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Mourning Google

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Re: Mourning Google

#291

Post by redrove »

poszlem wrote: post #223
Xcelerate wrote: post #53

> quickly got into a pattern of hiring and empowering psychotic pricks who were presumably “good at business” This seems to be the real challenge that I haven’t seen any company founder overcome. How do you keep these types of people out? It’s like one gets in, then they let all their friends in, then they overtake the company. The tech company offices I visited in 2010 were full of nerds—people who rode unicycles, j…

The Bozo Explosion: https://kevinpaulscott.com/the-bozo-explosion/

I’ll use this article as an argument for the next time I’m forced to choose the lesser of two idiots in a round of interviews.

Thanks for sharing, really insightful.

Re: Mourning Google

#292

Post by Apocryphon »

nonameiguess wrote: post #266
sneed_chucker wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't think the Bell Labs people were pulling Google tier TC.

This is the real core of the problem. Bell Labs was populated by hackers who were perfectly content to earn double to triple what an average factory worker was getting for less toil while doing cool shit. FAANGs became too profitable and attracted people who would have been finance bros in the 90s. Engineers expected to be compensated like quants and directors like portfolio managers. You don't get a Skunk Works or D…

You make a lot of good points, but was the failure of Google moonshots really the fault of the workers who were easily lured by comp, or management who were impatient about seeing material results? Seems like either could have been chasing higher returns.

Initiatives like Google Fiber flaming out were certainly not the fault of anyone at the company. Maybe for drastically underestimating the difficulty of the problem. Actually, maybe that’s a reoccurring issue with these moonshots.

Re: Mourning Google

#293

Post by rchaud »

GNOMES wrote: post #278
rchaud wrote: post #255

These blog posts eulogizing Google's culture death sidestep the elephant in the room; Google sells ads. Nothing else they produce makes money. Google Search didn't magically get dumber, they simply made a business decision to favor SEO-optimized junk sites, many of which run Google Ads. There's an outdated saying that goes, "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" If Google was hiring only the best and brightest, s…

Curious on your Android would be dead without Samsung comment. I know the US is skewed towards iOS, but Android is the #1 mobile OS, presumably due to cheap devices. Is there a stat showing Samsung is largest manufacturer? I found this, but company market cap != number of devices obviously https://finance.yahoo.com/news/16-biggest-smartphone-compani... It looks like there are 20+ manufacturers in the Open Handset All…

The OHA has about as much relevance as the League of Nations did in the 1930s.

Samsung makes screens, SOCs, storage and memory. They put Android into every conceivable form factor and distributed them in every country on earth at every price point. That is why Android suceeded.

Google's original Android partners were HTC and Motorola, neither of whom ever had the scale to compete with Apple. Google even acquired Motorola, but spun it off as they had no idea how to run a phone business.

Re: Mourning Google

#294

Post by marginalia_nu »

zehaeva wrote: post #181
whythre wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren’t wrong, but we used to teach Latin in schools. Things aren’t getting better in a lot of these arenas, they are being chipped away… and the center cannot hold forever.

What does teaching Latin in schools have to do with schools, ostensibly, failing? Are you saying that Latin is something that is useful to everyday life and because we don't teach it to our children we're depriving them of this wonderous tool? I personally do not know Latin, but I have never run into a situation where I needed to know it. And to analyze the idea that, "Well, it's not Latin in specific, but that we ar…

Well, you would be surprised how much historical writing you are locked out of by not being able to read Latin. Not from antiquity, but from the fall of rome up until the turn of the previous century, Latin was the language. A tiny fraction of what's been written in Latin is available in any vernacular. By not reading Latin, you're locked out almost all western pre-modern writing.

> Plato complained that "children today are not learning the things that they should"

Where does he say this? This seems an incredibly uncharacteristic sentiment coming from Plato. If nothing else because his mentor Socrates was sentenced to death for corrupting the youth, and almost all extant writing from Plato deals with Socrates' legacy. When Socratres isn't harassing rulers and generals, he's typically portrayed hanging out with the youth in Plato's writing.

Closest thing I'm aware is a section of The Republic. The section, a hypothetical aside really, deals with the horrors of Athenian democracy (the same that killed Socrates), where fathers fear their sons and children are said to think themselves equals to their parents.

Re: Mourning Google

#295

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

bluetomcat wrote: post #252
Multicomp wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People like to say, "But those people don't even create anything, they're just taking credit for other people's work!" But just letting smart people gather and work on pet projects doesn't seem to work particularly well either. Maybe having a headstrong product oriented person upstairs is useful/necessary. I mean, isn't that what Bell Labs basically was? Put smart people in a supportive playground and harvest the c…

Bell Labs worked during the Cold War, in a Keynesian economic system. They were focused at fundamental technology, not in creating an end-user service to conquer the world.

Bell Labs did that, but they worked in service to the rest of the Bell system that was precisely targetting "creating an end-user service to conquer the world". Citing Bell Labs as if they were "an entire company" is misleading - they were the R&D wing for what was essentially a monopoly in telecoms.

Re: Mourning Google

#296

Post by sojournerc »

marcosdumay wrote: post #268
sojournerc wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plants do this weird thing and turn CO2 into O2. More CO2 means more plants. The earth is greening with the additional atmospheric carbon. https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization...

O2 levels are not set that way. Just think where all the new CO2 is coming from.

Much of it is coming from the carbon in fossilized remains of a time when there was much more O2 in the atmosphere because there was so much flora and a warmer planet... what am I missing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_oxygen

Re: Mourning Google

#297

Post by rchaud »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #284
rchaud wrote: post #255

These blog posts eulogizing Google's culture death sidestep the elephant in the room; Google sells ads. Nothing else they produce makes money. Google Search didn't magically get dumber, they simply made a business decision to favor SEO-optimized junk sites, many of which run Google Ads. There's an outdated saying that goes, "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" If Google was hiring only the best and brightest, s…

I know ads are their behemoth, but aren’t some of the other groups you listed large enough to be considered huge companies in their own right? You always hear about products getting shut down at google because they “only” make $100M a year in profit or whatever. They may not be as successful as ads, but they sure are successful. (… at least until they get shut down for not being as successful as ads)

Yes, Youtube for example could certainly be spun off into its own company. But Google (or is it Alphabet?) has always resisted this. We do know that YT is not profitable, so I imagine they can't spin it off and charge market rates for GCP hosting.

Re: Mourning Google

#298

Post by psunavy03 »

fidotron wrote: post #166
Chathamization wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the impression I have. I remember a little over a decade ago when the population at large was completely hyped about all of the world changing technology we were going to see coming from the moonshots at Google X. The excitement over Google Glass, the mystery over the Google barges. Eventually, people started wondering when these hyped up products in development were going to actually become products[1]. Not i…

I think you could go further - the old Google culture was not great at teamwork, and most definitely not when teams crossed boundaries with third parties, where they would expect to be dictating reality and struggled when this wasn’t possible. (Credit where it is due - certain people in the Android group worked this out and changed their tune, and much money was made as a result). There are limits to how much tiny te…

> Part of the function of a Jobs type character is to be the defining asshole in the organization that no one has a chance of defeating alone.

Except you don't have to be an asshole to be that person, just in charge.

Re: Mourning Google

#299

Post by psunavy03 »

fidotron wrote: post #271
vharish wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current Google is no better when it comes to team work. It's likely worse when it comes to cross team work.

Absolutely. My outside impression of current Google is everyone is at war with everyone at their level. Get promoted and it's war with a new level. Your success at a given level is based on your ability to persuade the level above of your use to them ascending further levels. It's tempting to blame Sundar for this, but he is the result of this game being setup that way in the first place, and he simply eliminated all…

So basically Microsoft under Ballmer?

Re: Mourning Google

#300

Post by Marazan »

The sad slow death of Google Search is close to genuinely upsetting.

At one point it felt like Google cared about defeating SEO spam. Now it feels like they actively encourage it.

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