The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images • Hacker News Board

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#221

Post by jcampbell1 » Thu, May 31, 2012, 6:43 AM UTC

swalsh wrote: post #49

gcb wrote: post #12

Glass will be google's newton pad. a new world promise, but in reality totally uncool and only used by a few san francisco hippies-yuppies. And then forgotten. With a chance of a decade later becoming a game changer.

Sir I challenge you to a bet, $100 to our respective favorite charities. In my opinion Google Glass is set to be a game changer from the start. I wager that when google glass is launched, it will be a cultural icon no more than 1.5 years later. It's clear WHY google needs glass. Owning the channel between my eyes and the world is a huge potential pot of money. Targeted ads have a lot of potential to disrupt the ad sp…

I'll gladly take this bet. It is hard to frame since I don't think it will ever launch in any meaningful way (1.5 years from never, is still never). That being said, I think if they sell 20 million units globally before December 31, 2016 you will win the bet.

The marketplace is going to reject Glass.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#222

Post by netvarun » Thu, May 31, 2012, 7:07 AM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #89

51Cards wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one little thought I would add to that is that when Google first started working on a self driving car everyone went "WTF is a search company doing..". Now, X years later... it's a different story. People have started to really think about self-driving vehicles and autonomous travel. I don't see Glass at this point... but I didn't see practical self driving cars 6 years ago either, let alone states licensing them…

Google isn't a search company, it's an AI/ML company.

Google isn't an AI/ML company, it's an ad platform company.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#223

Post by toemetoch » Thu, May 31, 2012, 7:14 AM UTC

jes5199 wrote: post #104

toemetoch wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd that you'd state that. My flickr-feed is dwindling because photographers are moving to Google+ for picasa's quality service.

really? I post photographs on G+ entirely out of network effects - that's the site that my friends check reliably. Flickr is like a black hole, now, socially. But the Flickr user experience is still nice compared to G+'s clunky too-much-javascript.

Yes. In the early weeks of G+ it was really weird. I had mainly people from flickr in my circles, they were very easy to find because they actively pointed at each other. Posts like "if you're into this kind of photography you should add these people" - this was before you could share circles. They also posted how-tos on using picasa images in posts and such. They really jumped on it.

One of the reasons I often heard was that facebook reduced quality too much (bad compression) and this resulted in bad press for FB among photographers. Apparently, many were on the lookout for something like fb with an integration of something like picasa.

I'm less on flickr now because of the "please post this in our group" spam. They really need to get a grip on that.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#224

Post by mmccomb » Thu, May 31, 2012, 7:19 AM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #89

51Cards wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one little thought I would add to that is that when Google first started working on a self driving car everyone went "WTF is a search company doing..". Now, X years later... it's a different story. People have started to really think about self-driving vehicles and autonomous travel. I don't see Glass at this point... but I didn't see practical self driving cars 6 years ago either, let alone states licensing them…

Google isn't a search company, it's an AI/ML company.

But Google didn't start life that way - they were born a search company. That's what I find so interesting about Facebook at present, here they are, investment in hand and a world of opportunity. From here on in they can choose their own path and focus on whatever they like - just as Google have had the opportunity to do.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#225

Post by duaneb » Thu, May 31, 2012, 7:24 AM UTC

chintan wrote: post #62

Old Google = GoogleX (try outrageous things, see what sticks) Current Google = Google+ (a beautiful bouquet of socially unified product experience) Future Google = ??

GoogleX is still there.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#226

Post by ocirion » Thu, May 31, 2012, 8:29 AM UTC

Google has a huge revenue generating machine in search, and adwords. This allows them the opportunity to spend massive amounts of money on a lot of projects that will mostly fail. They're hoping, at some point, one or more of these projects will turn profitable. But they're burning millions doing it.

The problem with this approach is that they end up neglecting their core search product, which I don't think has evolved much in the past decade. If someone else comes along and disrupts search, its goodbye Google.

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#227

Post by gaius » Thu, May 31, 2012, 8:32 AM UTC

saraid216 wrote: post #178

falling wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Google you see research (which is of course commendable), but so far they haven’t been able to produce profit from anything else than ads, so I would call that research awesome, useful, beautiful, but not (yet) future proof for the company.

This is actually why I've been saying that Google is acting more like a government than like a business. They have a buoy of revenue to coast on and are spending it on (what appears to be) unrelated R&D. It smells more like IBM or Microsoft than Ford or Chevrolet. To me, it's not just not the same race. It's not even the same game. Facebook's playing Tetris; Google's playing Civilization.

It smells like Bell Labs. Where do Ken Thompson and Rob Pike work these days? ;-)

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#228

Post by rockmeamedee » Thu, May 31, 2012, 9:01 AM UTC

confluence wrote: post #109

dxbydt wrote: post #99

to gauge marginal positive externalities, invert the principal component & see what remains. as an example - suppose you wake up tomorrow and google search stops working. never mind why - some random bug impossible to figure out, so it just stops working. Then what are the positive externalities that remain ? Well, gmail. youtube. android. gdrive. maps. picasa. blogger. reader. googledocs. googlecheckout. etc etc etc…

Reminds me of a Charlie Munger quote: that to get closer to the right answer, scholars should "invert, always invert." You have a strong point there. Most top 100 websites I see are just frontends to databases . I kid you not. Their competitive advantage is proprietary data holding and network effects to get more data. Google - search + database frontend. Facebook - database frontend. YouTube - database frontend. Yah…

This begs the question. Websites are basically databases connected to servers through some controller logic.

And isn't that the point, that now we're in an information age?

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#229

Post by gcb » Thu, May 31, 2012, 9:03 AM UTC

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #214

gcb wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they don't mess it up with weird looking hardware Q.E.D.

I don't follow.

Was an attempt at joke. Everyone do find the glasses a joke to be displayed in public environments already

Re: The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

#230

Post by dsirijus » Thu, May 31, 2012, 9:04 AM UTC

dxbydt wrote: post #99

to gauge marginal positive externalities, invert the principal component & see what remains. as an example - suppose you wake up tomorrow and google search stops working. never mind why - some random bug impossible to figure out, so it just stops working. Then what are the positive externalities that remain ? Well, gmail. youtube. android. gdrive. maps. picasa. blogger. reader. googledocs. googlecheckout. etc etc etc…

Great thought.

Though, there's always a single choke point at which you could deny ANY number of services, including all the externalities. Even if that point is a little worst-of-the-worst case scenario.