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Google X: Waiting for a Moonshot
- doctorpangloss 10y agoResearch divisions exist for recruitment purposes. Sometimes it's just a bait and switch, being promised "R&D" and then getting interviewed for Google Play Store once someone realizes you're not qualified enough. Other times, you work on research for six months, and then there's this team at the company that needs work from you for two years. Ask the former MSR executive, who fixed the accounting of their losses by pointing out how people at MSR were working on regular MS commercial products too.
- honkhonkpants 10y agoEh, you've got it all backwards. You cannot get a job at X by going into the ordinary Google hiring pipeline, and in any case the Google hiring system does not hire people for specific products like Google Play Store. Furthermore, one does not freely transfer between X and Google, in either direction.
- Redoubts 10y agoHow does one get hired at X? Their jobs page just leads you to google.com/about/careers
- CardenB 10y agoI don't believe this is true. I know someone was initially picked to interview for YouTube but then got interviewed for X after declining YouTube.
- honkhonkpants 10y agoYouTube has retained their own quasi-independent recruiting regime, along with X, Verily, Fiber, etc.
- tjl 10y agoActually, they are part of the normal Google pipeline (or at least they were before the Alphabet split). A few years ago, I was contacted by a recruiter from Google and after talking to her I ended up being interviewed by someone for a job at Google X.
- honkhonkpants 10y agoA few years ago was before Google reorganized into Alphabet.
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- dredmorbius 10y agoAstro Teller. Grandson of Edward Teller.
- mdonahoe 10y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller
- throweso 10y agoThis is only tangentially-esoterically related, but due to your comment I ran across some online book called Unsong about a Kabbalistic sweatshop in Silicon Valley. [0] It sounded like a novel humoristic idea. Apparently by coincidence the lead character is named Aaron Smith-Teller, and worked on AI at some point. And Astro Teller wrote a book about AI and also sold a movie pitch to Paramount called Golem (a Kabbalistic reference). And Gwern posted an interesting thing on Edward Teller's Atomic Alphabet. [1] [0] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28589297-unsong http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28589297-unsong [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/unsong/comments/4pzyvq/edward_tellers_atom_alphabet_1946/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unsong/comments/4pzyvq/edward_telle...
- eru 10y agoIsn't Unsong by the same author as Slate Star Codex?
- tene 10y agoYes, it's authored by Scott Alexander.
- tene 10y agoIt's not a coincidence; it's discussed in chapter 6 that Aaron Smith-Teller's grandfather was Edward Teller. http://unsongbook.com/chapter-6-till-we-have-built-jerusalem/ http://unsongbook.com/chapter-6-till-we-have-built-jerusalem...
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- ars 10y agoReading this I'm starting to wonder if they are failing too early. I've often reached a point in fixing some object, or some code, or whatever, when I'm certain I can't do it. I'm ready to just shut it down. But I have no choice - I have to make it work. So I keep plugging away. And so far I've managed almost every time - despite being certain I couldn't. Now I'm smarter and no longer so certain :) But if I got a bonus for failing - well. In each case I could easily, and convincingly, and truthfully! demonstrate it couldn't be done.
- dang 10y agoAnybody want to take a shot at a less baity, accurate, neutral title? Preferably using representative language from the article.
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoThe Business Model of Moonshots at Google X (not grounded by language in the article, however)
- sokoloff 10y agoCorporate Research Labs Chasing Moonshot Projects; Most of Them Don't Pan Out Financially
- ars 10y agoGoogle X research lab: Waiting for a Moonshot or Waiting for a Moonshot at the Google X research lab ("Waiting for a Moonshot" is a prominent sub-heading in the article.) Incorporating another subheading, perhaps: Google X research lab: Waiting for a Moonshot after 'Failing to Fail' or Waiting for a Moonshot after 'Failing to Fail' at the Google X research lab
- dang 10y agoOk, we'll use that suggestion; incorporating a subheading is a good idea. Thanks!
- Gustomaximus 10y agoInside Google X: Moonshots and Rewarding Failure.
- navbaker 10y agoNot sure how this is baity. The jetpack portion refers to an actual example of research done by X and the profit promise portion refers to the hit or miss nature of the research as it applies to Alphabet's main goal of making money. Am I missing something?
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- dharmon 10y agoThis: > “I’m an optimist: I believe that there is an endless supply of huge problems affecting humanity.” combined with this: > “I think we could meet it, but it would be more like 15 to 20 years.” That was too far away, which was why she recommended killing it. ...seem to be fundamentally at odds. Or, at the least, leave an extremely narrow sliver of projects: big problems that can be solved in under 10 years. And how many projects started out in the engineer's mind as a short task but turned into a decade-long struggle? Also, I can't look at a picture of that guy in rollerblades without thinking of this: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-x-astro-teller-hbo-silicon-valley-2016-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-x-astro-teller-hbo-sil...
- forrestthewoods 10y agoWe all stand on the shoulders of giants. Huge problems are still solved. Small problems are solved and accumulate until the large problems are suddenly not so large. Then in the blink of an eye they become commodities. Drones, virtual reality, autonomous vehicles.
- seanp2k2 10y agoAnd drones are still not yet commercially viable, VR is not yet amazing and in the hands of consumers / widely applicable outside of gaming, and autonomous vehicles are currently hyped-up versions of adaptive cruise control. We're still probably 10 years away for drones and autonomous driving, and 2-5 for VR in terms of large mainstream impact (possibly much longer for truly autonomous cars, depending on AI advancements, laws, etc...I wouldn't be surprised if it's more like 25-30 years until it's the norm).
- IanCal 10y ago> And drones are still not yet commercially viable I don't really understand here, are you talking about a specific area that they're not commercially viable? Because people make and sell them for a profit.
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- spc476 10y agoI wonder if they make available the research they've done on dead projects, like the vertical farming, failed because they couldn't get staple crops to grow well enough.
- Animats 10y agoI'm impressed that Google/X has been willing to give the self-driving car group enough time and money to do it right. They have about 60 self-driving cars, being driven by paid employees. They have their own proving ground. All that can't be cheap. I'm disappointed that Google bought all those robotics companies and ran them into the ground.
- mc32 10y agoWell, when the person who probably oversaw those acquisitions leaves, what do you expect to happen? The people who took over probably didn't have the same vision.
- iainmerrick 10y agoThat just shows there are at least two ways the problem could have been avoided — don't do the acquisition, or don't lose that key person. ...Or make sure the person taking over has the right vision. Three ways! :)
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- grinich 10y ago> bought all those robotics companies and ran them into the ground Did this actually happen? I know there have been cultural issues with Boston Dynamics, but the other acquisitions seem to have gone fine. Folks from Redwood, Meka, Bot & Dolly, and Holomni are still working at Google and many of the founders are director-level in the robotics groups.
- Animats 10y agoBot and Dolly had customers, yet they seem to have dropped out of the market they were serving.
- pgodzin 10y agoThe self-driving car project that came from Google X sparked the huge investment in autonomous vehicles, and gave Google a huge head start. In addition, they positioned themselves well with a large investment in Uber. The moonshot has succeeded/will succeed from a technological sense. Now they just need the right go-to-market approach.
- jayjay71 10y agoWhile I don't disagree with you, I think the real credit goes to Dr. Tony Tether who was the director of DARPA for the duration of the self-driving car competitions. He set aside money for the races and helped design them. After the last race in 2007 Google acquired most of their talent from various teams.
- pgodzin 10y agoDefinitely, but to me it seems like Google was responsible for jumping on it and taking it from university research projects to a viable "moonshot." So it's much less waiting for a moonshot - they already have it - more just waiting for the launch
- iainmerrick 10y agoWhat always irritated me about Google X was exactly that rhetoric around "moonshots", as if Google had discovered this completely new technique for getting stuff done. Not only have quite a few companies and organisations successfully completed huge, ambitious, forward-looking projects; but Google haven't, at least nothing remotely comparable to the actual moonshot they happily co-opt. Google has done lots of amazing stuff, but usually in a remorselessly incremental way. Gmail and Google Maps (especially Street View) are the closest I can think of to "moonshots" in that they were big and bold improvements over what had come before. But neither one would be called a "moonshot" by Google X standards. In each case a back of the envelope estimate would be enough to show that it would work out (in technical terms, if not business terms). So why does Google act like they're uniquely qualified to make moonshots work?
- nostrademons 10y agoGMail and Google Maps were also both ruthlessly incremental. They seemed like big improvements over what had come before because they had incubated inside the Googleplex for a couple years before they were released, and because the competition hadn't improved in nearly a decade. It's more that Search was a non-incremental leap forwards, and that Google was basically the only company of the dot-com era that had attempted an ambitious technological goal and succeeded. Google Search really was fundamentally different from previous technologies; its main rival Alta Vista, for example, ran on a single box and used very standard text-ranking techniques, while Google thought very much out-of-the-box in terms of ranking, scale, and architecture. Google X is very much a Larry & Sergey project, and Larry (while Eric was CEO) was often very critical of how incremental employee projects were and how they weren't taking enough risks on fundamentally different approaches.
- iainmerrick 10y agoGoogle search used a couple of clever innovations -- the PageRank algorithm, and scaling via lots of small computers. But apart from that, isn't it almost the definition of incremental? You don't need a massive investment to make it work, just a couple of grad students with 10 PCs to make a proof of concept, then 100 PCs to make it better, then 500... Thinking about it, Google's key business trick has never been moonshots, it's been "throwing things against the wall to see what sticks". It's a wide approach (invest speculatively in lots of different ideas) rather than a deep one (bet heavily on a really long shot).
- zatkin 10y agoI think one of the biggest problems with Google X is that they give their employees a false sense of what I consider "full freedom" which is a big component in making moonshots possible. All of the biggest tech companies in the last 20 years were not conceived within a larger corporation - they evolved out of a garage or a university. What makes Alphabet think that by fueling employees under a new division of their company is going to spin off more cash cows for them? Also, what happens if an employee manages to produce something that does become a huge success? Will they be able to enjoy the same success as if they had spun up that idea on their own?
- goatsi 10y ago>Mr. Teller appears to be always on Rollerblades. The article seems to confirm the rollerblades anecdote from the New Yorker Silicon Valley story [0] >Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades. He wobbled to the door in silence. “Then there was this awkward moment of him fumbling with his I.D. badge, trying to get the door to open,” Kemper said. “It felt like it lasted an hour. We were all trying not to laugh. Even while it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use this?” In the end, the joke was deemed “too hacky to use on the show.” [0] http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-silicon-valley-nails-silicon-valley http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-silicon-va...
- a3n 10y ago> Waiting for a Moonshot It sounds like they're doing interesting work. But you don't "wait" for a moonshot, hoping something of that magnitude comes out of all but random motivation from individual team members. You produce a moonshot by deciding to do that exact thing. Which is exactly how the actual moonshot happened. If you have random inputs, you'll have random outputs of unknown magnitude.
- elgoog1212 10y agoY'all misunderstand why Google X exists. It exists for three reasons: 1. To obscure the fact that Google is an advertising company, first and foremost, by creating dazzling PR. The more insane the project, the better. Self-flying balloon shooting lasers from the sky? Here's 10 million dollars, go ahead and do it. Over time people lose interest, and those projects disappear into the void. 2. To draw the "best and brightest" in with the promise that they'll work on self driving cars, only to have them repair some obscure dilapidated ad serving backend, where they'll spend years nurturing futile hope that they'll get to work on the cool stuff at some point, and wiping their tears with hundred dollar bills. 3. To keep very senior employees from jumping ship to competitors. If those three goals are met, actually producing a moonshot every 5 years or so would be gravy, GoogleX will exist even without producing anything at all, indefinitely.
- simplehuman 10y agoThis is pretty much the reason the research wing of most organizations exist.
- elgoog1212 10y agoI don't disagree, but GoogleX is _not_ Google's research arm. Google Research actually produces very cool stuff that's beneficial to the company, and does so at a pretty rapid clip. GoogleX, on the other hand, takes bold, but not really research-worthy ideas and milks them for PR for years before they quietly die.
- hartator 10y agoDo you know what was the lastest cool thing by google research?
- infinite8s 10y agoIt's mostly CS related. Most of their big data systems were initiated by the Research group.
- hartator 10y agoShouldn't we say Marsshot now? :)
- iamleppert 10y agoIf you have a great idea and are actually talented, why would you want to go to Google X, rather than start a company yourself and have far more control and freedom in the open market? You could always get Google to invest later, and if you're right and successful you probably have a lot more options for investment than just limiting yourself to Google in the first place. That is, if you're really serious about your idea. Or are you just there to play with Google's money? You don't see Elon Musk or Richard Branson clamoring to join Google X, or just about any other startup founder. The entire premise behind Google X (save other than a hype machine) is flawed on basic principle. Seriously, what actual real thing has come out of Google X in all these years?
- ktta 10y agofallback. I assume they like doing what they do and they prefer having job security. I'd rather try moonshot projects thinking about how to develop it rather than constantly wondering about the business model and if it will be successful (read: stress). They have other people to think about that (the foundry). And they will have much more resources. While I agree that VC funding might be an analogue in a startup situation, it's just not the same. You'll still have the steady paycheck at the end of the month, no matter what Of course, if someone is confident of their idea and wants to start their own company, they will. Just google 'ex-googler startup'
- zimbatm 10y ago> Xerox pioneered the graphical interface for computers — the idea that people could navigate with a mouse rather than typing obscure commands on a screen. But it was a young company named Apple that turned that idea into a giant business. It's weird how the article fails to mentions past successes for other R&D labs. Xerox Parc also invented the laser printer which certainly made a lot of money for the company.
- tmzt 10y agoAs a standalone device, powered by Adobe Postscript and HP PCL/JCL. Where did the embedded version in the Star end up?
- eitally 10y agoHere's the thing -- well, two things, really: 1) The article mentions Obi Felton's Foundry team. This was explicitly added to solve one of the deficiencies at X: X is staffed by hardcore engineers & research scientists, not businesspeople. The Foundry team was created to add a commercialization path & process for X research, which never previously existed (except in special cases like self-driving car). That should, in theory, help bring more things to market. 2) Google is averse to investing in anything that isn't a moonshot (where I liberally define moonshot as "at least $1b or 1b users"). So many great ideas and products get shot down because they just aren't "Google scale" even though they'd be perfectly viable, and sometimes wildly profitable, businesses on their own. Because the bar for business viability is so high, lots of things aren't even tried, which is a shame.