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Google just gave Sundar Pichai a $692M pay package

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Re: Google just gave Sundar Pichai a $692M pay package

#81

Post by tombert »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #9
crop_rotation wrote: post #4

Pichai has been a very poor CEO but Google's position was so strong that it is still doing fine. I am sure he is in the founder's good graces so as long as the company's stock takes a big dive he is gonna stay at the helm and keep raking in the big bucks.

> Pichai has been a very poor CEO Why do you say this? I’m not familiar with him, and really haven’t paid much attention to Google’s strategy beyond cultural awareness, but I think Google has done well with staying competitive in AI, is dominating the self driving battle with Waymo, and has mostly kept its good brand intact (no small feat when you are so big). Are there some big mis-steps I don’t know about?

Not the person you're replying to, but something that has bothered me about him (and a lot of SV tech), is how they did rapid over-hiring in 2022, then a year later fire a bunch of people, while he claimed he took "full responsibility", but still got a nice happy bonus that year. I'm not sure I know what "taking full responsibility" actually means, because to me it seems like if you have to lay off thousands of people in a year, that would be a good reason to not get a bonus.

These are peoples' lives. People almost certainly quit decent jobs because there was a prestige factor in working for Google, potentially moved to the overpriced world of California, just to be fired less than a year later because apparently Pichai thought that interest rates would never increase and there would be free money for forever. These people have families, and they almost certainly thought that moving to Google would be a "stable" position, because it's one of the biggest SV companies.

I don't know if he's good for the stock price, that's tougher to gauge, but I do think he's a short-sighted jerk.

Re: Google just gave Sundar Pichai a $692M pay package

#82

Post by kingofmen »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #52
crop_rotation wrote: post #4

Pichai has been a very poor CEO but Google's position was so strong that it is still doing fine. I am sure he is in the founder's good graces so as long as the company's stock takes a big dive he is gonna stay at the helm and keep raking in the big bucks.

I remember Pichai mainly for his "AI now first everything" in 2015, destroying Google search as a reliable channel to acquisit users somehow for free.

That may have been bad for users, but you can hardly claim it was bad for the company - not even in the long run. Ten years is like 40% of Google's lifetime, that is the long run! And if indeed he went all-in on AI in 2015, that seems to me like a damn near prophetic vision. Dislike AI by all means, but you can't say it's not the Current Big Thing or that Google is doing badly because of it. To see that coming so early as 2015 looks rather skilful to me.

I did not know this about Pichai and if true, it makes me feel rather better about his leadership.

Re: Google just gave Sundar Pichai a $692M pay package

#84

Post by bnchrch »

lateforwork wrote: post #57
KellyCriterion wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my bet is: - Google will be #1 because of sher data amount - Anthropic will be #2 because of the best product (whatever this may mean in the future) - Microsoft will be #3, because of enough cash to follow

What data does Google have that OpenAI can't get at?

1. Proprietary Data (Youtube, docs, gmail, cloud logs, waymo, website analytics, ads, search, the list is huge)

2. Commercial Datacenters (theyre ahead at least)

3. Chip production (Google is manufactoring proprietary chips)

4. Consumer OS (Chrome, Andriod)

5. Consumer Hardware (Pixel)

Basically google has access to data that OpenAI will never have access to, can lower costs below what OpenAI can, and is already a leader in all the places OpenAI will need massive capex to catch up.

Re: Google just gave Sundar Pichai a $692M pay package

#85

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

shevy-java wrote: post #34

Evil pays well. We need to find alternatives to Google - that giant is out of control now.

Well here are 8 search engines that I know that I did something recently with[0]

1. DDG (Duckduckgo) 2. Kagi 3. Brave (Independent) 4. Ecosia (Looking to be independent with Qwant in future) 5. Startpage 6. Marginalia (Independent and creator is on HN) 7. Mojeek (Independent) 8. Yandex.ru (Russian, Independent)

I personally use DDG (Duckduckgo). I think its a decent option fwiw, yes I know it uses Bing internally but it works really great.

> Evil pays well.

It isn't that Evil pays well although one can say that but rather that, Short term profits seem to pay well.

Although Google now has a decent AI model, Their search engine which I don't use aside from some image search sometimes, is getting worse, (maybe because that somehow helps them short term) because fwiw, their stock price isn't really correlated anymore with how good their search is, because you can bet that if that was the case, Google would throw everything to become best search engine.

These corporations are so locked in/monopolistic that unless you change your search engine/(In case of Microsoft operating system), they don't really care about how much worse their product becomes and sometimes even if people stop using their product, short term, they still don't care.

[0]: what I did: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=47232986

Re: Google just gave Sundar Pichai a $692M pay package

#86

Post by rkomorn »

tombert wrote: post #81
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pichai has been a very poor CEO Why do you say this? I’m not familiar with him, and really haven’t paid much attention to Google’s strategy beyond cultural awareness, but I think Google has done well with staying competitive in AI, is dominating the self driving battle with Waymo, and has mostly kept its good brand intact (no small feat when you are so big). Are there some big mis-steps I don’t know about?

Not the person you're replying to, but something that has bothered me about him (and a lot of SV tech), is how they did rapid over-hiring in 2022, then a year later fire a bunch of people, while he claimed he took "full responsibility", but still got a nice happy bonus that year. I'm not sure I know what "taking full responsibility" actually means, because to me it seems like if you have to lay off thousands of peopl…

The "I take full responsibility" thing has been entirely meaningless.

I guess it's supposed to convey that it's not the laid-off folks' fault, and that it was "his decision", but as you said: "taking full responsibility" without any real impact to his life? I may as well take full responsibility for the layoffs. It'd mean just as much.

Re: Google just gave Sundar Pichai a $692M pay package

#87

Post by turzmo »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #28
turzmo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that Google has had declining quality in search results, bordering on completely unusable in the past few years, and that has resulted in people using LLMs for things that they would have searched for years ago. Although they are competitive in AI, I think it is surprising that their product continues to frustrate people and that they are a distant second place.

Without taking a stance on whether their search has improved or degraded, we can observe that the same claim (“search is so degraded it’s unusable”) has been common for like 5 years at this point. If it’s really such a problem, why haven’t people already switched? Google’s search is at 90% market share [1]. Surely if it was perceived as a problem to customers there should be some measurable effect? [1] https://gs.sta…

Google has succeeded in enshittifying their search in a way that the vast majority of users (not customers -- those are the advertisers) have not noticed.

Re: Google just gave Sundar Pichai a $692M pay package

#89

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

compiler-guy wrote: post #80
gotwaz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well currently they make about 1500 bucks a year of every american household just selling ads. Make much less on the rest of the world. So it really just boils down to what the upper limit on ad sales to the american consumer is.

The cloud business is also doing quite well. Waymo is generating revenue now as well. So not just ads.

Is it profitable?

Re: Google just gave Sundar Pichai a $692M pay package

#90

Post by tombert »

geetee wrote: post #36
delusional wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get to enjoy your single family home because you're at work all the time. The ultra-rich don't have that problem.

I always got the impression these ultra rich are workaholics that barely see their family.

I don't think so; I know a lot of them are in charge of multiple companies, which sounds like they work a lot, but I think it signals just as much that CEO really isn't that hard of a job.

Elon is the CEO of like four or five companies I think, while also ostensibly heading a government agency. If you can have four or five full time jobs, then they are not full time jobs.

Given that, I suspect that they're able to find plenty of time for themselves.

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