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Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

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Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like they're also good at interoperability, market penetration, and distribution. Do you not think they're good at video streaming, security research, email, or cloud hosting?

I think you missed my point. Of course saying that they are only good at search is a catch-all statement. They are probably good at many things but their relevance is tied exclusively to their search product. Products like YouTube are what they are because of Google's search expertise. Also let's not forget that AdWords either subsidizes or leverages everything that Google builds. So I would add that they are also gr…

I understood your point, I just think it's incorrect. For instance, I don't think search is even close to the hardest problem YouTube is solving. I would say that magically streaming a crazy volume of video at the best possible resolution is a pretty tough technical problem, and totally unrelated to search. Ditto security research for the most part, modulo some of the work TAG does on finding 0days in the wild.

This is a common trope about Google; they're only a search company, only an ad company. It's simply not the case.

Edit: if you wanted to make a broad sweeping statement, I would say that they're only good at hard technical challenges. That's why they succeeded at e.g. search and YouTube, and failed at chat and social.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All organizations that grow rapidly face an "Alexander bias" where the sort of incentivizes, perspectives and people that allowed them to rapidly capture territory cause them to value capturing new territory even when it is no longer possible or in their organizational interest to do so. Even when organizations identify the problem, evolving from the cult of the new to the cult of incremental improvement is always ha…

How does this apply to all the chat apps? Google chat was great, wouldn't redoing the tech and making apps for all platforms have captured more territory than changing every couple years? When you have network effect, it's just crazy to try to rebuild that network every couple years if the point is to grow.

It's not about capturing marketshare for the company, it's about capturing bullet points for your resume. Working on new stuff is valued much more highly than fixing old stuff, and you naturally move much faster with more impressive sounding accomplishments in the early days of a product.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#223
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing of stuff just stagnating and no care to scrub the rough corners is crazy. On the outset, you might think with such ridiculously high compensation there would be an expectation of quality, but I think that's an error. Google operates as an ad-company that happens to employ ridiculous amounts of exhorbitantly compensated individuals to engage in market and technological research, particularly to open or exp…

mail, docs, drive et al ... they created them to _open a new market_ for advertising This seems obviously false. Google clearly monetizes gsuite as a paid service, and "everyone uses the same service at home that they do at work" has clear advantages, whether or not there is advertising in your gmail. Advertising in (consumer) gmail came long after paid gsuite (or "google apps for domains", as they called it then - h…

> Advertising in (consumer) gmail came long after paid gsuite

This is clearly false. The screenshots in this Time article show gmail having advertising from day one.

https://time.com/43263/gmail-10th-anniversary/

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#224

It boggles my mind to imagine how many verticals in the technology space have been kneecapped because of google. There could be so many companies that could offer amazing services but they just can't compete with a half-assed "free" service made by Google, which is just a temporary cost center for all the ad revenue they don't know what to do with.

You’ve just made the core argument of anti-trust legislation, which is far broader in scope than discussion of monopolies and far subtler. At root, monopolies are easy to detect, and it follows fairly uncontroversially from basic economics that’s been agreed-upon for centuries that if there are no (potential) competitors than there is no competition, rent-seeking/profit-gouging behaviour ensures by the incumbent, and capitalism basically dies. Anti-trust, however, it a great deal less clearly defined.

Let’s imagine a firm, and let’s call it Adobe. Adobe makes Photoshop. Photoshop has a full set of features and is sold for a high price to a market segment comprised of professional users who need the features provided by Photoshop, and are happy to pay the price since it enables them to make a decent living even once the cost of the tool is deducted. Adobe gets a decent revenue that allows it to cover expenses, capital costs, and develop future versions.

On the other side of the spectrum, you have Microsoft. Microsoft ships Paint for free. Paint has very few features, but it covers some (mainly ironic) usage cases, and it gets used by those who wish to manipulate images but have no need for the complex features of Photoshop. Sure, some people who wish to do high-level image manipulation but cannot afford Adobe’s asking price for Photoshop are not well-served by this arrangement, but hardly anybody would argue that Microsoft’s inclusion of Paint would be anti-competitive towards Adobe: it’s not worth adding all the features of Photoshop to Paint only to give it away for free (and the argument that you would give it away for free only long enough to bankrupt Adobe and then start charging for Mega-Paint might be profitable, but it’s uncertain and depends on costs of capital and expected rates or return, plus the costs of an almost certain lawsuit).

Nor can Adobe be anti-competitive against Microsoft: dropping the price of Photoshop to zero just to stop people from using Microsoft’s own free product would be... pointless as it would zero their revenue.

These are two extreme cases, and it’s easy to just think in these dualistic terms and come to the wrong conclusion (or wonder what I’m getting at with this bizarre and apparently off-topic rant).

Now to tie it all together, introduce a middle-ground player such as Affinity. Affinity makes Photo, a product that is midway between Paint and Photoshop both in terms of price and features. People who need the full features of Photoshop (including those not present in Photo) will still choose Photoshop, which might slightly dip Adobe’s revenue. Microsoft’s will however remain stationary at zero. Affinity has captured the market of those who are defined by Paint being unsuitable but who do not wish to pay Photoshop’s full price (because Photos contains all the features they need).

Now, finally, the final step: say Adobe turns a blind eye to piracy of Photoshop. It still gets paid by its professional customers so it’s revenue remains unchanged. However, people who found Paint to be frustrating are now faced with an interesting choice: steal Photoshop (which has all the functions they could possibly want, and is free) or buy Photos (which has all the functions they want, albeit a subset of those offered by Photoshop, but does so for a higher price).

This is one obvious case that comes under the broad rubric of ‘dumping’ (selling at prices that damage one’s own short-term interest in order to damage one’s competitor and increase one’s net long-term advantage) but there’s plenty others where that came from. The tech industry is rife with them. Mainly, lack of successful prosecution is probably due to regulatory capture by way of lobbying.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#225

I'm sure these alternatives work for some, but I really don't find "Hey" a suitable alternatives to Gmail, nor "Notion" to Google Docs. I think the innovation and updating in those Google products has stagnated a lot, but they're still better for actual work and business than the new hip things.

Perhaps I'm in a time warp -- wasn't Inbox basically integrated with gmail last year?

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#226

For Google Translate you should check out DeepL https://www.deepl.com/translator It's absolutely insane, blows GT right out of the water with its accuracy.

For Japanese Deepl leaves GT in the dust and I've found myself using it more over the last few months.

I've often seen GT get the basics dead wrong - for example formal greetings Japanese people have been using in formal correspondence for hundreds of years. When it gets things right it's often fleeting, a week later it gives you something different.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#228
post #115

I had the "pleasure" to work with Ex-Googlers which had "Project Managers at G" in their resume. Honestly, I do not wonder anymore why Google nowadays s#ck as hard as they do. They made great presentations and a grand plans using some project management saas tools. But both of them neither understood the basics of projectmanagement (Who does what when and what do they need when?) nor could react when challenged. Both…

You tell a nice story with the data, but I cannot dismiss the potential selection bias: perhaps these PMs were not up to Google's standards and were invited to leave?

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Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All organizations that grow rapidly face an "Alexander bias" where the sort of incentivizes, perspectives and people that allowed them to rapidly capture territory cause them to value capturing new territory even when it is no longer possible or in their organizational interest to do so. Even when organizations identify the problem, evolving from the cult of the new to the cult of incremental improvement is always ha…

How does this apply to all the chat apps? Google chat was great, wouldn't redoing the tech and making apps for all platforms have captured more territory than changing every couple years? When you have network effect, it's just crazy to try to rebuild that network every couple years if the point is to grow.

I think the premise is that the culture/behaviors/tactics that allowed Google to capture new territory early on are hanging on past their usefulness, not the actual capturing of territory itself. Growing existing products wasn't the important thing before, so _now_ the incentive structure at Google is mis-aligned with capturing territory in that way.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#230
post #206
post #115

I had the "pleasure" to work with Ex-Googlers which had "Project Managers at G" in their resume. Honestly, I do not wonder anymore why Google nowadays s#ck as hard as they do. They made great presentations and a grand plans using some project management saas tools. But both of them neither understood the basics of projectmanagement (Who does what when and what do they need when?) nor could react when challenged. Both…

Interesting how you are basing your assumptions on two ex-employees who no longer work there probably because of what you experienced, not to mention the small sample size.

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