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The IBM-ification of Google?

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Re: The IBM-ification of Google?

#21

Post by sakesun »

hintymad wrote: post #16

> YouTube is eating itself from the inside out too One thing that I really really hate Youtube for is that they don't allow users to turn off their shorts. You can choose to "reduce" Shorts for a given session, but they come back right next time. That said, Youtube is tremendously valuable for its high-quality content. It's kinda like a restaurant. The service can be horrible. They decor can be hideous. But! I'm goin…

You can go to Google Account > Data & Privacy. Then pause Youtube History. There will be no more feed on Youtube home screen. You will only see your /subscriptions feed. Little trick for a more peaceful life.

Re: The IBM-ification of Google?

#22

Post by dekhn »

antibios wrote: post #14
wrs wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not about stickiness. People complain because they liked the dead product . Do you hear complaints about Google+ dying? Reader wasn't a risk, it was a product people loved that wasn't hard to run. It was just too boring to maintain, didn't support the ad monopoly, and Google dropped it for the next shiny monetizable object. Anyway, enterprise products are an entirely different ballgame where product support,…

Reader was dropped in the run up to G+. I believe there was a strategic decision to try and get people to move to G+ and move both personal news and organisational news together.

The leadership was never completely honest about why Reader was shutdown, and the stated reasons didn't pass some basic sniff checks. But it was easy to read between the lines: the executives' attention was on other things, and Reader was a threat to their growth. But also it was a passion project that a company like Google would struggle to keep updating since it brought in little revenue (even though there were hordes of people volunteering to maintain it for free in their 20% time).

Re: The IBM-ification of Google?

#23

Post by majormajor »

amazingamazing wrote: post #13

I remember these types of posts saying Google is done because they shut down Google Reader. Google's stock was about $60 at the time. I look forward to reading this post and chuckling a few years from now. Doomers really do get more engagement, though. I have some friends in real life who complained about reader, and none of them even use RSS feeds anymore. I mean seriously? The one point I will make though is: these…

I was thinking the other day that it's particularly weird that Gmail is so bereft of features after all this time. It's not that they've left it completely as-is "this is great, there is nothing to do"—but just that the things they have tried have been... kinda uninteresting and quite simple? It's weird to me that with the other AI features they've tried (including suggested responses and such in drafting new emails) there isn't anything, say, to make really good proactive suggestions for like "apply this label to all incoming emails like this."

That sort of stagnation, though, and lack of their "trying things" really moving the needle compared to their decades-old ads product, makes me think they really are becoming the new IBM. IBM, in my estimation, has largely been irrelevant to the future of computing since the early 80s when MS ended up owning the PC story, but they have still had some quite solid stock prices runs at times over the decades (10x in five years at the end of the 90s, say). You can make a lot of money with a no-longer-that-interesting business.

Re: The IBM-ification of Google?

#24

Post by rkagerer »

spicyusername wrote: post #5
somesortofthing wrote: post #2

Not the article's main point but I've never liked the "google killing products" complaints. People always talk about how big companies fail because they're unwilling to take risks and just recommit to their areas of strength, but this is what risk-taking looks like - you blast out products, see what sticks, and kill what doesn't. People who think it's a quality product won't be wary of whether it'll get killed - the…

I don't disagree with your point. It's interesting to imagine if there's some kind of middle ground where products could be launched without the pretense of them being permanent? I suspect at least some of people's frustration is that X or Y was pitched as something serious, which then grates some when it gets canceled. But maybe you can't launch a product without pretending it's going to be real because it'll be dea…

...where products could be launched without the pretense of them being permanent

Yeah, it's what Google used to do by releasing everything as "Beta". Gmail was in Beta for 5 years with millions of users.

Re: The IBM-ification of Google?

#25

Post by bigstrat2003 »

erwincoumans wrote: post #15
cyberax wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name a good new Google product then? I just can't remember anything recent. I can't even remember any good recent _improvements_ to their core products. If anything, recent changes are more like downgrades than upgrades.

Gemini is pretty good.

You're entitled to your opinion, but you're literally the first person I've ever heard say that. Even people who like LLMs seem to think that GPT and Claude are the good ones, with Gemini being B tier at best.

Re: The IBM-ification of Google?

#26

Post by majormajor »

erwincoumans wrote: post #15
cyberax wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name a good new Google product then? I just can't remember anything recent. I can't even remember any good recent _improvements_ to their core products. If anything, recent changes are more like downgrades than upgrades.

Gemini is pretty good.

Is it any sort of leap over the product's it's copying?

IBM made some decent (sometimes extremely good, even!) products in a lot of segments for a long time after losing their relevance as "driving the future of computing." But rarely as a segment-definer or introducer.

Re: The IBM-ification of Google?

#27

Post by jeffbee »

"Everyone hates YouTube" is an argument that has a lot to overcome. All objective indicators suggest it is incredibly popular, and growing in popularity, pretty much across the demographic board.

Re: The IBM-ification of Google?

#28

Post by amazingamazing »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #25
erwincoumans wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gemini is pretty good.

You're entitled to your opinion, but you're literally the first person I've ever heard say that. Even people who like LLMs seem to think that GPT and Claude are the good ones, with Gemini being B tier at best.

https://openrouter.ai/rankings

Re: The IBM-ification of Google?

#29

Post by SanjayMehta »

amazingamazing wrote: post #13

I remember these types of posts saying Google is done because they shut down Google Reader. Google's stock was about $60 at the time. I look forward to reading this post and chuckling a few years from now. Doomers really do get more engagement, though. I have some friends in real life who complained about reader, and none of them even use RSS feeds anymore. I mean seriously? The one point I will make though is: these…

If you only use IMAP gmail is just good old email. I learnt about the AI inbox from your comment.

Re: The IBM-ification of Google?

#30

Post by amazingamazing »

majormajor wrote: post #23
amazingamazing wrote: post #13

I remember these types of posts saying Google is done because they shut down Google Reader. Google's stock was about $60 at the time. I look forward to reading this post and chuckling a few years from now. Doomers really do get more engagement, though. I have some friends in real life who complained about reader, and none of them even use RSS feeds anymore. I mean seriously? The one point I will make though is: these…

I was thinking the other day that it's particularly weird that Gmail is so bereft of features after all this time. It's not that they've left it completely as-is "this is great, there is nothing to do"—but just that the things they have tried have been... kinda uninteresting and quite simple? It's weird to me that with the other AI features they've tried (including suggested responses and such in drafting new emails)…

I honest to God cannot see how someone informed at all could call Google stagnant. Name almost anything and Google is on the frontier. Quantum computing, self driving, language models, network infrastructure, TPUs, etc.

It's some sort of delusion on this website that Google is falling behind. Or more likely, wishful thinking.

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