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

The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

robinsloan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 258 posts

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#191

Post by philwelch »

hk_kh wrote: post #174
brudgers wrote: post #117

Here's the thing I see, Google has no meaningful history of monetizing things like self driving cars or video glasses or anything else except for via advertising. Yeah, they sell some web services, but that's a lot different from going head to head with companies that know about manufacturing like Toyota and BMW or those that know about consumer electronics like Samsung and Sony. I guess they could create an advertis…

Why stick to ads if you can sell / license software for cars? It could both work from a manufacturer or a personal POV. Buy my car, it comes with Google.

Hopefully they'll be smart enough to actually license the software. I half-suspect they'd do something stupid, like open-source it on the assumption that it would increase the demand for web advertising (since you could just use a tablet or laptop during your commute instead of driving).

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#192

Post by [deleted] »

benburleson wrote: post #142
confluence wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of a Charlie Munger quote: that to get closer to the right answer, scholars should "invert, always invert." You have a strong point there. Most top 100 websites I see are just frontends to databases . I kid you not. Their competitive advantage is proprietary data holding and network effects to get more data. Google - search + database frontend. Facebook - database frontend. YouTube - database frontend. Yah…

What's a good example of a site that isn't a db frontend?

[deleted]

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#193

Post by zitterbewegung »

StavrosK wrote: post #89
51Cards wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one little thought I would add to that is that when Google first started working on a self driving car everyone went "WTF is a search company doing..". Now, X years later... it's a different story. People have started to really think about self-driving vehicles and autonomous travel. I don't see Glass at this point... but I didn't see practical self driving cars 6 years ago either, let alone states licensing them…

Google isn't a search company, it's an AI/ML company.

Google is currently an Ad company that drives you to those ads using AI/ML.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#194

Post by ekianjo »

taligent wrote: post #154
detst wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If that's a waste, then I don't really know what else is meaningful in life. The "strong tie"? I'm just not so sure changing the "weak tie" is such a net positive for society. I'm not going to claim that FB doesn't have its positives but I'd rather see a society building strong ties with fewer people than weak ties with many. (and, frankly, doing nothing but wasting time for hours per day)

How is communicating with people on Facebook a greater waste of times than playing games, being on here, chatting with friends, watching movies etc. It's funny because your entire comment is self contradictory. On one hand you criticise socialising using Facebook and on the other want to build stronger ties. Socialising = Stronger ties.

Socialising does not equal stronger ties. Talking to a bunch of people at a party is not going to create anything but acquaintances, a word we use to describe people you have met but who mean close to nothing to nothing to you and vice versa. Socialising on facebook is even weaker than that.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#195

Post by danielrhodes »

51Cards wrote: post #33

"Google is getting good, really good, at building things that see the world around them and actually understand what they’re seeing." That statement spells it for me. With Google I see research, I see pushing tech boundaries and hardware experiments, I see new ways to interpret the world. With Facebook I see a huge lump of data but nothing really too groundbreaking. I don't deny Facebook's momentum... it's huge and i…

There's no question that Google is good at R&D. In the past these projects have led to full featured products that were pretty great. However, lately that hasn't been the case and it wasn't because of lack of vision but lack of top notch execution and lack of attention to the experience element people expect these days. When companies start competing with each other rather than with themselves, they tend to lose sight of the end goal which is to create great products.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#196

Post by JVIDEL »

51Cards wrote: post #75
ajross wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I'm willing to be surprised. And I'm willing to give Google a lot more benefit of the doubt than I am most entities at being able to execute on this stuff. But still... Glass? Seriously?

Agreed as it sits now... but maybe the current form factor is the limit of today's technology. And maybe the insights they get from even attempting to develop that kind of interface puts them 5 years ahead when someone invents a holographic projector that clips onto your shirt collar. But if you don't even try it, then you don't even get the "maybe".

We don't have the technology to make volumetric holograms, the closest thing is some persistence of vision-like system made by a Japanese company that's very low-res and can make you blind if you stand too close to it.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#197

Post by tlrobinson »

saraid216 wrote: post #177
tlrobinson wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were Facebook, publicly I'd focus on growth, while quietly building killer applications with the massive amounts of data they have. Consider how many photos they have with users' faces tagged. They'd be crazy not to leverage that data. With the right facial recognition technology they will own that space, which would be extremely useful in products that compete with, say, Project Glass. Ditto with location data,…

Are you seriously suggesting that they'll come out with a piece of software that can compete with a piece of hardware? Competing with Glass, assuming it's successful by some meaningful measure, will require physical manufacture. I guess they could leverage their massive amounts of data to blackmail supply chains or something...

No, I'm suggesting they could compete directly with Project Glass or similar types of products, or at least partner with hardware companies. The software is what makes the hardware interesting to use.

I have no clue what you're talking about regarding blackmail.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#198

Post by roc »

detst wrote: post #101
ececconi wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Connecting people and giving them a new way to communicate with each other is a big waste to society? Facebook has fundamentally changed the idea of the weak tie for many people. If that's a waste, then I don't really know what else is meaningful in life.

> If that's a waste, then I don't really know what else is meaningful in life. The "strong tie"? I'm just not so sure changing the "weak tie" is such a net positive for society. I'm not going to claim that FB doesn't have its positives but I'd rather see a society building strong ties with fewer people than weak ties with many. (and, frankly, doing nothing but wasting time for hours per day)

Fewer, stronger ties sounds like a recipe for insulation and groupthink, just as weaker more numerous ties sounds like a recipe for banality and conformity.

I prefer society, via technology, to continue to have and explore both.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#199

Post by ajross »

qq66 wrote: post #172
ajross wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But again, Google did all that stuff too (almost 1:1, even -- remember that G+ is a facebook clone). And somehow they also found time to make self driving cars, a first tier mobile operating system, ChromsOS, a Dropbox clone, these ridiculous glasses, etc... Facebook just looks pretty lame in comparison, sorry.

You do realize that Google has 10 times the employees, revenues, profits, etc. of Facebook?

Of course. But it's a culture thing. Google was producing great innovative madness when they were 1/10th its size size. And Facebook had what is essentially their core service already in place when they were 1/10th their current size. They've since done very little that's interesting. I don't see why that's controversial, nor why so many people feel the need to "defend" them.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#200

Post by pstuart »

jrockway wrote: post #139
T-Winsnes wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember my parents called all mp3 players "iPod" long before the appstore was announced. The first generations of iPods might have been easier to use than the other mp3 players at the time, but that alone does not explain the huge adoption by the general population. Marketing definitively had a lot to do with it, probably more than the quality of the product.

Indeed. The iPod was just a worse Nomad. (I already posted CmdrTaco's iconic summary in another comment in this article, so I will avoid it here.) But nobody bought Nomad, and everyone bought an iPod. Why? Because Apple told people to buy an iPod, and people tend to do what they're told.

Ah, so the reason the ipod is successful is:

"Because Apple told people to buy an iPod, and people tend to do what they're told".

Post reply on HN