211–220 of 264 posts
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That's what moonshots are though, there is a high statistical possibility that 0/100 makes it.
Not really; a moonshot is a huge investment to advance the state of the art in something where we know it's possible . It's not a wild shot in the dark. No Saturn V rocket ever failed.
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Are any of those innovations? It seems to me they are all boring, obvious, copied, or purchased products that complement their ad selling business.
I mean, maybe after 15 years they seem status quo. But almost all of these were revolutionary at the time... do you remember videos before Youtube, collaboration before Docs, email before Gmail or maps before Maps? Yes, Google makes money off ads. But how does that discount them being innovations (which, btw, is a qualification you came up with... nobody above you even said they were).
Hotmail and Mapquest would like to chime in here...
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"Pizza-box-sized" was a placeholder. The Starlink antenna ("Dishy") has a diameter of 59cm https://i.imgur.com/ULwOGxs.jpg
That's a 12 inch medium pizza, without the box. An antenna of that size can't be carried by normal people going about their daily lives. More people are willing to buy a phone and a phone plan (Facebook was even willing to subsidize the plan in India with Internet.org) than buying a phone, a phone plan, an antenna and a StarLink plan. That's even more true for people who aren't internet users yet.
I don’t know what kind of barbaric society you hail from, but here in civilization 12” is a small pizza. ;-)
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?
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I believe gravity is what happened, in the particular case of Loon. I never understood it. It is expensive to keep things fighting gravity. The only way to avoid that is to either a) not put them up above the earth, or b) put them high enough that gravity isn't much of a force, like low earth orbit. It doesn't take a genius to understand that, but it took Elon Musk to prove it. Meanwhile... Google launched balloons.…
Gravity in low earth orbit is pretty much the same as it is at the surface.
Or, I suppose more simply, "weather".
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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.
My question wasn't to be a jerk. It was a legitimate question asked out if ignorance.
I still kind of feel like they could be in a lot of additional areas like logistics where they could put all their capital and software edge into becoming a global leader.
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I wouldn't call this a strategic failure. Google is a big SpaceX investor.
Well a nine year investment in a company to end in failure isn’t what I’d call a strategic success.
They invested in multiple potential paths to a global internet. It's not surprising that they'd drop the investments that aren't as promising as the investments that are showing significant promise.
It's like saying I applied to multiple colleges, and because I only accepted one application, that the other applications were a failure. But, no, it could just mean that I preferred to go to the college that I accepted, but the others were a hedge against that path not working out.
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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?
I think the main problem is they lost the edge on execution. Traditional "vision" is not strictly needed for moonshot projects; the vision for moonshots is provided by a small team working on their idea. But should the technology start panning out, the company needs to focus aggressively on finding a commercial home for this technology. And this is where I think google (and many big companies) fail. Technologically,…
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Keep in mind android they bought, then the leader of that project "resigned" for sexual harassment. So it's continuing but I doubt it'll be more than incremental improvements, as we've seen in the past 5 versions. But I think Gmail and Maps were fairly innovative products when they came up. Both in terms of "wow I didn't think this would be possible before" and being viable businesses.
I use iOS, and have no love for Android but... that's an insane statement. There's almost 3 billion android phones out there, and one guy leaving isn't going to cause Google to throw up their hands and shrug. Phones are just really, really good now, and there's not much you can really innovate on.