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

81–90 of 485 posts

Re: Mourning Google

#81

Post by LoveMortuus »

Grimblewald wrote: post #63
vanderZwan wrote: post #22

> To me this feels like a big inflection point, because around the stumbling feet of the Big Tech dinosaurs, the Web’s mammals, agile and flexible, still scurry. Tangent: I kinda hate this metaphor. It reinforces this incredibly outdated idea that dinosaurs - or any other extinct life-form - went extinct because they were an evolutionary dead end. (Also, since I do not know a single nerd who isn't into dinosaurs the…

building on the dino thing, we've currently hellbent in creating a new dino age it seems. Hot ass planet high in the CO2 required to create thriving lush jungles.

While humans might not survive, the nature will.

Should the worst happen. But I'm optimistic that humanity won't let things get this bad.

Re: Mourning Google

#82

Post by ulfw »

rezonant wrote: post #24
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…

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…

"However, you can feel it in the experience as a user when the product team is given the keys to the kingdom and left unchallenged. The product becomes soulless and vapid"

Wow. Incredibly that there are people who think this. So only an engineer with no product team input can build products with a soul? Really?

Re: Mourning Google

#83

Post by test77777g »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #15

"Psychopaths" seems to be a running theme in the various reminisces that people are sharing in comments here on Google stories.

I’ve noticed developers have a pretty low bar for being a “psychopath” I’ve found psychopaths to mostly be people that see programmers as disposable. This is pretty much true, hence the psychopaths everywhere.

Re: Mourning Google

#84

Post by mbreese »

rezonant wrote: post #72
fidotron wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Product design, usability, simplicity, and sheer style were not the forte of the Google of old.” This is completely wrong. Their style was deliberate indifference about aesthetics, but their products (maps, search and gmail in particular) were absolute masterpieces of product design when first launched. Edit to add: even Chrome itself was like this.

Search was a product designed by two engineers. Maps from 2005 was a very sleek product, but at the time there were no competitors on the web, and now Maps is so ubiquitous, and requires such an insane data investment, that we'll probably never know the ideal Maps design, because every competitor out there is still catching up. Their primary advantage was the money they threw at mapping data and the ability for them…

> Maps from 2005 was a very sleek product, but at the time there were no competitors on the web

Mapquest would beg to differ. To me, the interface was the killer feature for Maps. The data and trip planning functionality existed already on the web (as my print outs of driving routes in the late 90s can attest to). But being able to just scroll around a new city was amazing. Every other site required clicking through every North or West button with a round trip to the server.

It wasn’t until later that the satellite data and street view data became the next killer feature.

Re: Mourning Google

#85

Post by prepend »

> For now, here’s the direction I think I’m going: Use Chrome for Google stuff: Maps, Calendar, Docs, Translate. Safari and Firefox for non-Google stuff; they ain’t perfect but I think they’re better aligned with my interests.

This is my approach. I used to really like google products. Not I keep chrome to run the google products I haven’t gotten rid of yet.

Re: Mourning Google

#86

Post by rezonant »

fidotron wrote: post #79
rezonant wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search was a product designed by two engineers. Maps from 2005 was a very sleek product, but at the time there were no competitors on the web, and now Maps is so ubiquitous, and requires such an insane data investment, that we'll probably never know the ideal Maps design, because every competitor out there is still catching up. Their primary advantage was the money they threw at mapping data and the ability for them…

“Gmail was not actually a particularly elegant product design” It popularized instant search, tagging and threading to such a degree you have clearly forgotten how elegant it was!

Features are not product design.

Re: Mourning Google

#87

Post by rezonant »

mbreese wrote: post #84
rezonant wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search was a product designed by two engineers. Maps from 2005 was a very sleek product, but at the time there were no competitors on the web, and now Maps is so ubiquitous, and requires such an insane data investment, that we'll probably never know the ideal Maps design, because every competitor out there is still catching up. Their primary advantage was the money they threw at mapping data and the ability for them…

> Maps from 2005 was a very sleek product, but at the time there were no competitors on the web Mapquest would beg to differ. To me, the interface was the killer feature for Maps. The data and trip planning functionality existed already on the web (as my print outs of driving routes in the late 90s can attest to). But being able to just scroll around a new city was amazing. Every other site required clicking through…

Oof that's true I forgot about MapQuest.

Re: Mourning Google

#88

Post by _heimdall »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #70
_heimdall wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit: I totally misread the parent comment, move along I really wouldn't recommend looking to LLMs to evaluate truthfulness, they aren't built for that and have no way of knowing what true is. They're much better as a tool for summarizing information, with the usual caveat that any summary is incomplete and can only be as truthful as the original source(s) used.

I think you've misread my comment. I have found copilot for example to be really useful for searching for things like how to pull out part of a log like using common bash commands. I can generally evaluate what it comes up with pretty well; having used all of the commands before but just not using them on the daily basis which would make it easy for me to come up with the initial version on my own. On the other hand…

Looked again and I absolutely misread it, I somehow completely missed the "things where I am in a reasonable position to evaluate" part. Sorry about that!

Re: Mourning Google

#89

Post by cxseven »

bsenftner wrote: post #45
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…

My theory is any engineer led organization is doomed to fail because the STEM education does not include professional communications, and as a result any engineer led project and organization has communications issues that ultimately lead to failure. Quality communications is so critical in any collaborative, it is simply amazing an emphasis on communications is not a part of technology development - where "new" and…

Engineers would win many more arguments if that was their full-time job. Who has the energy after completing a blitz to solve a highly technical problem by deadline to debate a PM who has spent months cooking up a product story?

Re: Mourning Google

#90

Post by tdb7893 »

samirillian wrote: post #25

I like Tbray's posts but I want to quibble over language. What's happening to the term "late stage capitalism"? Feels like it's becoming a meme like neoliberalism. What does it even mean to say that it wasn't tech's fault, it was late stage capitalism's fault? Kind of dodging a particular responsibility with a generality. I think LSC came to prominence through cultural marxists like David Harvey and Frederic Jameson.…

So from my experience most of the people using it won't think there was a "good capitalism time". I think the prevalence of that term is used to evoke the idea that continuing for too much longer on the current path is impossible without something major breaking. The ecology of the planet is slowly going to shit, basic necessities like housing and medical care keep getting more expensive, and pay for most people in real terms has been stagnant (even with huge productivity gains).

In contrast to that corporate profits are off the charts but there's the sense that they are getting that by squeezing everything else too much and eventually something is going to give and it's just a race between whether what breaks is the planet, the labor force, or the broader structure of society.

Take this all with a bit of a grain of salt though as this is just why it's caught on in the particular circles I run in.

Post reply on HN