never will. This hasn't become the standard just a perk for a small subsection of mostly American FANNG employees.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#157

Post by no_wizard »

chubot wrote: post #139

What's also incredible about early Google is how FAST the company created unique technology that led to decades-long profits. The company IPO'd in August 2004, less than 6 years after it was founded. I think the market cap was around $20 B then, and now it's in the trillions. I don't think any other company since has done it that fast -- Stripe, Uber, AirBNB, Dropbox, etc. Compare Facebook, a company that also grew q…

Adobe had sky high growth back in the 80s. It was the first company out of SV that achieved profitability in less than a year (thanks to a sweetheart deal with Steve Jobs / Apple), however it did really well through the decade. Inflation adjusted, I think it'd hit similar numbers, though I think Google is still bigger by some margin.

Adobe today maybe not so much, but at one point they were a powerhouse

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#160

Post by ppsreejith »

paxys wrote: post #99

Without commenting on the direction of the company in recent years and where it is today, I'll be forever grateful to Google for setting the standard for how tech companies need to treat their engineers. People who have entered the industry in the last decade or two may not realize it, but the sky high salaries, stock grants, benefits, flexible work hours, free gourmet meals, stocked pantries, gym memberships and lot…

Agreed on many counts but they did collude (with Apple, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm allegedly due to bullying from Apple) to suppress poaching workers from each other. I'd say Facebook played a huge role in refusing to collude (as can be seen from this exchange between Sheryl Sandberg and Jonathan Rosenberg [1]) and thus driving up worker wages due to competition.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/24/sheryl-sandberg-facebook-r...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34227388 - Steve jobs email asking Google to stop poaching from apple and them agreeing

Post reply on HN