The Mediocrity of Modern Google
1–10 of 30 posts
Re: The Mediocrity of Modern Google
#2Is this blowhard seriously going by just "Om" now? Pretentious level 9000.
Re: The Mediocrity of Modern Google
#3A couple of things have struck me about Google as an outsider:
- Learning that they had 100K+ employees
- Seeing resumes from people who had spent 5+ years at Google and had a project list with what I would expect from - Learning about the "I want to just serve 5 Terabytes" video/story [0]
- Hiring people away from Google who were, for example, network engineers who turned out to be great SREs with good programming skills
- They just kill off greats apps that people enjoy with little to no notice (granted, keeping stuff around forever ala AWS is its own issue)
In other words, they became a big corporate behemoth and lost a lot of their "spark". Which is sad b/c I remember the early days of using Google search, Google maps etc where it felt like we were all living in the future.
Sure, they are breaking ground in the AI space but 100% agree that it feels like they are on the downward trajectory.
(although other firms have been here and come back so let's see...)
Re: The Mediocrity of Modern Google
#4> "I was an early Webpass customer. Back then, before Google acquired it"
The monopolization by modern Google is more like it. They're not competitive because they don't have to be.
Re: The Mediocrity of Modern Google
#5I wish I had a company as mediocre.
(I'm not saying I don't agree with the complaints.)
Re: The Mediocrity of Modern Google
#6What is this dumb article? Gemini pro 2.5 is getting talked a lot about in AI circles. AI Studio team is cracked and has been able to avoid the committee virus.
Google has problems but this piece is written by someone who is not knowledgeable about this company and the space at all.
Re: The Mediocrity of Modern Google
#7> The company that once represented the pinnacle of innovation has devolved into a symbol of corporate indifference
Although they may have been slow to publicly launch anything worthwile in AI, Gemini 2.5 Pro is SOTA.
I mean: AI is the hot topic atm ang Google arrived and are already owning everybody on many metrics.
I wouldn't discount yet a company which powers 70% of the world's smartphones and which knows how runs millions of servers.
They just proved with Gemini 2.5 Pro that the old dog can still learn a new trick. And then teach some to other dogs.
Re: The Mediocrity of Modern Google
#8[deleted]
Re: The Mediocrity of Modern Google
#9"The company remains trapped in its “10 blue links” jail, even as the world moves toward direct, conversational AI interfaces."
I don't want conversational AI interfaces. I like search.
If I lose that because it's a losing model, then so be it. But I don't see the point in telling Google to follow somebody else's trend.
They suck in so many ways, but this doesn't add to it. I find this kind of "what have you done for me lately" just a little weird. They have done zillions of crappy things and a dozen earth shaking ones. If the next earth shaking one comes from someone else I don't see any point in waggling my finger at Google over it.
Re: The Mediocrity of Modern Google
#10A couple of things have struck me about Google as an outsider: - Learning that they had 100K+ employees - Seeing resumes from people who had spent 5+ years at Google and had a project list with what I would expect from - Learning about the "I want to just serve 5 Terabytes" video/story [0] - Hiring people away from Google who were, for example, network engineers who turned out to be great SREs with good programming s…
All large and successful companies head in this direction. You get a few killer products, the stakes become really high, and now you spend more time making sure the cash keeps flowing instead of trying to do something radically new. People talk about startup mentality within a company, but I think that's nearly impossible since you need leadership's attention to get things moving, but there's only so much attention the CEO of a large company can give, and only so much they're willing to delegate. I bet Google spends more time worrying about how to avoid antitrust and complying with regulation than trying to build something radically different. The one exception is AI, but ultimately that's because it threatens their cash cow.