Chromium/ChromiumOS and AOSP are some of the most valuable open source projects on earth. Without android, smartphones would be a luxury, thanks to android even poor people have one, in many cases their only general purpose computing device.
Google was founded 25 years ago today
201–210 of 232 posts
Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today
#202> The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. - Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine
The user demographics changed a lot. When google started, most people didn't even use the internet. Today, most people go online to shop, watch videos, or socialize. Today's Google serves that target pretty well, at the expense of the relatively small number of people who are searching for technical information about programming languages or frameworks. Not coincidentally, a lot of ads target that demograpic as well.…
Google still serves me well when I look for technical information, but do you know a search engine that's even better for that purpose? (I also use ChatGPT, and that's sometimes better, sometimes worse, and always slower.)
Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today
#203Without 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…
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Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
> At some point most people will sell out. That might be true, but I don't believe people sell out for the money. There is no concrete difference in lifestyle between having a hundred millions and a billion. And no matter how luxuriously you live, there will be an enormous amount of wealth left to your heirs. When you have that kind of money, changing the world and the future becomes more interesting than getting as…
If this was about legacy, not money, do you think they would let enshittification proceed at the pace it has? No, it's about money. Always has been. Hence the quote.
You understood the opposite of what I wrote. What I'm saying is that people who are ultra-rich are not selling out because they want more money, but rather because of threats, extortion and such shadowy pressures. Combined with money. The carrot and the stick.
Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> So in this case they are no longer competing on product quality, but on distribution. Incorrect. Quality is a moving target as search gets better. Competition is in quality and distribution. If Google stops improving and lets Bing move ahead on quality, it'll be dead. Witness the recent worries about incorporating LLM's into search. > Furthermore no one, including Microsoft, is going to risk $20B on overcoming Goog…
Okay, they complete on quality but they are "close" to use your term.
My point was that paying to be the default is not enough. A challenger needs to also overcome the brand preference has built. A one-time investment of $20B (or even $3B) would be wasted. A true competitor would have to be in this for the long haul and willing to outbid Google for many years. Additionally they'd need to invest in building their brand image against Google which would be expensive and risky.
> Samsung was considering switching to Bing
Great case in point. Samsung (not Bing) backed out of this "over concerns of how it could affect its relationship with Google and the market’s perception of the move" [https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/19/23730368/samsung-google-b...]
Demonstrates that its not just money that is required to compete with Google.
Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today
#206Earlier 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…
It’s hard to do direct comparisons when most of this isn’t public information, the job requirements are so different, and inflation plays such a big role in these comparisons. A dollar is nominally worth 1/2 what it was in 1995, but if you’re looking at housing etc the difference is much larger.
My understanding is adjusted for inflation the minimally skilled developer was actually better off on the mid to late 90’s. The median developer was in a roughly similar situation. The elite’s pay was comparable, but today we have a larger percentage of people in that elite category.
PS: IBM isn’t Silicon Valley. Many developers today are still making sub 120k, but that’s really not what we’re talking about.
Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today
#207Without 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…
The spoiling was already quite obscene during the Dotcom Bubble 1996-00. IPO valuations were directly related to the number of programmers in a company, so they did everything to hire and retain staff.
Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today
#208What'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
Oh yeah for sure, I can only imagine Adobe in its early days was just as exceptional as Microsoft or Apple back then.
I would have thought another Google would come along in the last 25 years, but weirdly/arguably it was Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft that out-competed them! (in mobile, e-commerce, and cloud)
Those companies are all older than Google!
And there's definitely a timing issue play. The market in the early 80's was "ripe" for the PC boom and Apple, and the market was ripe for desktop publishing and Adobe.
The Internet was likewise "ripe" in the early 2000's.
It feels like the last 10 years have been full of grasping at straws for the next big thing:
- google glass was definitely a "jump the shark" moment
- VR / metaverse seems to be "forced"
- there was a bunch of hype around 3D printing for consumers, rather than for industrial use
- In 2023, self-driving cars have achieved 1% or less of what people thought they would in 2013 or 2016
- crypto and NFTs also feel "forced". Bitcoin is 15 years old now. Whatever you think of it, it's not like the PC era or the Internet era. 15 years in, those were way more impactful.
- I mentioned generative AI above -- it's interesting, but it also has big question marks in terms of BOTH the product and business. Google had neither of those. It's also 11 years in to deep learning.
Of course, this could be just an old guy talking ... and probably missing a lot of what's useful and new. But it does seem like Google was singular -- both the right thing, and the right time. I'm sad to see how bad the products have gotten and how disappointed people are in the brand
Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today
#209Without 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…
Yeah.
Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today
#210Without 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…
Yea. Was there myself and so 'tis true