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

Peak Google, Apple and Facebook

xconomy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 43 posts

Re: Peak Google, Apple and Facebook

#11

Post by jezclaremurugan »

No, it isn't. At least not for Google.

Firstly, Google has Glass, self driving cars, Google Fiber, Loon, and every single one of them has the potential to be the most significant thing of this century - though these are mentioned in the article, their potential is __highly__ underestimated. Its true some of them will (I prefer might) turn out to be duds, but definitely not all of them.

Secondly, all three companies make a conscious effort to be innovative. Sometimes they err on the side of innovation. And the smartest brains are still proud of working there. And until that changes, one can argue that with the recent deluge of startups that it has, they will continue to dominate.

And talking of AI, I guess almost all the leaders in the field are have a strong relationship with Google. Andrew NG, Sebastin Thrun, Peter Norvig, Ray Kurzweil...

Re: Peak Google, Apple and Facebook

#12

Post by throwaway10001 »

abraxasz wrote: post #7

Published the exact day Google announces his Loon Project? I can't say for sure, but if this project is successful, I'd call it a major innovation...

"I'd call it a major innovation..."

The company behind the Loon concept has been working on this for over a decade. http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Space_Data_Awarded_USAF_Cont... Innovation on an existing idea, no doubt but

Re: Peak Google, Apple and Facebook

#13

Post by redwood »

onedev wrote: post #8
Helianthus wrote: post #6

Foolishly wrong about Google. Aside from G+, Google continues to do crazy new things--even if one is skeptical of Glass, one can't deny it's interesting. And something like Facebook, with its artificially inflated value, cannot expand to advertise to everyone; it can only crash when its optimism runs out. He gets it right: it's only a place for sharing photos and links. We don't need Facebook for that, and we'll figu…

Saying Facebook is just a place for sharing photos and links is like saying Google.com is just a place for looking up links. You can understate it as much as you want but at the end of the day Facebook connects PEOPLE. Technology, whether it be Google, Facebook, or Apple, is about people and it seems to me you haven't figured that out yet.

Fb's user experience has waned on a number of fronts... users of the site feel the change and are losing interest.

Re: Peak Google, Apple and Facebook

#14

Post by doseofreality »

jezclaremurugan wrote: post #11

No, it isn't. At least not for Google. Firstly, Google has Glass, self driving cars, Google Fiber, Loon, and every single one of them has the potential to be the most significant thing of this century - though these are mentioned in the article, their potential is __highly__ underestimated. Its true some of them will (I prefer might) turn out to be duds, but definitely not all of them. Secondly, all three companies m…

Yes, and Xerox PARC also had a ton of smart people working on a bunch of exciting futuristic projects at one point as well.

Re: Peak Google, Apple and Facebook

#15

Post by jsolson »

doseofreality wrote: post #14
jezclaremurugan wrote: post #11

No, it isn't. At least not for Google. Firstly, Google has Glass, self driving cars, Google Fiber, Loon, and every single one of them has the potential to be the most significant thing of this century - though these are mentioned in the article, their potential is __highly__ underestimated. Its true some of them will (I prefer might) turn out to be duds, but definitely not all of them. Secondly, all three companies m…

Yes, and Xerox PARC also had a ton of smart people working on a bunch of exciting futuristic projects at one point as well.

... and completely failing to capitalize on more or less all of them, because they didn't even try.

Re: Peak Google, Apple and Facebook

#16

Post by hyperbovine »

jsolson wrote: post #15
doseofreality wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and Xerox PARC also had a ton of smart people working on a bunch of exciting futuristic projects at one point as well.

... and completely failing to capitalize on more or less all of them, because they didn't even try.

You mean, like, not charging money for anything?

Re: Peak Google, Apple and Facebook

#17

Post by onedev »

redwood wrote: post #13
onedev wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying Facebook is just a place for sharing photos and links is like saying Google.com is just a place for looking up links. You can understate it as much as you want but at the end of the day Facebook connects PEOPLE. Technology, whether it be Google, Facebook, or Apple, is about people and it seems to me you haven't figured that out yet.

Fb's user experience has waned on a number of fronts... users of the site feel the change and are losing interest.

Every single point of hard data and evidence says otherwise.

Facebook, in the past year, has increased every single metric of success; whether it be the amount of money it makes, the number of advertisers on the site, the number of users on the site, or the level of engagement from all age ranges. Every single metric has increased in all countries.

If you're getting your data and information from sensationalist articles which get thousands of hits just for mentioning Facebook, then you should look elsewhere to form a more accurate assessment.

Re: Peak Google, Apple and Facebook

#18

Post by onedev »

eliben wrote: post #9

"Just three companies—Google, Apple, and Facebook —generated most of the new ideas (at least the mainstream ones) and most of the business momentum. (If I had more room and time, I’d work Amazon into the argument, but as a technology company, it ranks well behind the other three.) " I find this puzzling. What great new ideas have emerged from Facebook, exactly? It's just one of multiple very similar social networks t…

Google is just one of multiple similar search products that prevailed through better execution and marketing.

Re: Peak Google, Apple and Facebook

#19

Post by victoro »

eliben wrote: post #9

"Just three companies—Google, Apple, and Facebook —generated most of the new ideas (at least the mainstream ones) and most of the business momentum. (If I had more room and time, I’d work Amazon into the argument, but as a technology company, it ranks well behind the other three.) " I find this puzzling. What great new ideas have emerged from Facebook, exactly? It's just one of multiple very similar social networks t…

Agreed. It's really hard to read the rest of the article without questioning every statement after reading that ridiculous paragraph early on. You're telling me Facebook, who's killer app was photo tagging for the first 3 years of its existence and who has, over the last few years, been struggling with transitioning its platform to a mobile audience, somehow ranks ahead, technology-wise, of the biggest e-commerce site on the internet? The technology that goes into Amazon's logistics and distribution platform alone rivals facebook's impressive scale, and Amazon is doing that while, at the same time powering a gigantic and feature rich cloud service and methodically eating the publishing industry's lunch.

Re: Peak Google, Apple and Facebook

#20

Post by nostrademons »

victoro wrote: post #19
eliben wrote: post #9

"Just three companies—Google, Apple, and Facebook —generated most of the new ideas (at least the mainstream ones) and most of the business momentum. (If I had more room and time, I’d work Amazon into the argument, but as a technology company, it ranks well behind the other three.) " I find this puzzling. What great new ideas have emerged from Facebook, exactly? It's just one of multiple very similar social networks t…

Agreed. It's really hard to read the rest of the article without questioning every statement after reading that ridiculous paragraph early on. You're telling me Facebook, who's killer app was photo tagging for the first 3 years of its existence and who has, over the last few years, been struggling with transitioning its platform to a mobile audience, somehow ranks ahead, technology-wise, of the biggest e-commerce sit…

It's because he's not measuring greatness by technical achievement, he's measuring greatness by how much you have changed the average consumer's behavior. Amazon's big as far as e-commerce goes...but people bought things before, they can buy things from other websites, and they'll continue to buy things even if Amazon didn't exist. Facebook somehow managed to get people to spend 2-3 hours/day throwing sheep at each other and give up all their personal information for targeted ads.

Zuckerburg's genius isn't that he's a master technologist (I hear he's pretty good, but that was never FaceBook's core competency), it was that he realized social networking would be a billion dollar business long before anyone else did. Google had competitors out within a year, but it never took those competitors seriously, and so 9 years on they are still struggling to play catch-up.

Probably nearly everyone on Hacker News could've built FaceBook in a weekend or so, in its original incarnation. Zuck was the only one who realized he should and then pressed forward with it, and that's why he got rich.

Post reply on HN