Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#151

Post by novaleaf » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

thoraway1010 wrote: post #25

No kidding. Early adopter of gsuite for domains (work and personal email). The google home devices CANNOT get your calendar from your google calendar. My Alexa device can easily. The thing of stuff just stagnating and no care to scrub the rough corners is crazy. They have some things they keep on improving. I think youtube is there (after the dumped plus thank goodness). Chrome seems to be moving along nicely. I used…

> They have some things they keep on improving. I think youtube is there (after the dumped plus thank goodness). Chrome seems to be moving along nicely.

Namely, the things that directly contribute to the ads business.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#152

Post by johannes1234321 » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #113

staticassertion wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having too many self-directed engineers with no management vision I personally feel it's the opposite. I think management, and Google's internal incentives, lead to a lot of their issues. As one obvious example, the leveling system is totally flawed and creates incentives for their greatest issues, such as releasing many competing projects only to deprecate/ abandon all of them. That's on management, not the engine…

I think in the early days, Google Engineers just worked on whatever they felt like. This resulted in fantastically profitable cool technology, and vast holes in the products for things no one volunteered to work on. Then things were turned around to today's "jump through these hoops and you'll get promoted" system. I was there 2006-2009, and I think the turn happened in that era, though it's hard to tell from "the fl…

And for the future it will be tough to change without losing ability to create new things. If they switch their internal incentive structure to maintenance they lose the new ideas.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#153

Post by t0mmyb0y » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

This is google in a nutshell.

I lived near google for many years and knew many employees and this drives them crazy. In order to have innovation and support for a particular product, google allows engineers to do what they want until nobody wants to touch the bloated pos and everyone walks away.

Gmail has thousands of hidden functions. To get gmail built they allowed each engineer to add what they wanted...and most of it was for them personally. Remember the gmail2 thteat from a number of years ago? They couldn't figure out how to force every user into a new platform.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#154

Post by kweinber » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #13

Microsoft has a new clear mission: The Cloud. That's a clear mission?

No, it’s cloudy with an 80% chance of pain.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#155

Post by aazaa » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

Google's main liability is that they can never, under any circumstances, prioritize user privacy.

The reason the products listed by the author have rough corners is that those products don't contribute much to the bottom line.

Google is an advertising company that happens to use technology. The problem is that too many people view it as a technology company that happens to be into advertising.

As browsers adopt ad-blockers by default, Chrome will be the lone holdout. As smaller companies and startups realize that you can "monetize" products by charging a price and adopting stringent privacy policies, Google will be stuck with its "free" business model.

Nothing Google will try to do in the years ahead will change the basic equation.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#156

Post by hogFeast » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

yt-sdb wrote: post #118

DuckDuckGo's rise feels like textbook "Innovator's Dilemma" stuff. By prioritizing privacy, something Google can't do because all the institutional values are misaligned with that goal, DDG were able to make headway into a niche market. Now they're established, and their results are getting better and better, even in the broader market. For example, I use DDG mostly because their results are visually easier to parse.…

The visually easier part also relates to how Google "innovated".

At some point Google seems to have realised that all they needed to do to grow, was just stuff more ads above the fold, and remove all non-Google content (i.e. when you search for travel, you get Google's OTA...when you search for finance news, you get Google's clickjacked articles, etc.). It is far easier to hit earnings that way (and btw, this was the intention...they rolled this out slowly so could they could control the numbers they reported).

In my personal opinion, Google also optimises for hiring bureaucrats. Something has gone wrong with hiring when you are hiring a bunch of "smart" people and your strategy is this weak. Either you are hiring a bunch of people you don't need or you are hiring a bunch of people with the wrong skills (in this case, it is probably both). Google jobs seem like a sinecure...lots of people busily doing nothing...just imo.

It is classic Innovator's Dilemma though (that book is amazing).

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#157

Post by ancarda » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

searchableguy wrote: post #138

ancarda wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Wish you didn't have to worry about being poor. What? Are you suggesting I don't use iOS and macOS because I can't afford Apple's hardware? I have multiple Macs and iPhones in the house - I recently switched because I don't like Apple's direction. Not because I can't afford their products.

No. you are wildly misunderstanding me. I mean I can't devote more time to contributing to open street maps or other open source projects because of the worry.

Oh I see, I'm sorry to hear that. I hope things will improve for you soon.

It's understandable you would be focused on more important things. Lately I have been wondering if more people would get into open source if they didn't have bigger things to worry about like poverty and climate change.

I suppose I am privileged enough to do OSM contributions in my spare time. I'm not sure how to feel about that...

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#158

Post by smellsdonkey » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

Here's a free idea for Google that would make my life better... you know these voice assistant thingys? I would love if they could tell me when things happen instead of having to ask them if something is currently happening. For example, "Hey Google, tell me when XXX announces a concert in town." or "tell me when YYY is on sale" etc.

Having to look these things up all the time really sucks.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#159

Post by acdha » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

listenallyall wrote: post #57

To be clear, this is a stealth ad for Hey email service wrapped in a rant against Google. #1 on HN 20 minutes after posting. It's quite impressive, actually.

The fact that Hey can on day one offer so much over a Gmail experience which hasn’t improved since the Bush administration is less an ad than underscoring how bad Google’s management are.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#160

Post by rkagerer » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

I had an early Chromebook (from I/O) and was never very impressed. I always felt the lackluster support for local storage would hold it back from ever seriously competing with my PC.

I saw its value as more of a dedicated device for people who do limited things on their laptop (e.g. sales team using only a handful of web apps), and even in that niche it had to compete with iPads, etc.