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Is Google far too much in love with engineering?

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Re: Is Google far too much in love with engineering?

#31

Post by michaelbuckbee »

gnaritas wrote: post #30
danh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the author is a bit whiny, but I still think he has a point. One example: design. I still haven't seen a single page from Google that looked stunning, or even good (to my eyes, obviously). Their entire design philosophy seems to be infinite-amount-of-monkeys-hacking-css and A/B-testing. They even manage to make their main landing page, with only a handful of items, look quite messy. The method may be scientific…

Because good looks don't necessarily equate to good performance. They optimize for conversion, not beauty, and make an ass-load more money because of it. That's how it should be done.

I agree with you, but it is still possible the they are only optimizing within a local minimum (ala Jason Cohen's latest blog post - http://blog.asmartbear.com/local-minimum.html).

Re: Is Google far too much in love with engineering?

#32

Post by jackfoxy »

kwantam wrote: post #5

The author of this article backs up his argument with little substance. No decision-making process is perfect; pointing out the warts in Google's isn't much of an indictment. Really, to my mind the whole thing comes across as a bit whiny.

I submit to you as an example Chrome, which while technically sound has not exactly caught fire, despite Google's ability to promote it from the Google page.

Re: Is Google far too much in love with engineering?

#33

Post by cglee »

saturdayplace wrote: post #28
cglee wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I paid for the Premium Google Apps for one of my domains. When it was about to expire, I got emails almost daily reminding me to renew. The day before it was to expire, someone from Google Apps actually called my cell about renewing. For a different domain that I was using regular Google Apps on, I couldn't get an email response to a support question I sent several months prior. Whatever their focus, it's not on cust…

> Whatever their focus, it's not on customer service. No, that's exactly their focus. You got a lot of attention regarding the product that you were a customer of, the premium paid apps. In the other instance, you were the product: a pair of eyeballs they could sell to advertisers. And the advertisers are the customers in that instance.

I should add that they were never so helpful when I inquired from my premium domain in the past. I only received a lot of attention when it was time to renew.

For example, I couldn't figure out how to cancel the premium account, and I sent an email asking. No response ever came.

Re: Is Google far too much in love with engineering?

#34

Post by Maven911 »

aaronkaplan wrote: post #22
Maven911 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most companies try to show they are ethical by donating or being a corporate sponsor for a charity or event. I like Google's concept of just giving things out for free since I am a great benefactor of that. Google can make some of the money back through increased ads, but its not always clear how they do it for some products where there isn't any visible ads at all.

I think you mean beneficiary, not benefactor.

yup you are right, sorry

Re: Is Google far too much in love with engineering?

#35

Post by frossie »

fliph wrote: post #13

Yeah, Google could be pretty successful if only they didn't focus so much on engineering.

Are you arguing that anybody who is successful is by definition doing everything right?

Maybe they are successful because they do more rights than wrongs. Or they were in the right place at the right time. Or because they lacked a better competitor. The history of IT is littered with wildly successful yet sub-optimal companies.

Re: Is Google far too much in love with engineering?

#36

Post by falien »

jackfoxy wrote: post #32
kwantam wrote: post #5

The author of this article backs up his argument with little substance. No decision-making process is perfect; pointing out the warts in Google's isn't much of an indictment. Really, to my mind the whole thing comes across as a bit whiny.

I submit to you as an example Chrome, which while technically sound has not exactly caught fire, despite Google's ability to promote it from the Google page.

by what metric do you argue that it has not caught fire in ways that are remotely possible based on past experience with browser market share?

Re: Is Google far too much in love with engineering?

#37

Post by danh »

gnaritas wrote: post #30
danh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the author is a bit whiny, but I still think he has a point. One example: design. I still haven't seen a single page from Google that looked stunning, or even good (to my eyes, obviously). Their entire design philosophy seems to be infinite-amount-of-monkeys-hacking-css and A/B-testing. They even manage to make their main landing page, with only a handful of items, look quite messy. The method may be scientific…

Because good looks don't necessarily equate to good performance. They optimize for conversion, not beauty, and make an ass-load more money because of it. That's how it should be done.

You can't really optimize, in the A/B-testing sense, an entire design. You can just tweak the details, in the turd-polishing sense.

That being said, being ugly can of course be profitable. If you want to signal that you are cheap, for example, the ugliness helps. Just look at the difference between, say, Walmart and an Apple store. So maybe Google wants to look cheap - but I for one wish they didn't.

Re: Is Google far too much in love with engineering?

#38

Post by falien »

Maven911 wrote: post #8
rbranson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. The Nexus One is a working, production, reference implementation of what an Android phone SHOULD be, not something Google expected to make them rich.

Well that makes the point of focusing too much on the engineering side...corporations are for-profit entities and they are not there to make the "perfect" product but rather a marketable product that will generate them net positive cash flows...after all, if you are a shareholder of Google, you expect them to MAXIMIZE their earnings, not just make things for the fun of it, or cause its interesting (example: the free…

They're not a product company. They're an advertising company. This may change, but that does not mean all their efforts should be put towards changing it. They're expanding and creating their existing market, while putting feelers into others.

Re: Is Google far too much in love with engineering?

#39

Post by prospero »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #31
gnaritas wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because good looks don't necessarily equate to good performance. They optimize for conversion, not beauty, and make an ass-load more money because of it. That's how it should be done.

I agree with you, but it is still possible the they are only optimizing within a local minimum (ala Jason Cohen's latest blog post - http://blog.asmartbear.com/local-minimum.html ).

I think you're ignoring the fact that a product as familiar as the Google search page alters the search space you're trying to optimize. No matter how bad of an idea it was to add background images, the fuss that it caused was way out of proportion.

Any change that deviates too much from the current state of things has a huge amount of friction working against it. Whatever you think of the current design, I defy anyone to come up with a major overhaul that makes up for the loss of warm fuzzies the average user associates with the current home page.

Re: Is Google far too much in love with engineering?

#40

Post by gnaritas »

danh wrote: post #37
gnaritas wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because good looks don't necessarily equate to good performance. They optimize for conversion, not beauty, and make an ass-load more money because of it. That's how it should be done.

You can't really optimize, in the A/B-testing sense, an entire design. You can just tweak the details, in the turd-polishing sense. That being said, being ugly can of course be profitable. If you want to signal that you are cheap, for example, the ugliness helps. Just look at the difference between, say, Walmart and an Apple store. So maybe Google wants to look cheap - but I for one wish they didn't.

> You can't really optimize, in the A/B-testing sense, an entire design.

That's just crap. You can test anything, including entirely different versions of an app. The idea that you can't test good design is what designers tell themselves to justify their operating on gut feeling and pulling opinions out of their asses.

There isn't anything a user does that you can't come up with a way to test, designers are just afraid of actual data showing them they're full of shit. They don't want their ideas challenged democratically by users, they want their own ideas used instead because of some misplaced sense of taste. Engineers do it right, test, iterate, improve, follow the data wherever it leads regardless of your own ego.

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