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Loon’s final flight

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Re: Loon’s final flight

#21

Post by carlineng »

7thaccount wrote: post #15
gkoberger wrote: post #9

Hey, 9 years is a pretty good run for any product, especially a ambitious one with no clear revenue model. And the shuttering is paired with a $10M donation to continue the support of the mission. I know Google gets hate for shutting things down, but they have hundreds of products – I can't think of any other tech company with such a wide range of products. They make bets, and with bets comes a certain amount of fail…

Does google have anything successful outside of: search, adsense, chrome, chromebooks, and android? Those are all large accomplishments to be sure, but it seems like they should have more products out there that people actually buy.

GCP

Re: Loon’s final flight

#22

Post by jariel »

person_of_color wrote: post #11

Google is cursed by its own success. Any product they release will always be on shaky ground when compared to their advertising and search money-printing monopolies. At this point, they should give up and settle into their role as the 21st century IBM.

This is not a Google Project, it's an Alphabet 'Moonshot' designed to maybe shake things up, create a market, discover new solutions/opportunities/induce investment with a very high risk profile and no obviously commercial outcome i.e. quasi NGO stuff that VC's won't touch.

There's no way to compare Loon to a regular commercial venture.

It's just stuff the founders want to do and that's fine.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#23

Post by ehsankia »

7thaccount wrote: post #15
gkoberger wrote: post #9

Hey, 9 years is a pretty good run for any product, especially a ambitious one with no clear revenue model. And the shuttering is paired with a $10M donation to continue the support of the mission. I know Google gets hate for shutting things down, but they have hundreds of products – I can't think of any other tech company with such a wide range of products. They make bets, and with bets comes a certain amount of fail…

Does google have anything successful outside of: search, adsense, chrome, chromebooks, and android? Those are all large accomplishments to be sure, but it seems like they should have more products out there that people actually buy.

They have at least a dozen services that have over a billion users. Others not mentioned in your list: Youtube, Photos, Drive, Maps, Gmail, Docs. And probably slightly more trivial ones like translate, calendar, flights, news, finance, and other stuff that are kinda part of search. Their hardware/home line isn't doing that bad either.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#24

Post by activatedgeek »

This is quite a surprise. Only recently, Loon collaborated with seasoned reinforcement learning researchers to build more efficient navigation controllers for the balloons, titled "Autonomous navigation of stratospheric balloons using reinforcement learning" [1]. Although, it would appear that much of the gains come from a simulator that they've been developing for a while.

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2939-8

Re: Loon’s final flight

#25

Post by ogre_codes »

Mistri wrote: post #4

People often make fun of Google/Alphabet for their graveyard of failed initiatives/products. While some of it might be warranted, projects like this—that strive to solve a large, global issue through somewhat charitable actions—are generous and have only increased my respect for the Google/Alphabet/X team. I hope they don't get flamed for this, and hopefully some of their research and donation funds can live on and s…

I think the days of Google Moonshots are coming to a close. In general Google hasn't been very good at shooting for the moon. They've lost their leadership and vision and all that's left is a giant advertising behemoth.

Did any of their moonshots really hit the mark or even come close?

Re: Loon’s final flight

#26

Post by killjoywashere »

person_of_color wrote: post #11

Google is cursed by its own success. Any product they release will always be on shaky ground when compared to their advertising and search money-printing monopolies. At this point, they should give up and settle into their role as the 21st century IBM.

IBM builds their own line of processors and operates some of the biggest supercomputers (e.g. Summit at Oak Ridge). I know at least one guy who works on a pretty ambitious project at Google, and last I talked to him, he lusted after the insanely crazy things he used to get to do in an IBM-internal dev shop.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#27

Post by gkoberger »

7thaccount wrote: post #15
gkoberger wrote: post #9

Hey, 9 years is a pretty good run for any product, especially a ambitious one with no clear revenue model. And the shuttering is paired with a $10M donation to continue the support of the mission. I know Google gets hate for shutting things down, but they have hundreds of products – I can't think of any other tech company with such a wide range of products. They make bets, and with bets comes a certain amount of fail…

Does google have anything successful outside of: search, adsense, chrome, chromebooks, and android? Those are all large accomplishments to be sure, but it seems like they should have more products out there that people actually buy.

Gmail? Youtube? GCP? Waymo? Maps? Calendar? Google Suite? Google docs/drive/sheets/etc? Google Analytics?

Re: Loon’s final flight

#28

Post by valvar »

7thaccount wrote: post #15
gkoberger wrote: post #9

Hey, 9 years is a pretty good run for any product, especially a ambitious one with no clear revenue model. And the shuttering is paired with a $10M donation to continue the support of the mission. I know Google gets hate for shutting things down, but they have hundreds of products – I can't think of any other tech company with such a wide range of products. They make bets, and with bets comes a certain amount of fail…

Does google have anything successful outside of: search, adsense, chrome, chromebooks, and android? Those are all large accomplishments to be sure, but it seems like they should have more products out there that people actually buy.

They also have maps, gmail, docs, drive, translate, calendar, photos, scholar, and lately Stadia.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#29

Post by Mistri »

ogre_codes wrote: post #25
Mistri wrote: post #4

People often make fun of Google/Alphabet for their graveyard of failed initiatives/products. While some of it might be warranted, projects like this—that strive to solve a large, global issue through somewhat charitable actions—are generous and have only increased my respect for the Google/Alphabet/X team. I hope they don't get flamed for this, and hopefully some of their research and donation funds can live on and s…

I think the days of Google Moonshots are coming to a close. In general Google hasn't been very good at shooting for the moon. They've lost their leadership and vision and all that's left is a giant advertising behemoth. Did any of their moonshots really hit the mark or even come close?

Waymo seems like it's nearing its final stages. I have high hopes!

Re: Loon’s final flight

#30

Post by antupis »

ogre_codes wrote: post #25
Mistri wrote: post #4

People often make fun of Google/Alphabet for their graveyard of failed initiatives/products. While some of it might be warranted, projects like this—that strive to solve a large, global issue through somewhat charitable actions—are generous and have only increased my respect for the Google/Alphabet/X team. I hope they don't get flamed for this, and hopefully some of their research and donation funds can live on and s…

I think the days of Google Moonshots are coming to a close. In general Google hasn't been very good at shooting for the moon. They've lost their leadership and vision and all that's left is a giant advertising behemoth. Did any of their moonshots really hit the mark or even come close?

Brain is doing great and Waymo probably at least hits close.
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