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Why I left Google to join Grab

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Re: Why I left Google to join Grab

#81

Post by fauigerzigerk »

reacweb wrote: post #71
syshum wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with your theory is there are a TON of evidence it is not in any way reality. For example, if their primary motivations were Preventing Monopoly status, and feeding their AI Research they would be embracing open standards, Federation of services, and a whole host of other things they have rejected the last decade or so. They would have never Killed Reader, they would have never taken Hangouts off XMPP, th…

A social network is better when almost everyone are on the same network like it was with facebook. Google avoids having a too good social network to avoid becoming dominant. If Google provided a good stable API, people may never consider going to concurrence. By pissing off some users, Google stimulates competition and avoids becoming a "public service". I think this reasoning explains well Reader, XMPP, their droppe…

I don't get your reasoning at all. You're saying that Google wants to feed its AI as much data as possible while at the same time not appearing too dominant.

Launching a bunch of terrible and failing copycat projects and closing down actually useful "niche" projects sure helps with not appearing too dominant, but it does nothing to help feed Google's AI.

It also does nothing to prevent Google's competitors from becoming dominant and getting locked out of important data sources like social interactions (Facebook) or product search (Amazon).

I agree with syshum. Supporting federated, open protocols would make much more sense. It would make Google appear benign while at the same time granting them access to a lot of data and help keep competitors at bay.

Re: Why I left Google to join Grab

#82

Post by calvinbhai »

sgift wrote: post #55

> When this idea inevitably takes off, people are going to be able to order take-out from their neighbors, from anyone in the city who wants to cook their family recipe. It will change cuisine forever. I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. As if such things as hygiene regulations didn't exist and you can just open a restaurant by hanging a sign out and telling someone to deliver whatever you just produced in y…

I agree with you.

But I remember when I laughed similarly at AirBnB and Uber, because regulations, safety etc.

I remember when Uber riders, drivers, AirbnB hosts got screwed because the other party turned up to be a criminal (remember #uberdelhirape ?)

But, sharing economy is the new buzzword and regulations have been too much of a pain, so people are willing to take a risk.

Re: Why I left Google to join Grab

#83

Post by ggggtez »

edanm wrote: post #77
ggggtez wrote: post #76

So he complained about Google just copying, and then boasts this new company is going to be "the Uber of South East Asia"? This is in all seriousness the 5th startup I've heard of that is doing this exact thing. And like everyone else here pointed out: the demand doesn't exist. The only explanation is that if they really worked at Google for 13 years, they must have made so much money that they don't care about makin…

"The only explanation is that if they really worked at Google for 13 years" Just FYI, he's a pretty famous blogger. He also accidentally posted a supposed-to-be-private rant about Google a few years ago, which became pretty famous too. So yes, he really did work at Google for 13 years.

That wasn't intended to be a comment of doubt, it was a logical implication, if P then Q. So in that case, I double down on saying he must just have no financial sense to think this idea is going to compete with every other copy cat.

Re: Why I left Google to join Grab

#84

Post by ianai »

sgift wrote: post #55

> When this idea inevitably takes off, people are going to be able to order take-out from their neighbors, from anyone in the city who wants to cook their family recipe. It will change cuisine forever. I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. As if such things as hygiene regulations didn't exist and you can just open a restaurant by hanging a sign out and telling someone to deliver whatever you just produced in y…

I wonder if there are fewer regulations on food processing? Ie maybe a restaurant producing a meal needs to be regulated. But what if someone sells chopped onions and other prep work?

Re: Why I left Google to join Grab

#85

Post by hardkids »

Google landed their ivestment in Go-Jek, and Go-Jek is Google Cloud heavy user. And this guy made a blogpost why he jump to Grab after Google while mentioned Grab is AWS heavy user.

Purely advertorial for me :)

Re: Why I left Google to join Grab

#86

Post by syshum »

reacweb wrote: post #71
syshum wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with your theory is there are a TON of evidence it is not in any way reality. For example, if their primary motivations were Preventing Monopoly status, and feeding their AI Research they would be embracing open standards, Federation of services, and a whole host of other things they have rejected the last decade or so. They would have never Killed Reader, they would have never taken Hangouts off XMPP, th…

A social network is better when almost everyone are on the same network like it was with facebook. Google avoids having a too good social network to avoid becoming dominant. If Google provided a good stable API, people may never consider going to concurrence. By pissing off some users, Google stimulates competition and avoids becoming a "public service". I think this reasoning explains well Reader, XMPP, their droppe…

>>A social network is better when almost everyone are on the same network like it was with facebook.

Disagree completely. A Social Network is better when everyone can communicate seamlessly with each other, that does not require a hierarchy model controlled by a single entity, it is much much harder to do in a decentralized way, and it much less profitable but it is far from impossible or even better as a social network to be centralized. It is better for profitability to be centralized, it is better for censorship, control, etc to be centralized, but for the actual users it can be decentralized, seamless and far better

>Google avoids having a too good social network to avoid becoming dominant.

Google does not have good social network for a variety of reasons, none of which is because they have purposely chosen not to have one.

>If Google provided a good stable API, people may never consider going to concurrence. By pissing off some users, Google stimulates competition and avoids becoming a "public service". I think this reasoning explains well Reader, XMPP, their dropped API and explains also why they do not embrace open standards.

When talking Anti-Trust this is the exact wrong approach. MS got into Anti-Trust trouble because of their non-standard dominance over the web. It was a combination of IE Integration into windows along with other technology like ActiveX that was not open to competitors. Forcing users to use the IE Web Browser.

Had there been a stronger Standard like HTML5 is today, and has MS been a full partner and compliant with it I likely would have avoided all Anti-Trust actions (especially in the US) even with the integration of IE into windows.

Adopting Free and Open Standards can be a defense against Anti-Trust.

Re: Why I left Google to join Grab

#87

Post by mywittyname »

notyourday wrote: post #73
sgift wrote: post #55

> When this idea inevitably takes off, people are going to be able to order take-out from their neighbors, from anyone in the city who wants to cook their family recipe. It will change cuisine forever. I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. As if such things as hygiene regulations didn't exist and you can just open a restaurant by hanging a sign out and telling someone to deliver whatever you just produced in y…

Personally, I always find it funny when those who cut their teeth in a software industry ( which based on profit margins is a toddler ) think that their skills translate into well established industries such as restaurants.

We live in an era where every company is a software company.

Re: Why I left Google to join Grab

#89

Post by willempienaar »

okr wrote: post #47
plinkplonk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand Go-Jek is kicking Grab's ass in Indonesia. Go-Jek is presently only in Indonesia, and Grab is probably larger in SEA as a whole , but nothing prevents GoJek from expanding to other countries, so yes major war going on. May the best company win! I think Steve just wrote a great recruiting piece for Grab and Gojek ;-). Both are incredible companies, so all for the good. $Diety knows we need some…

If you can tell your friends, that customers also like to be tracked/found, temporarily (if needed) Phoning is not really helpful, i dont understand them, they dont understand me. SMS the driver also does not work, as i usually do not buy SMS budget. And the notes are ignored by drivers! Maybe even a little doodle to show them how to drive best to the location on the last mile, could be useful. :)

Good point. I work on the Data Science team, but I will pass along your comment and suggestion to the relevant product team.

Re: Why I left Google to join Grab

#90

Post by motdiem »

PretzelFisch wrote: post #88

Not related to the story but it's depressing that I can no longer follow Steve in my rss reader. Unless there is a non obvious way to get Medium posts in rss.

Your comment prompted me to look for it. Apparently you can by appending /feed/ before the author's name. so for steve, it would be https://medium.com/feed/@steve.yegge/

Source: https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/214874118-RSS-feed...

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