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Why I Left Google

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Re: Why I Left Google

#301

Post by Drbble »

jrockway wrote: post #144
YmMot wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree for the most part that Google is not "fighting for it's life", though I think it has faltered a bit. > people are not defecting away from search to use Facebook's search or Bing or whatever. You are perhaps missing the point a little. It doesn't matter what people are doing, it's what advertisers are doing. The fact that everyone still uses Google search won't be worth much if advertisers are only interested…

Yeah, absolutely. I think iPhone vs. Android is a good analogy. Google is never going to kill Apple and Apple is never going to kill Google. Google provides a phone platform for two groups: people who want the cheapest smartphone, and people who want the most freedom to customize their phone. Apple provides a phone platform for people willing to spend a good amount of money on a phone that works perfectly without twe…

Google phones aren't very customizable by the users. They are customizable by carriers. Rooting is a pain and buggy, so that is no defense.

Heck, Google won't even let me remove Facebook and Twitter from my unlocked Nexus One!

Re: Why I Left Google

#302

Post by eli_gottlieb »

pvarangot wrote: post #51
DanI-S wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Google /want/ you to have any files on your computer. They could have built Dropbox a long time ago, but that's not the direction they want the world to go. They chose Google Docs instead. Whether they're correct or not is still up for debate. Dropbox are doing pretty well.

> I don't think Google /want/ you to have any files on your computer. Oh, yes they want. They also want to be your computer.

No, not really. They don't want to be your computer; that would mean you have a computer. They want to convince you to replace your computer with a thin client that forwards all actual data and computation to them. That's their ultimate business proposition: you get analyzed for ad-men, and they make the big mean scary monster of responsibility for one's own computing go away.

Re: Why I Left Google

#303

Post by Drbble »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #230
6ren wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" was motivated by DEC getting killed. He claims that DEC was a victim of a disruption: a new technology that offered something that didn't seem to be a threat, become successful in other markets and eventually improved enough that it was threat - then it was too late. There, the old technology was minicomputers; the new technology was workstations. The new technology isn…

Its an interesting comment but lets put a few things in perspective: 1) "However, right now, Google is fighting for its life." Any company that is dumping 2 - 3 BILLION dollars into the bank each quarter is not 'fighting for its life.' Google is doing just fine at the moment. 2) "My only disappointment is that google didn't manage to transform its internal inventions into innovations. " This is a huge thing, and its…

Which is funny, because Google product developers are intensively trained to believe compute resources (BigTable, etc) are free (in stark contrast to Amazonians who are constantly shopping for TCO effective virtual machines) right up to the moment they get shut down for inefficiency.

Re: Why I Left Google

#304

Post by Drbble »

kragen wrote: post #128
mistermann wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> trading in their old fans for the hope of new fans that probably aren't interested anyway. 100% agree. Two small decisions that enrage me for some reason: 1. Stealing the "+" operator away from searches 2. Making Google+ a (semi) closed platform - when I see a link on HN and I click through and it wants me to login to my google+ account just to view the article, I rage inside. I always want better search, and I've…

Delete your Google cookies and only log in to Google+ in an Incognito window. Then you won't have the "wants me to login to my google+ account just to view the article" problem ever again.

Yeah, but, there is a better solution, right? Like, Google choosing to not actively break the Web?

Re: Why I Left Google

#305

Post by Drbble »

apenwarr wrote: post #263
DanBC wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers of people using + operator correctly were tiny. (1 in 600 people.)

If there are 6 billion people on earth, that's 10 millon of them.

It's good to see a Google manager hold that point of view. Do you have any influence in the organization? Or are mchurch's nightmare demons really running the show?

Re: Why I Left Google

#306

Post by Drbble »

MarkMc wrote: post #123
Steko wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shrug I thought I made the case already. If Google makes X on untargeted ads and X+Y on targeted ads then it comes out ahead by offering Y/10 of that money to the user somehow. Yeah it's peanuts so you make it Google Play credit. For some people maybe it's only one song a month, for others it might be one movie a quarter.

Or Google could make a deal with Facebook: If Google makes X without Facebook's data and X+Y with their data, they can offer Facebook Y/3.

But Facebook is gunning for that X+Y. There are only 12 billion * 24 eyeball hours in each day.

Re: Why I Left Google

#307

Post by Drbble »

jrockway wrote: post #137
mbreese wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, say what you will about Microsoft, but their business model is primarily to sell technology. Google's business model is to use technology to sell ads.

But remember, you are Microsoft's product, not their customer. When you demand to use Windows, it means that the OEMs have to negotiate Windows licenses for new computers, or you'll buy some other OEM's box. That means the OEM is the customer that Microsoft gets money from, meaning you are only tangentially important. (The Office market is the same way: Office is sold as being the "don't retrain your staff" solution.…

Nice to see the stupid "you are the product" meme subverted.

Re: Why I Left Google

#308

Post by Drbble »

marshray wrote: post #142
wvenable wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason to want your identity is for advertising. Google went from a technology company (with the goal of collecting and making available all the world's information) to a social media company (with the goal of collecting information on the unwashed masses). Google has gone from cool to dirty and I think we'll see more Googlers leaving the company as they slowly discover that fact.

I mostly suspect you're right. But at the same time I get the sense that nobody is completely sure what all this social identity is going to be good for. Like the early days of the web, everybody can see that it will be very important going forward, but the business models it will support aren't fully clear yet. So it's a mad land grab at the moment in the hope it will monetize or be commercially leveragable somehow…

$10/user per year isn't so much....

Re: Why I Left Google

#309

Post by Digital_Data »

SpiderX wrote: post #251
beatle wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Apple sells products. Google sells YOUR personal information that you do NOT want to share to advertisers. Big difference.

Why would I not want to share my personal information with advertisers. I certainly don't want to be marketed feminine hygiene products if I am a male. I also don't want to get offered oracle integration products if I am a Microsoft SQL shop. Targeted advertising is fine by me.

Is it possible, that you haven't thought this to the end. When you don't get advertising of feminine hygiene products, because you are a male, it is also possible, that you get no insurance advertisings, because you do free climbing. More, it is possible, you don't get cheap insurance or even any insurance because you habe only searched for free climbing or clicked on advertisement for free climbing products.

You understand. The industrie washes your brain to only see the positive side effects and don't think about the negative ones.

Re: Why I Left Google

#310

Post by mhansen »

Yawnoc wrote: post #191
RandallBrown wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't your 20% time project still require managerial approval? You can't just work on whatever you want, you need to get it approved by a manager? This is what I've read, I don't know if it's true or not.

No, 20% doesn't require any approval. Your manager can ask you to set it aside during crunch time (one quarter max) and you might eventually get dinged if you're doing something wildly irrelevant. 20% time is alive and well and not at all "deprecated".

And if you set it aside you get 40% time next quarter. It's very much alive and well.
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