Google Labs no more • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Labs no more

#61

Post by shareme » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 10:36 AM UTC

_frog wrote: post #23

kennystone wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would never seen something like "Labs" from Apple, and everyone applauds them for "focus".

Apple certainly does a lot of experimentation, but their approach differs greatly from Google's. The main reasoning behind Google Labs as far as I can determine is to expose projects to the broader world and determine which are best through some form of natural selection. A form of market research if you will. Apple on the other hand has been very much against market research, preferring to experiment internally, kil…

Apple has never been against market research, its only done internally with internal employees as the volunteers under NDA so we never see those workings..

Re: Google Labs no more

#62

Post by FuzzyDunlop » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 1:20 PM UTC

While there's no longer a specific Labs section, they do still have Google Code, and my guess is that you'll still find the odd experiment popping up on there every now and then (and naturally gaining publicity through word of mouth).

Re: Google Labs no more

#63

Post by mkr-hn » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 1:21 PM UTC

There was a great Labs feature I missed after they killed it: "What's around here?" All the button did was add an asterisk to the search box, and that still works.

Re: Google Labs no more

#64

Post by mkr-hn » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 1:23 PM UTC

georgemcbay wrote: post #14

kennystone wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would never seen something like "Labs" from Apple, and everyone applauds them for "focus".

I'm about as much of a Google fanboy as you can be and unfortunately zdw's words ring true. Also, in spite of Apple's success I'm not sure Google would do well to emulate them. I (and I would guess many others) have loved Google because they aren't Apple, though unfortunately they do seem to be inching that way at an increasing rate.

Are you talking about their recent UX trend of turning everything into a minimalist interface with a lot of whitespace?

Re: Google Labs no more

#65

Post by clebio » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 1:47 PM UTC

The most disconcerting thing is that a Google search for one of the Labs projects doesn't handle this change in any elegant way. I went looking for a description of Google Sets (http://www.google.com/search?q=google+sets), but the most relevant links either redirect or give 404. The one hand doesn't know what the other is doing.

Re: Google Labs no more

#66

Post by rwolf » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 4:07 PM UTC

machrider wrote: post #17

Does anything remotely like Bell Labs exist today? Is it simply not possible with everyone tightening their belts? If you're unfamiliar with what came out of Bell Labs, check out this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_labs#Discoveries_and_devel... Or is it the fate of software innovation that it is to be decentralized and happen in our spare time now?

Woah woah woah, you seem to be confusing "small experiments Google hosts publicly at labs.google.com" with R&D. Since your wiki link seems to be about publishing academic articles, here's a list of academic article produced by places that are not Bell Labs: http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html http://research.microsoft.com/apps/dp/pu/publications.aspx

The software industry is also producing patents at an absurb rate, which is another byproduct of research (theoretically).

Re: Google Labs no more

#67

Post by smoyer » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 4:12 PM UTC

zdw wrote: post #6

I get the feeling that the bean counters are taking over Google and slashing off everything that doesn't have obvious monetization potential. I mean, I know great people who work there, but overall it seems like they're turning into Microsoft circa 2000 - they own the industry, they buy startups and kill the products made by about half of them. Some of their products are great, but a lot of it is just an obvious mono…

Yes ... it's a sad day. And a further indication of how little big-G's management cares about engineering is how poorly they made this change. As of 1200 EST on 10/15, Labs is still available on the "even more >>" page (http://www.google.com/intl/en/about/products/index.html).

Re: Google Labs no more

#68

Post by kisielk » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 4:39 PM UTC

basugasubaku wrote: post #48

ww520 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS Research is quite good. Done lots of fundamental research work.

MSR may be the top organization in computer science today: http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=7...

Looks like IBM is quite far up there in terms of publications as well.

Re: Google Labs no more

#69

Post by suivix » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 4:59 PM UTC

mapster wrote: post #49

It was an experiment that met it's natural end.

Google Labs itself was an experiment? That's very meta.

Re: Google Labs no more

#70

Post by cracell » Sat, Oct 15, 2011, 5:42 PM UTC

pajju wrote: post #58

asto wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I always thought Labs was a part of Google's identity. What next, no doodles because it's a waste of time? :-(

Doodles won't. Doodles have become a strong reason for Google search to be used in their homepage. ("Locking in a category of users"). Btw, Orkut may be the next.

Running Orkut and Google Plus doesn't really make sense unless Orkut still has a large South American userbase that would be hard to transfer over (not sure if that is the case still).