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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#171

Post by kbrosnan »

AlbertCory wrote: post #17

Yet another "famous" Googler whom I didn't know. He joined one month before I did. I did know Chris DiBona, at least. Didn't know this Jeanine person. I wrote a number of articles about working there in the early (or earlier) days. Chronologically: https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/working-at-google-enterp... https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/working-at-google-ads https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/working-at-go…

If you were involved with W3C around the time of XHTML 2.0 through to HTML 5.0 via WHATWG Ian is a well known person.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#172

Post by hfjjbf »

fidotron wrote: post #19

This is interesting, surprisingly blunt, and quite on point about the current malaise, but . . . I think this is the perspective of someone that was happily drinking the kool aid for longer than they should have been. For example, my impression was that had Android assimilated into the wider Google they would have failed. The wider Google views the fact Android isn't Chrome OS as a strategic failure, but the truth is…

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#173

Post by ghaff »

chatmasta wrote: post #129
pardoned_turkey wrote: post #86

Ian's post is pretty incisive, although I've read so many of these over the past 15 years or so. And the prescription is always to go back in time. I don't really think that's possible. When you're a newcomer, a disruptor, the whole point is to be different. You're bold, you have a clarity of purpose, you say things like "we're building a new kind of a company" or "the user comes first." But once you achieve market d…

> what's the alternative? A cutthroat corporate environment Sure. Isn't that how the financial industry operates? (Or maybe that's more of an illusion, and people in finance just tell themselves they're in a cut-throat environment, even though in reality they'll never leave it. Whereas if it were really a cut-throat environment you'd expect to see more churn as the weak employees fail out of the industry.) > And then…

>perhaps that organization will inevitably develop into something resembling IBM.

So an over 100 year old company that makes 10s of billions of dollars?

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#174

Post by emodendroket »

kevinventullo wrote: post #143
hot_gril wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes Google is still less diversified than its peers. Cloud and YouTube (edit: and Pixel phones?) are profitable afaik. The overall tech market has matured is what I meant; it's no longer time to loss-lead everything.

Not sure I’d characterize YouTube as a diversification from ads.

It is though. Being an ad supplier is different from being an ad exchange. Or would you describe the New York Times or HBO as "ads businesses"?

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#175

Post by omoikane »

alberth wrote: post #13

> “Much of these problems with Google today stem from a lack of visionary leadership from Sundar Pichai, and his clear lack of interest in maintaining the cultural norms of early Google.” Ouch. I know a lot of outsiders believe that, but to have someone who spent 2-decades at Google saying it publicly is rough.

I personally felt the best icon of original Google culture was Craig Silverstein, whose departure greatly affected the various intergrouplets that were holding the company culture together. In that sense, I wouldn't place all the blame on Sundar, although he didn't necessarily help.

But all hope is not lost yet -- even though the work environment might change from big family to big company to big factory as the company size grows, it has gotten to the size where there are now pockets of families that are cohesive among themselves. I believe these fractals of families will be what carries the culture forward.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#176

Post by fgsfds028374 »

JohnFen wrote: post #74
pkasting wrote: post #10

As a current Googler of approximately the same tenure, I can't speak to the comments on Jeanine Banks (never met her), but I agree with every other word of this. It's frustrating to continue to see both the level of genuinely well-intentioned work that the public is unfairly (and often viciously) critical of the motives of, and also the (at this point) complete absence of concern for the user, the long term, and the…

> the public is unfairly (and often viciously) critical of the motives of Is it unfair, though? I went from being a huge fan of Google to being a huge Google critic because of real changes in what Google did. I think it's reasonable to question their motives. This isn't the same as questioning the motives of the engineers, though. I have no doubt that there are a lot of good people who work there. However, their pres…

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#177

Post by capableweb »

cbsmith wrote: post #134
eslaught wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was an intern at Google circa 2010, there was a guest lecture from a business professor who described exactly this process. At the end of it, he made a comment like, "Of course none of this will happen to Google. You're too innovative." But literally every single prediction of his came true, and I witnessed some of them happening in front of my own eyes even in just the months that I was there (and certainly i…

"Of course none of this will happen to Google. You're too innovative." I would have had a hard time hearing that as anything other than sarcasm.

Absolutely. And I'm sure the talker had a "" in their transcript, which they had to quickly skip since people were taking it seriously.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#178

Post by FirmwareBurner »

swetland wrote: post #162
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I definetly wouldn't want to have been on the early Android team. Imagine you work your ass of to build the Android 1.0 device to compete with the Blackberry and then when you're close to launching the iPhone drops and your leadership says we gotta throw everything in the trash and start over from the touchscreen perspective. Mind you, the iPhone employees didn't have it much better either, with most of them wo…

The whole "throw everything in the trash and start over" thing is massively overstated. The iPhone announcement absolutely impacted things, not entirely all bad -- there was interest from OEMs before that, but it went through the roof after -- and it did mean we moved from the plan to ship a blackberry-style device first followed by a touchscreen device to skipping right to touch for initial launch, recognizing that…

>Microsoft might end up entrenching themselves the way they did in PCs through the 90s, possibly including a more successful attempt to control the browser/web experience

That fear was kind of overblown. In those days of Steve Balmer, Microsoft was far less focused and organized, too high on its success with Windows and Office, for such a slow, large and bloated ship to react quickly and precisely enough on this.

Just look at what they did with Zune before that. It was not a bad product at all, but it was too little too late for consumers to give up on Apple and jump ship to Microsoft.

They did react here as well, but just like before, by the time they had a desirable and competitive mobile OS, Apple and Google had already reached critical mass adoption that no matter how good Microsoft's offering was, they wouldn't have been able to recoup the lead lost to Apple and Google both with consumer and developer adoption.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#179

Post by busterarm »

hinkley wrote: post #145
pardoned_turkey wrote: post #86

Ian's post is pretty incisive, although I've read so many of these over the past 15 years or so. And the prescription is always to go back in time. I don't really think that's possible. When you're a newcomer, a disruptor, the whole point is to be different. You're bold, you have a clarity of purpose, you say things like "we're building a new kind of a company" or "the user comes first." But once you achieve market d…

I have a long list of ways to improve processes and when I was young, energetic, and didn’t know any better, I got very, very lucky getting many or most of them through. As I’ve gotten older I’ve found more things that I “need” to improve and there’s been more time for me to forget how I need to justify things I consider “the right way” and so I don’t always win those arguments. But the bigger thing I’m coming to gri…

I feel so much exactly what you're describing here...
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