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Mourning Google

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Re: Mourning Google

#191

Post by eduction »

rezonant wrote: post #24
cousin_it wrote: post #16

I have a different theory about the cause of the decline. Google 10-15 years ago had a clear idea of how to win: hire the best programmers, give them freedom, and they'll build products that will win in every market. And, well, that hasn't happened. Long before the current talk of Google's decline, there was talk of the Google black hole, where talented people would get hired and their noteworthy output would drop to…

Your theory doesn't match the timeline. Under the engineering first strategy, Google became the juggernaut it is today, with products like Gmail, Maps, Street View and of course Search. Unfortunately, the approach doesn't work for all product categories. Product design, usability, simplicity, and sheer style were not the forte of the Google of old. As a result they saw themselves fall behind Facebook in social, faile…

You make some very good points. Just two critiques:

> Under the engineering first strategy, Google became the juggernaut it is today, with products like Gmail, Maps, Street View and of course Search.

Just by definition search predated any culture or strategy at Google since its launch came before any hiring or incorporation. Certainly it was refined and maintained well for years but I’d argue this is an exception to the culture as refining and maintaining things well are not regarded as Google’s strong suit. Search dominates revenue in a big way so they had to do that for search and made it happen.

And a second bit of pushback - Maps, Gmail and Street View were certainly best in category from a user standpoint but my impression is they are a rounding error when it comes to revenue (actual businesses success) compared with search. Maybe this has changed. But assuming it hasn’t, a common critique of engineering led orgs is that they tend to stop at technical sweetness and fail to fully follow through on delivering great businesses and all that entails (revenue, support, incremental evolution, maintenance). That shoe seems to fit.

Re: Mourning Google

#192

Post by aorth »

alimbada wrote: post #54

> Use Chrome for Google stuff: Maps, Calendar, Docs, Translate I don't see any good reason to stick to Chrome for these. I've been using them without issue via Firefox for years. I used to see warnings on some of those products that " works best with Google Chrome" when using Firefox but those have all disappeared now and even when they did have those warnings I don't remember experiencing any major issues.

> I don't see any good reason to stick to Chrome for these. I've been using them without issue via Firefox for years.

Yep, me too. A conscious decision on my part. I run Firefox Developer Edition, though (which is essentially Firefox Beta). It has a comfortable freshness somewhere between stable and nightly.

Re: Mourning Google

#193

Post by ponderings »

Chathamization wrote: post #124
cousin_it wrote: post #16

I have a different theory about the cause of the decline. Google 10-15 years ago had a clear idea of how to win: hire the best programmers, give them freedom, and they'll build products that will win in every market. And, well, that hasn't happened. Long before the current talk of Google's decline, there was talk of the Google black hole, where talented people would get hired and their noteworthy output would drop to…

That's the impression I have. I remember a little over a decade ago when the population at large was completely hyped about all of the world changing technology we were going to see coming from the moonshots at Google X. The excitement over Google Glass, the mystery over the Google barges. Eventually, people started wondering when these hyped up products in development were going to actually become products[1]. Not i…

What should one do with power once one has it? After immaturity wears thin, what should one become? The most simple answers seem to make an effort to hold onto power, expansion of power seems a method but I think popularity might be a greater preservant which in turn depends on what one chooses to become. Gluttony, specially on it's own, is pretty useless to everyone else. You could convert popularity into power, it isn't a net gain necessarily.

I suppose the todo table could have many columns. What are the great unsolved mysteries or challenges? How useful are they to humanity? How hard are they? What does it cost? How does one sort the rows?

Say each human is assigned a column with the value of the todo item. Most fields would be empty. We would need a column with virtual min-max values.

Then, while expanding the data set, you dump it onto the internet, sit back and eat popcorn for a while?

Re: Mourning Google

#194

Post by closewith »

coldtea wrote: post #95
closewith wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real issue the OP has is that they’re aging and seeing things differently. The Google they remember never existed - it’s just how they felt at the time.

Well, a Google existed then, and a Google exists now. Has Google always been the same, so that we can attribute any note of it changing, to "aging and seeing things differently"? This is a kind of gaslighting ("Google was always the same, your experience of it in a previous state is irrelevant, you see things that never existed because you're older"). Tons of real world changes have happened to Google, the people, th…

Nobody's claiming nothing has changed, but that's not the source of the OP's grief.

Re: Mourning Google

#195

Post by fancyfredbot »

DanielHB wrote: post #146
fancyfredbot wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> floods of people that should have tormented Wall St who all landed in tech instead Hmm, would these people have inflicted more or less damage on society if they had worked for Wall Street firms?

More

Another great service big tech has provided to the world then!

Re: Mourning Google

#196

Post by coldpie »

MrPatan wrote: post #167
Chathamization wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the impression I have. I remember a little over a decade ago when the population at large was completely hyped about all of the world changing technology we were going to see coming from the moonshots at Google X. The excitement over Google Glass, the mystery over the Google barges. Eventually, people started wondering when these hyped up products in development were going to actually become products[1]. Not i…

The market, made up of a lot of people, seems to think the richest man in the world is pretty valuable. A subset of people around here don't think that way. Why? I have my own opinion, not very flattering.

> The market, made up of a lot of people, seems to think the richest man in the world is pretty valuable.

By the same logic, our biology must think cancer is pretty valuable because of how many resources it dedicates to feeding cancerous cells. Wealth and value are not correlated.

Re: Mourning Google

#197

Post by YoshiRulz »

Tistron wrote: post #116
yard2010 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me if the dinosaurs couldn't handle an asteroid they did not adapt, lost the race and went extinct, good day. The birds adapted well and they're still thriving. There are no laws to the race of life. Just survive and reproduce. If you failed to do either you're out.

Maybe read something like this: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/what-are-evograms/the-origin-... :)

also https://xkcd.com/1211/

Re: Mourning Google

#198

Post by genmon »

nostrademons wrote: post #68
vanderZwan wrote: post #22

> To me this feels like a big inflection point, because around the stumbling feet of the Big Tech dinosaurs, the Web’s mammals, agile and flexible, still scurry. Tangent: I kinda hate this metaphor. It reinforces this incredibly outdated idea that dinosaurs - or any other extinct life-form - went extinct because they were an evolutionary dead end. (Also, since I do not know a single nerd who isn't into dinosaurs the…

This description actually makes me feel like the metaphor is more apt. The dinosaurs went down because they were large, complex lifeforms that required a vibrant, complex ecosystem to support them. Amidst a fundamental shift to that ecosystem, large complex organisms were the first to go down. This is a general pattern - complex systems are always the first to collapse when there's a shift in the ecosystem, because t…

you're saying that dinosaurs were a zero interest rate phenomenon?

ok ok flippant but maybe not entirely flippant... I'm used to conceiving of fitness as in fitness for a niche. But I hadn't grasped the idea of "meta-fitness" being the ability to adapt to a highly dynamic niche. there must be a term in evolutionary theory for this.

Re: Mourning Google

#200

Post by sgu999 »

k_kelly wrote: post #119
VBprogrammer wrote: post #11

I have to say, I'm not convinced by all of the AI hype, but it makes a bloody good search engine for a lot of the things I want to search (things where I am in a reasonable position to evaluate the truthfulness of an answer). It's only a matter of time before someone realises that and ruins it in the aim of making money.

It’s far more 5D chess than that. Search costs nothing to run relative to ad revenue. Microsoft makes each query require 100x the cpu usage because users expect an LLM answer for results. Microsoft’s share of search goes from 1% to 5%. Their cost go up but their sale of ads increases and they get valuable IP. Google loses 5% share of market but its costs go up 100x. Google can no longer finance its other bets like Cl…

Is your point that MS is diversified enough to absorb the losses of eating up Google's share in search even with the now higher costs?
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