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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#841

Post by mcny »

refulgentis wrote: post #630
mianos wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he may be referring to Android Wear. While I agree with you, Android is rock solid and great to use on most phones in the last few years, Android Wear is anything but. It's buggy, unstable and a long long way behind the Apple platform. I love my Android phone, but, having had way too many Android Wear devices, it's complete crap. I really want it to be good.

I'd say y'all are thinking macroscopically of Android as a whole, whereas I'm thinking about my corner of 100-200 on launcher / system UI. There's very explicit examples I can think of, but now that I think of it...it might impossible to tell from the outside because you can't really tell what's The Cool Project from year to year

From the outside, my perspective has been that Android was a free for all in the beginning and had to tighten down permissions later for battery drain problems while iPhone was too locked down initially and had to figure out how to make their devices actually useful for third party apps.

It is just an impression I remember so may not be completely accurate but android made huge progress from a user's perspective in my opinion in terms of battery management (new phones having huge batteries I guess but 5Ah battery means nothing if Android kept wasting it unnecessarily.

I remember at some point there was a funny example something like if you forget your android tablet at home on wifi when you go on a three day trip, you should not come back to see a dead battery on your tablet. It was funny but also got the point across I think. I appreciate that.

For example, on this phone I am typing on, I have set it so by default battery saving kicks in as soon as I drop down to 75%. Then I turn it off manually if I need to do something important (rare).

One thing that bothered me about Android as a user was by default there was no feature for me to say don't allow this app to do anything on boot or in the background without my permission. Don't allow this app to connect to anything on the Internet or don't allow this app to connect to any network at all unless I say it is ok to do so. Any ideas why?

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#842

Post by saagarjha »

JW_00000 wrote: post #150
satvikpendem wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All their revenue came from ads, and they loss-led other projects. Great, market has matured from that. Has it? Seems like Google still makes most of their money via ads and everything else is a loss leader.

Are the Android app store and GCP loss leaders? I assumed those two would be profitable at least.

GCP burns massive amounts of cash and was a loss for many years. It just barely pulled a profit this year, though it looks more like some accounting tricks to make a small negative number look like a small positive one to make things look better during a downturn.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#843

Post by mcny »

ThrowawayB7 wrote: post #589
swetland wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole "throw everything in the trash and start over" thing is massively overstated. The iPhone announcement absolutely impacted things, not entirely all bad -- there was interest from OEMs before that, but it went through the roof after -- and it did mean we moved from the plan to ship a blackberry-style device first followed by a touchscreen device to skipping right to touch for initial launch, recognizing that…

Microsoft staying on top with Windows Mobile would have been a good thing for developers and consumers for one gigantic reason: Windows Mobile devices were open. No app stores, no Google or Apple bleeding away 30% of your revenue to line their own pockets, no byzantine approval process, just load your executable onto the device and go.

Windows mobile is not windows phone though and iirc from my brief time trying it out it was a mess even in 2008. My understanding was Android and open handset alliance came into being to tackle the fragmentation in the market. Clearly that's not true if the Android team saw Windows Mobile as it's biggest competitor...

I don't think Windows Phone would have ever happened if the iPhone never existed. Looks like Microsoft was just happy making money with Visual Studio licenses so I don't know if Visual Studio community edition would even have happened without outside pressure.

> Windows Mobile runs the .NET Compact Framework, which will support development in C# and VB.NET. You can also develop for Windows Mobile using MFC/Win32 APIs in C++ or Embedded Visual Basic. At the end of the day it's a stripped-down Win32-based OS, so there are other options, but these are probably the most popular.

> Depending on your experience, it will probably be easier to get Visual Studio 2008 and develop in a .NET language, the development experience is pretty nice and there is a built-in emulator in Visual Studio, so you don't need to have a device plugged in unless you are working with device-attached or embedded hardware.

> Unfortunately, Visual Studio 2008 Express editions (the free versions) do not support Mobile development, you would need to run a trial version or purchase a license.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/1702070

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#844

Post by Kbelicius »

JSavageOne wrote: post #824
speedgoose wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR doesn’t mandate cookies banner but requires informed consent. Browsing in incognito doesn’t prevent all kinds of tracking by the way.

Right so every website needing a cookie banner to comply with EU regulations is not only a UX nightmare, but it doesn't even prevent tracking. Horrible pointless legislation.

> Right so every website needing a cookie banner to comply with EU regulations

As it was pointed out, no, EU regulations don't mandate cookie banners. It seem you have an axe to grind with the EU.

> but it doesn't even prevent tracking

Incognito mode doesn't prevent all forms of tracking was what GP said...

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#846

Post by Annatar »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #780
leoc wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s remarkable is that that phrase was already, at that time, notorious for having been a portent of doom at Sun Microsystems.

..and now all that's left of Sun is the wood on the back of the Meta sign.

Every time a socket is instantiated, Sun Microsystems comes alive; so too it is with NFS, and many other core technologies; there is lots that's left of Sun which still makes it live, even though it doesn't officially exist any more.

And any time 0xide Computer ships a cloud in a rack with the Helios operating system powering it, Sun Microsystems shines bright as a beacon of indestructibility due to quality.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#847

Post by ayewo »

ryloric wrote: post #833
ot1138 wrote: post #734

> Much of the criticism Google received around Chrome and Search, especially around supposed conflicts of interest with Ads, was way off base (it's surprising how often coincidences and mistakes can appear malicious). The author is refreshingly candid but hopelessly myopic. Speaking as an outsider and a rather large advertiser, Google was great to work with in the early years (2004-2008). I founded the first search i…

Did you really have to say "some engineer in India"? What exactly are you trying to imply there?

I don't see anything wrong with their phrasing.

The full context of the quote: "The engineering help disappeared. Within another year, some engineer in India told us our API access was going to be rescinded." seems to imply that Google had outsourced engineering help to India to save on operating costs. This type of outsourcing [1] was pretty common back in those days.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#848

Post by crashmat »

Zambyte wrote: post #585
pardoned_turkey wrote: post #86

Ian's post is pretty incisive, although I've read so many of these over the past 15 years or so. And the prescription is always to go back in time. I don't really think that's possible. When you're a newcomer, a disruptor, the whole point is to be different. You're bold, you have a clarity of purpose, you say things like "we're building a new kind of a company" or "the user comes first." But once you achieve market d…

> But once you achieve market dominance "Market dominance" simply shouldn't be achievable under capitalism. We would be much better off as a society if the government started enforcing anti-trust laws again.

Thing is, under capitalism large companies get significant control over the governments' actions. And large companies don't like not being allowed to be as powerful as possible, holding monopolies.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#849

Post by rpgbr »

piyush_soni wrote: post #840
kelnos wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, agreed. My view is that the people on the inside often can't see the forest for the trees. They look at their immediate team/group, love the autonomy/transparency/"don't be evil"-mandate/etc. that they have and follow, and look around and see some of that in other groups, and think, "wow, this company is great, doesn't care about all that big-bad-company stuff". But people outside can look at a company that gets…

But then again, everyone says Google is evil to have made their own browser, but most of the world is using it - one would guess they must have done some good things with it (so taking humanity forward in some capacity etc.). Some are even criticizing Google from its own browser - I hate the fact that it made Firefox lose their market share, but I also understand it can't all be because the big corp brainwashed every…

Maybe they’ve achieved this position for Chrome leveraging Google’s strength, not because Chrome’s quality? I can name a few reasons, like an aggressive marketing campaign for Chrome circa 2012 (promotion on Google search, bundling Chrome with popular apps) and sabotaging Google web apps in rivals, specially Firefox, that makes Chrome look better for Google’s users (basically everyone online).
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