Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mourning Google

tbray.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 485 posts

Re: Mourning Google

#31

Post by baud147258 »

bluetomcat wrote: post #27
fancyfredbot wrote: post #18

Part of me is actually happy that Google lost its shine. A part of this is certainly schadenfreude, for which I am obviously ashamed, but there is another side to it. I remember the awe/respect with which people thought of Google back in the mid-'oughts. Working there carried this huge cachet that few tech companies can compare to today (maybe OpenAI). All these amazing engineers went to work there and everyone was j…

> I don't mean to say it was a waste of talent, because clearly some of these things were a huge success. Nothing apart from search, ads, maps, Gmail, Chrome and Android was a huge success. They essentially created their own monocultural ecosystem. Most of everything else was a short-lived fad. Plus, Wave, Reader, Chat and Glass, to mention a few.

I'd add Youtube as a huge success, even if I don't think if ever brought in much money

Re: Mourning Google

#32

Post by closewith »

coldtea wrote: post #23
duringmath wrote: post #8

Things were better when I was younger and still worked there I don't know how much of it is a perspective thing but it's probably a decent amount.

> "Things were better when I was younger and still worked there" You make it sound like having actually worked there, and knowing how Google was, versus what it is now, is a bad thing, that somehow "taints" your critique. It's, on the contrary, one of the most important prerequisites to be able to evaluate current Google.

The real issue the OP has is that they’re aging and seeing things differently. The Google they remember never existed - it’s just how they felt at the time.

Re: Mourning Google

#33

Post by wyclif »

bluetomcat wrote: post #27
fancyfredbot wrote: post #18

Part of me is actually happy that Google lost its shine. A part of this is certainly schadenfreude, for which I am obviously ashamed, but there is another side to it. I remember the awe/respect with which people thought of Google back in the mid-'oughts. Working there carried this huge cachet that few tech companies can compare to today (maybe OpenAI). All these amazing engineers went to work there and everyone was j…

> I don't mean to say it was a waste of talent, because clearly some of these things were a huge success. Nothing apart from search, ads, maps, Gmail, Chrome and Android was a huge success. They essentially created their own monocultural ecosystem. Most of everything else was a short-lived fad. Plus, Wave, Reader, Chat and Glass, to mention a few.

I felt like Wave had potential, but they killed it too soon.

Re: Mourning Google

#34

Post by Paianni »

cousin_it wrote: post #16

I have a different theory about the cause of the decline. Google 10-15 years ago had a clear idea of how to win: hire the best programmers, give them freedom, and they'll build products that will win in every market. And, well, that hasn't happened. Long before the current talk of Google's decline, there was talk of the Google black hole, where talented people would get hired and their noteworthy output would drop to…

Chrome? Chrome OS? Google Docs? Those haven't been successes?

Re: Mourning Google

#35

Post by rezonant »

cousin_it wrote: post #28
rezonant wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your theory doesn't match the timeline. Under the engineering first strategy, Google became the juggernaut it is today, with products like Gmail, Maps, Street View and of course Search. Unfortunately, the approach doesn't work for all product categories. Product design, usability, simplicity, and sheer style were not the forte of the Google of old. As a result they saw themselves fall behind Facebook in social, faile…

I think the two viewpoints are compatible. The "PM takeover" was indeed a very distinct event, and the precursor of today's problems. I think the reason that takeover was allowed to happen is because engineers-in-charge wasn't bringing enough results, like I said. Maps and Gmail are good success stories but they happened many years earlier.

Yes, but Google as a business felt like they could do no wrong, like they were the best at everything, and failed to see that they threw the baby out with the bathwater while trying to chase product categories that weren't in their DNA.

Re: Mourning Google

#36

Post by herval »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #18

Part of me is actually happy that Google lost its shine. A part of this is certainly schadenfreude, for which I am obviously ashamed, but there is another side to it. I remember the awe/respect with which people thought of Google back in the mid-'oughts. Working there carried this huge cachet that few tech companies can compare to today (maybe OpenAI). All these amazing engineers went to work there and everyone was j…

> Working there carried this huge cachet that few tech companies can compare to today

It also was allegedly a "special" place, where you had autonomy as an engineer, yada yada. From what I hear about openai, that doesn't really apply there. Are there any small-but-large-ish companies (100-1k employees) out there today that have a culture similar to the early google?

Re: Mourning Google

#37

Post by herval »

> "Larry and Sergey were smart guys who recognized they didn’t know shit about corporateness and quickly got into a pattern of hiring and empowering psychotic pricks who were presumably “good at business”. Not gonna talk about some of the things I saw because these people are wealthy and litigious."

Big Tech in a nutshell

Re: Mourning Google

#38

Post by cousin_it »

rezonant wrote: post #35
cousin_it wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the two viewpoints are compatible. The "PM takeover" was indeed a very distinct event, and the precursor of today's problems. I think the reason that takeover was allowed to happen is because engineers-in-charge wasn't bringing enough results, like I said. Maps and Gmail are good success stories but they happened many years earlier.

Yes, but Google as a business felt like they could do no wrong, like they were the best at everything, and failed to see that they threw the baby out with the bathwater while trying to chase product categories that weren't in their DNA.

Ah, if that's your point then I disagree. There is no "DNA". A big tech company can and should try to do many things in many markets, look at Microsoft. When they started with Basic interpreters, or even when they launched Windows, would you have said that Xbox is in their "DNA"?

Re: Mourning Google

#39

Post by vintermann »

verisimi wrote: post #10

My opinion is that google only ever presented as a new type of company - without ever being that. It was marketing spin - and I bought into that. I since found out it was funded from inception by inqtel, the CIA's venture capital arm. There are lots of articles to this effect, eg: https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo... So, the hype, the free canteen, etc was all just spin to move people from…

> I since found out it was funded from inception by inqtel, the CIA's venture capital arm.

It just occurred to me - it's almost a too stupid theory to be true, but you should never underestimate this kind of corporate stupidity - the name change to Alphabet, maybe that was part of telling the actual alphabet agencies, "We're on your side"? One thing is sure, Schmidt really, really wanted to have a good relationship with Obama's state department.

Re: Mourning Google

#40

Post by rezonant »

coldtea wrote: post #21
cousin_it wrote: post #16

I have a different theory about the cause of the decline. Google 10-15 years ago had a clear idea of how to win: hire the best programmers, give them freedom, and they'll build products that will win in every market. And, well, that hasn't happened. Long before the current talk of Google's decline, there was talk of the Google black hole, where talented people would get hired and their noteworthy output would drop to…

"The non-normal culture wasn't proving itself." Well, that was what made Google in the first place. That's a hell of a lot of proof. What didn't work out was endless growth for the stockholders and "winning in every market". I'm not sure when companies decided they can't just be fucking happy in their domain (and make the same thing, improve it slightly over time, sell it with a profit, and go on), and have to "win e…

Absolutely. And don't get me started on how M&A has created an absolute monster of technical debt that stares you in the face as a user. Many might disagree, because the trillion dollar veneer Google can throw at things obscures it, but it's there.

I used to wonder why Google moves so slow to add features and get literally anything done, but after experiencing the monumental screwup that is Google's underlying unified payments infrastructure, it's become pretty clear. The engineers are spending too much time mucking through the garbage left behind by M&A tech merging and code left behind by hotshot college grads on their way to early retirement at 25.

EDIT: M&A

Post reply on HN