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”No one at Google is Returning Our Calls”

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Re: ”No one at Google is Returning Our Calls”

#81

Post by catnaroek »

dragonwriter wrote: post #76
munificent wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If only there were a term for being so impressed with yourselves that you felt you could just ignore the little people. It nothing to do with people being "little" in Google's eyes. It's about them being numerous . According to Wikipedia, Google has 46,421 employees. Here's the reported number of users of various Google products normalized to "per Googler": Gmail: 9,155 Drive: 215 Chrome: 16,156 Maps: 4,308 G+: 6,4…

What if Google spent some of the billions of dollars in cash it is sitting on and accumulating hiring a support workforce?

How would such an "investment" increase Google's bottom line? Are you sure it would not be a mere expense?

Re: ”No one at Google is Returning Our Calls”

#82

Post by wpietri »

munificent wrote: post #75
wpietri wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there were a term for being so impressed with yourselves that you felt you could just ignore the little people. Maybe "focused on Q1 revenue goals"? Seems long, though. I'd be happy if I could get it down to three syllables.

> If only there were a term for being so impressed with yourselves that you felt you could just ignore the little people. It nothing to do with people being "little" in Google's eyes. It's about them being numerous . According to Wikipedia, Google has 46,421 employees. Here's the reported number of users of various Google products normalized to "per Googler": Gmail: 9,155 Drive: 215 Chrome: 16,156 Maps: 4,308 G+: 6,4…

You say it like it has to be one or the other, but why can't it be both?

Google has chosen businesses where most of their users aren't, as you point out, their customers. They're the product.

What made them interesting in the beginning is that their behaviors were different than the economic incentives. They were engineering-focused, so they made a great search engine, and didn't worry about revenue maximization. They were, as far as I can tell, really serious about organizing the world's information, and about not being evil. That helped them crush their competitors.

But as far as I can tell, they've become just another large company. Many thousands of people, interacting mostly with fellow employees. So the people, always numerous, have also become little. Which I think is always the seed of a company's downfall. E.g., Microsoft, which has floundered for how long now? Cut off the roots and the whole plant eventually dies.

Re: ”No one at Google is Returning Our Calls”

#83

Post by jessaustin »

bane wrote: post #78

The solution of course is for Google to charge a small fee, say $50k/yr to each OEM who wants to use Android on their devices (if the OEM can't handle that fee, then they have no hope of handling the huge manufacturing, support, carrier fees and other costs involved with launching a product). This fee will guarantee them a warm body with a heartbeat on the other end of a dedicated number who will be their "relationsh…

This would certainly be a solution for OEMs in this situation, but I wonder how much of G would even consider this a problem? Another way to ask this: how long will G neglect the needs of this market before we conclude that G doesn't consider this a market worth noticing?

It seems possible that a third party could provide many of the services OEMs require, but I suspect that organization would need to be either very skilled or somewhat well-connected to the relevant dev groups at G, or else it would find itself in this same exact situation.

Re: ”No one at Google is Returning Our Calls”

#84

Post by shadowfox »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #80
michaelt wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has about $1,000,000 of revenue per employee [1]. Assuming their support employees worked a typical number of hours and billed every hour they worked to a customer, to keep the revenue per employee at the same level they'd need to charge $480 to $550 per hour for support. And fixing complex bugs in complex software can take a lot of hours. How many hours of developer time would you want spent on your issue? [1…

Interesting. Wonder why Amazon doesn't seem to have those problems. To me, they have just as many, if not more products to support and yet they're still known for their exceptional customer service.

Amazon does work on a really thin profit margin though.

Re: ”No one at Google is Returning Our Calls”

#85

Post by robk »

leoc wrote: post #24
sounds wrote: post #7

That was unexpected. Why would Google be so ignorant of Android China? China seems like such an obvious part of the mobile big picture that I can only assume "big" things. In no particular order: • Google's decision to leave China [1] • Political interference to protect a Chinese mobile OS [2] • Some sort of license restriction that doesn't effect Google services over the web but kicks in for mobile (completely a wil…

Other ideas (all pure speculation): * A desire to protect Google's relationship with the big-name phone manufacturers: maybe the big players have hinted that Google getting too helpful to the small Chinese firms would tend to cool them on Android * Concern that the Chinese manufacturers might accept Google's technical help, then refuse to implement all of the G-suite or otherwise violate the terms of the certificatio…

These are more plausible explanations than many of the others here.

Re: ”No one at Google is Returning Our Calls”

#86

Post by tadfisher »

tanzam75 wrote: post #54
pavlov wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably something that the PC clone vendors of the early Windows era (1990-95) would have loved to do, but they just didn't have the software competence. Developing a new shell for Windows was technically possible, but must have seemed like an outlandish prospect to companies like Compaq or Dell. ("Where are we going to hire a bunch of C developers who know GUIs and can do a better job at this than Microsoft?…

Isn't Microsoft also more restrictive when it comes to what parts of Windows OEMs are allowed to customize? It's one thing to swap out PROGMAN.EXE, as HP did with NewWave. But you're not allowed to interfere with the ability to run Windows Update.

That's just the bargain Google struck with carriers and OEMs. They have the reins on Google services, but allowing OS customization was a concession to get third parties to adopt Android as the de facto iOS competitor. And OEMs and carriers love to push their own customizations to build revenue streams.

Re: ”No one at Google is Returning Our Calls”

#87

Post by michaelt »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #80
michaelt wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has about $1,000,000 of revenue per employee [1]. Assuming their support employees worked a typical number of hours and billed every hour they worked to a customer, to keep the revenue per employee at the same level they'd need to charge $480 to $550 per hour for support. And fixing complex bugs in complex software can take a lot of hours. How many hours of developer time would you want spent on your issue? [1…

Interesting. Wonder why Amazon doesn't seem to have those problems. To me, they have just as many, if not more products to support and yet they're still known for their exceptional customer service.

Different types of support and different designs of company.

Call centre workers can process refunds, send out replacement items and do similar routine things - and they're not that well paid. It's unlikely there will be other more profitable ways to deploy them in the company. Programmers who can make code changes to fix faults in production software cost a lot more. And there will be other departments (which make a bigger contribution to the bottom line) trying to attract your most talented people.

By design of company I mean some tech companies only employ a small number of non-programmers, so they can afford to give programmer-level salaries, benefits and working enviroment to all employees. Google could give free food / laundry / busses / nerf guns to all employees and might think the equality is culturally important. Amazon on the other hand has radically different pay/benefits/working enviroments for programmers vs call centre workers vs warehouse workers.

Re: ”No one at Google is Returning Our Calls”

#88

Post by TimJRobinson »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #80
michaelt wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has about $1,000,000 of revenue per employee [1]. Assuming their support employees worked a typical number of hours and billed every hour they worked to a customer, to keep the revenue per employee at the same level they'd need to charge $480 to $550 per hour for support. And fixing complex bugs in complex software can take a lot of hours. How many hours of developer time would you want spent on your issue? [1…

Interesting. Wonder why Amazon doesn't seem to have those problems. To me, they have just as many, if not more products to support and yet they're still known for their exceptional customer service.

AWS support is pretty terrible, my last ticket didn't get a response from them for 8 days. Though when I complained about it on Twitter they responded a few hours later apologising and offering a refund.

Re: ”No one at Google is Returning Our Calls”

#89

Post by fpgeek »

Zigurd wrote: post #27

How did Microsoft manage a zillion OEMs who had to have audited numbers and get invoiced, and Google can't manage a simple compatibility test and license agreement? Never mind third tier phone OEMs, this is really hurting Google in tablets, where you don't need carrier retail channels.

Ironically, this actually isn't hurting Google in tablets. Over the past year or so, they've pulled in all of the bigger names (B&N, Kobo, Nabi, etc.) except Amazon and many of the budget OEMs as well (Archos, Coby, Ematic, ...). Maybe they're doing more outreach because Google is more concerned about tablets. It almost makes me wonder if the best way to get Google to pay attention to your phones is to make a tablet or two as well.

Re: ”No one at Google is Returning Our Calls”

#90

Post by d2dadvisory »

pistle wrote: post #38

Let's prioritize... Help out a large OEM with some level of gravitas and reliability or 10's to 100's of bargain-bin-targeting mom & pop shops that are unwilling to put their balls on the line to get up to speed on making globally-commercial products. Then you have the morass of cheap China tainting your platform. Google loves Samsung because they understand, slightly, how to balance silly, shiny shit with passable h…

So I wrote the original post, and I'm always a bit afraid to wade into the comments, but I wanted to respond to this one.

Your point is that Google is prioritizing correctly. That they are just going after the big OEMs first and then the guys I'm talking about are too small to bother with. About right?

I didn't hammer the point in this post, because I've made it a few other places, but all of these OEMs collectively are bigger than any other single OEM. Collectively, this group produces between one half and two thirds of the world's phones. Most are very small, but many are now huge. Google seems to be focussing on just one or two. I think with a small amount of effort they could tap into the whole audience. It wouldn't require building a huge support structure. And the numbers are huge.

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