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Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

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Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#131

Post by kamaal »

timr wrote: post #65

If you ask me, one of Google's biggest strategic successes was their ability to convince an entire generation of engineers that they were something other than a company. The way many (otherwise intelligent) people talk about it, you'd think it was a religion. What you're seeing here is not the shattering of a dream, but of an illusion -- Google hasn't been a scrappy, idealistic startup for many years. It's a fine com…

A lot of fast growing start ups make amazing places to work, because of the very virtue of what they are.

They are small, have lots of money, there is no bureaucracy and there are no managers getting in their way of achieving great things.

Microsoft has 95K+ employees and has by and large turned into IBM. Google has 45K+ employees and is rapidly transforming into the next Microsoft.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#132

Post by 6ren »

Search engines have zero switching costs, so mainstream PR is a key competitive advantage for Google (not engineer PR). Their massive capital investment in server farms (esp. for google suggest) is another.

20% time was a long-term strategy to lead new technologies instead of being disrupted by them. Google+ is a short-term strategy to avoid being disrupted by facebook. Long-term self-interest is often close to "good" (so close it may be why it's good).

oblig snark: Instead of turning evil, Google be like Sun - die, and be reanimated by evil piecemeal.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#133

Post by ktd »

michaelochurch wrote: post #46

This is not worth getting "bugged" about. I say this as one who made that exact mistake. It's really traumatic to see those who are supposed to be leading fail, but it's an ahistorical truth not worth getting emotional about. I don't care to speak about Google, but more generally, here's something everyone needs to know. Regarding the way we assess companies, it's probably the truest thing in the world. Here it is: r…

>It's why there is a centuries-old hatred of inherited wealth and position in all modernized cultures.

Isn't the opposite true?

We can certainly point to famous examples of heirs/heiresses behaving badly, but that seems largely the exception rather than the rule-- by and large, the terms nouveau riche and "new money" carry a negative connotation, while "old money" is associated with taste and sophistication (though certainly also snobbery).

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#134

Post by objclxt »

kamaal wrote: post #131
timr wrote: post #65

If you ask me, one of Google's biggest strategic successes was their ability to convince an entire generation of engineers that they were something other than a company. The way many (otherwise intelligent) people talk about it, you'd think it was a religion. What you're seeing here is not the shattering of a dream, but of an illusion -- Google hasn't been a scrappy, idealistic startup for many years. It's a fine com…

A lot of fast growing start ups make amazing places to work, because of the very virtue of what they are. They are small, have lots of money, there is no bureaucracy and there are no managers getting in their way of achieving great things. Microsoft has 95K+ employees and has by and large turned into IBM. Google has 45K+ employees and is rapidly transforming into the next Microsoft.

Of course, you could also say...

> A lot of fast growing start ups are terrible places to work, because of the very virtue of what they are.

The size of a company has a little to do with its culture. Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft all employ over 80,000 people, but have very different cultures.

I have seen some start-ups which have awful cultures, with terrible morale problems. It is really not the size of / number of employees at a company that defines its culture, but the mindset of the people in charge.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#135

Post by jmillikin »

dorfsmay wrote: post #110
matthewmacleod wrote: post #38

What's with the sudden outpouring of Google-hate of late? I totally get that Google is changing, and has been doing so for a while. But I don't see that as "evil," and I'm struggling to see why anybody would. Google around maybe five or six years ago was a wasteland of shoddy, broken, unintegrated products, many with half-assed, confusing interfaces. That's been tightened up - many of their products are now substanti…

Going away from standard and becoming incompatible. They are becoming very much like Microsoft that way. VOIP had a chance to become as ubiquitous and convenient as email, but the drop of xmpp fot voice and video took us back 10 years.... Same with replacing rss by g+. Google exists because of standards such as http and html, but they are slowly moving away from all standards in the name of locking users.

  > VOIP had a chance to become as ubiquitous and convenient
  > as email, but the drop of xmpp fot voice and video took
  > us back 10 years.
XMPP had its chance, and failed to deliver. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebRTC is the modern standard-to-be for VOIP, and the original implementation was created by Google.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#136

Post by dingaling »

Someone wrote: post #25
guybrushT wrote: post #14

Reports of Google's decline are greatly exaggerated :) G+ is annoying, but these days no large company can make all their users happy, with all their products/features/changes, all the time. The so-called erosion of 'Don't be evil' has just become more apparent now, but as long as I have known google, they always made money from ads - and ads are fundamentally evil (IMHO). Search, maps, email etc are quite nice and I…

Ads are _fundamentally_ evil? What mechanism do you propose for bringing new products to the attention of customers, then? Or are new products and/or customers also fundamentally evil, IYHO?

Most ads are designed to resonate on an emotional level, rather than being purely informative.

It's the sophistication of their design in order to pierce our emotional 'firewall' that makes them 'evil'; they're basically exploits against the human mind.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#137

Post by yapcguy »

css771 wrote: post #121
timr wrote: post #65

If you ask me, one of Google's biggest strategic successes was their ability to convince an entire generation of engineers that they were something other than a company. The way many (otherwise intelligent) people talk about it, you'd think it was a religion. What you're seeing here is not the shattering of a dream, but of an illusion -- Google hasn't been a scrappy, idealistic startup for many years. It's a fine com…

Well for me personally, it's been a long series of small stuff that convinced me that they were an engineering organization first and a for-profit company next. I remember when Android 2.3 was released and at one of the Google dev conferences, a Google engineer answering a question about why "X feature doesn't exist in stock Anroid" answered that Google thought that was too confusing for the lay user and that one cou…

What does all this say about Larry Page?

He gave a speech recently where he actually pondered why people wouldn't want to have their health care data public, so it could be shared to advance medical research.

From that I could tell that he's completely out of touch with ordinary people. He simply has no idea that people might be scared of losing their job or being discriminated against because of an illness.

Reminds me of his former girlfriend/date Marissa Mayer, who built a nursery next to her office while telling Yahoo employees they should no longer work from home.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#138

Post by pjmlp »

philwelch wrote: post #129
timr wrote: post #65

If you ask me, one of Google's biggest strategic successes was their ability to convince an entire generation of engineers that they were something other than a company. The way many (otherwise intelligent) people talk about it, you'd think it was a religion. What you're seeing here is not the shattering of a dream, but of an illusion -- Google hasn't been a scrappy, idealistic startup for many years. It's a fine com…

I was never illusioned about Google in the first place. This is not disillusionment. I just never expected them to turn into Microsoft .

All companies do when they reach a certain market size. I still remember the days when almost all geeks I knew would dream for a job at Microsoft.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#139

Post by Donwangugi »

r0h1n wrote: post #125
timr wrote: post #65

If you ask me, one of Google's biggest strategic successes was their ability to convince an entire generation of engineers that they were something other than a company. The way many (otherwise intelligent) people talk about it, you'd think it was a religion. What you're seeing here is not the shattering of a dream, but of an illusion -- Google hasn't been a scrappy, idealistic startup for many years. It's a fine com…

> one of Google's biggest strategic successes was their ability to convince an entire generation of engineers that they were something other than a company Interesting. Would you statement hold if I replace Google with Apple, and engineers with consumers?

Imo. The difference is the control Steve had over the company when he was alive. At Google, despite how well run the company is, you really do not know the direction or vision for the company although everything _seems_ really cool. Where as at Apple, the idea is you were sacrificing in order to help Steve achieve _his_ vision.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#140

Post by alaskamiller »

davidgay wrote: post #107
alaskamiller wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While eating my second dinner plate of something delicious on the campus I looked around and saw how many children and families were around. The company provides, so much, for you, for your family. You wouldn't to ever lose what you have now gotten used to, for yourself, for your family. So now you become a company man. What's good for the company must be good for you. What's good about knowing more people, how they…

From one of those googlers with children: I have to say I read a bit of the classic "people with children aren't like us" here - likely not intentional, but you may want to reread what you write more carefully for subtext.

Not sure what you mean but to your point, you are not like us. In a fire I grab my laptop and get out. You have your family. We're very much different. And likewise are taxed differently.
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