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Google Acquires North

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Re: Google Acquires North

#111

Post by amscanne »

ornornor wrote: post #72
peeters wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure "promising startup" describes North (previously Thalmic Labs) that well. Everything I've heard around the Waterloo tech scene is that it was mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government. Tales from past employees are not flattering. Being bought by Google is likely the best thing that could happen to both the founders…

> mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government This describes a surprisingly high number of companies I’ve worked at in Canada. These SRED credits keep afloat so many companies that should have otherwise perished and that won’t ever go anywhere. You can even hire SRED consultants that will help you milk those credits as much as pos…

> You can then apply for more credits to pay off these SRED consultants fees

Even better, many SRED consultants work on a contingent basis, i.e. they just get a fraction of your SRED refund!

Re: Google Acquires North

#113

Post by ttarabula »

ornornor wrote: post #72
peeters wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure "promising startup" describes North (previously Thalmic Labs) that well. Everything I've heard around the Waterloo tech scene is that it was mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government. Tales from past employees are not flattering. Being bought by Google is likely the best thing that could happen to both the founders…

> mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government This describes a surprisingly high number of companies I’ve worked at in Canada. These SRED credits keep afloat so many companies that should have otherwise perished and that won’t ever go anywhere. You can even hire SRED consultants that will help you milk those credits as much as pos…

I’ve noticed the same thing. Have you found any good writing on this topic and how the American approach differs from the Canadian approach? I’ve been fascinated by this dynamic after spending most of my working life in the USA then returning to Canada, and just feeling like something is “off” whenever I talk to Canadian startups, and it feels like a lot of the time it comes down to the way the flow of investment differs here (especially in the R&D space).

Re: Google Acquires North

#114

Post by sprayk »

bserge wrote: post #63
swagonomixxx wrote: post #47

Smart glasses were a gimmick back when they were first designed and implemented in the 60s/70s, and they will continue to be a gimmick, especially if G takes them on. Nothing against North in particular, I just think that it's a recipe for disaster to have every minute of a human's waking life tracked by Google. Color me a cynic, but I'm not optimistic about the future of this technology, especially in the hands of b…

I just hope it can be reprogrammed with custom firmware by some great people. My Oculus Go is ancient, but it does way more than it was supposed to thanks to some smart hackers.

Everything they did was closed source, there wasn't even ever an official SDK for others to make apps for it. I don't see there being enough of them out there for the intersection of "have a pair of Focals" and "can reverse engineer an app & device that talk over bluetooth" for this to end up anywhere close to Pebble/Rebble. And I think a custom firmware is basically out of the question.

That's not to say that I wouldn't love to see either of those happen. I'd be willing to donate my soon-to-be-a-brick Focals to someone that has a history of reverse engineering weird embedded ARM devices. Ideally you'd get it before the end of July so you can have a hope of sniffing bluetooth traffic.

Re: Google Acquires North

#115

Post by lowiqengineer »

twox2 wrote: post #109
andreilys wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employees are not guaranteed employment at Google. I'm sure a good chunk will be let go as part of this acquisition.

I'm curious how this usually plays out. Do employees of acquired companies need to go through the google interview process?

Unless they're part of leadership they usually do, yes.

Re: Google Acquires North

#116

Post by burkaman »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #80
peeters wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure "promising startup" describes North (previously Thalmic Labs) that well. Everything I've heard around the Waterloo tech scene is that it was mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government. Tales from past employees are not flattering. Being bought by Google is likely the best thing that could happen to both the founders…

My experience with the startup scene in another country agrees with your description. When tech is funded by government incubators, it tends to become a fake imitation of the VC funded industry that we know from Silicon Valley. Which often is itself a fake imitation of actual innovation, so (fake imitation)^2.

> When tech is funded by government incubators, it tends to become a fake imitation of the VC funded industry that we know from Silicon Valley.

Seems a little strong?

https://www.iqt.org/portfolio/ (Cockroach Labs, GitLab, DataRobot, databricks, Cloudera, mongoDB (I know), probably more you've heard of)

https://www.energy.gov/lpo/portfolio/portfolio-projects (Tesla)

https://www.sbir.gov/news/success-stories (Qualcomm, iRobot, 23andMe, Orbital ATK, countless others)

https://sbir.nih.gov/statistics/success-stories

https://sbir.nasa.gov/success-stories

https://sbir. agency here>.gov/

https://www.darpa.mil/Timeline/index.html (the internet, voice recognition, virtual reality, GPS, onion routing, the computer mouse, touchscreens, etc.)

Also, the many startups that were spun out of public universities and government-funded research.

Re: Google Acquires North

#117

Post by troutwine »

three_seagrass wrote: post #100
macNchz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stackdriver did not disappear, but having used it daily for the past 4 years and witnessed its painfully slow and buggy migration into the GCP admin, I can't say it's a product that has visibly gotten much love. We kept using it for some things out of inertia, but I can't say it ever impressed me.

How so? I've only ever used it on GC, not pre-acquisition.

Prior to the acquisition Stackdriver was never best of breed among its peer group but it was acceptable. Post-acquisition the feature set appears as an end user to have more or less frozen and their UIs feel haphazard: dashboarding is a mess, the trace UI is very complex without really giving me greater query power over alternatives and the options for converting one kind of data stream into another (logs to metrics, traces to logs to metrics etc) just aren't there. Google tightly integrates Stackdriver into its other products -- I assume that's where most of the labor for the Stackdriver team has gone -- but it feels cheap and like they've had to intentionally limit options to force buy-in. For what it is, Stackdriver is surprisingly expensive and their SDKs are quite complicated for what they end up accomplishing. Why should the end-user need to internalize Stackdriver Metrics' API to be able to produce metrics about their application? (I am sympathetic to the notion that this SDK is low-level and meant to be consumed by higher-level APIs like OpenTelemetry et al).

Nowadays the Stackdriver suite just feels left behind. There's plenty of other options in this space that have a nice internal integration and are reasonably inexpensive to purchase, or run yourself. If Stackdriver weren't so tightly integrated with Google's other cloud products I have to imagine it would get even less use than it does now.

Re: Google Acquires North

#118

Post by contactlight11 »

Slackwise wrote: post #49
wuunderbar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think the watches are primarily suppose to be used on the go. Like working out, walking around town or glancing at while driving. Not sitting at a desk with a Mountain Dew in one hand and your mouse in the other. Synced desktop notification or smartphone on a stand seems like a better option for that.

Working out is bike rides for me, so that means taking my hand off the bars. I mean, in comparison to a phone, what does the watch offer when you're lifting? How will you dismiss a notification? What's the real difference between just picking up the phone or having the phone or a tablet mounted somewhere you can see at all times? I do a lot of walking downtown and half the time I have a cup of coffee in my hands or s…

Smart watches are not a niche product in 2020. Apple shipped 31 million smart watches in 2019, more than the entire Swiss watch market combined (according to The Verge). Samsung and Garmin sell millions of watches too, and almost every serious outdoorsy type person wears at least one of these brands as a fitness tracker.

That's where you're missing the point. Smart watches have become popular because of the fitness component, and have also shown great versatility beyond that, including invoking a voice assistant and screening notifications.

I haven't taken my phone off silent in years, I will only have my watch on vibrate and a select few apps filtered to send notifications to my phone. The rest are not of immediate consequence, so I don't get them "in real time". Plus, if the watch is off my wrist, it vibrates my desk just like a phone. Notifications are dismissed automatically after a timeout, or a button to dismiss.

I find my glasses come off for far more serious activities than my watch. I never intended for my watch to be a phone replacement where I can respond to messages, but it's sure good at letting me know a message needs my attention.

A few things a watch offers you while lifting, specifically:

- rep counting

- heart rate monitoring

- music, without a phone, by pairing a BT headset directly to the watch

A few more things smart watches are great at:

- forget your wallet in the car? Contactless payments. Or, buy a bottle of water in the middle of a run or bike.

- sleep tracking

- leave your phone in your pocket more and enjoy life

- don't even bring your phone on a run, built in GPS tracks for you

- don't even bring your phone on a bike, same reason

- built in topo maps for hiking

When you think about it, smart watches are /far/ more useful than they seem because of all the tech and sensors packed into a device that (potentially) lasts days at a time. And I think most people get that, which is why smart watches are already a huge industry.

Re: Google Acquires North

#119

Post by returningfory2 »

> We are winding down Focals 1.0 and we will not be shipping Focals 2.0, but we hope you will continue the journey with us as we start this next chapter.

Isn't this just a classic acquihire?

I'm sure it will be on Our Incredible Journey soon.

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