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Very interesting to read your "one trick pony...strong pony" perspective, because it has always been the one constant 'red flag' about watching their growth and

Very interesting to read your "one trick pony...strong pony" perspective, because it has always been the one constant 'red flag' about watching their growth and expansion into new and cool things. The up-and-down, perfectly natural pattern of experimenting and killing off bits here and there that don't work makes sense for any business. It's just that I don't have an easy time with, um, I guess 'aura' is the right word, of crazy-wild-future-whoa sentiment. I think they can do great things, but growing pains are real in all sorts of businesses, not just the tech sector.

ChuckMcM 10y ago
What gives me pause is that if "the smartest engineers on the planet"[1] are working at Google, why aren't we reading about Alphabet Space Ventures, or The Alphabet Social Network, or the Alphabet Smartphone company, or the Alphabet Casual Hotel company, or the Alphabet Movies and TV on Demand company, or the Alphabet Electric Car Company. It goes on of course. And the pat answer is that innovation can happen anywhere. But I don't accept that. Google has tried and failed to make phones (Motorola/Android), tried and failed to make social networks (Orkut/Plus/...), tried to make a video business (Youtube Red), Etc and they have been miserable at it. It hasn't been for lack of spending money, and it hasn't been for lack of "brand reach" or customer acquisition. It reminds me Sun's inability to make anything other than a Workstation when it needed to fight Microsoft on the engineering desktop. Sun was organizationally incapable of winning that fight, and Scott McNealy was unwilling or unable to see the changes that needed to be made to empower the company to do that. How? I think you have to look to companies that have been able to make profitable businesses out of new technologies or products that were distinctly different than their initial success. I don't see Google doing that effectively, and the people who I think were on track to make the changes that would have done that, people like Chris Urmson, leave the company (as the article points out). How is it the organization expells the very people it needs to retain in order to survive? There is an apocryphal story of the #1 traveling circus that the author saw as a child, and when he finds it again as an adult it is bankrupt. He asks how that could be and the ringmaster tells him that the star of the show would never let any acts exist that would steal any part of the limelight or glory from his act, and then when the star died and there were no other acts and no reason for people to attend the circus. [1] From some recruiting hyperbole that they spammed out a while ago on LinkedIn.
- 6stringmerc 10y ago
  Helpful to get more details and I can definitely defer to your description; I just have surface-level observations overall. This part though: >How? I think you have to look to companies that have been able to make profitable businesses out of new technologies or products that were distinctly different than their initial success. That's a great concept to keep in mind. I've been a big gear head for most of my life, and only later on did I learn that a company like Mitsubishi or Volvo had additional heavy machinery lines, not just automobiles (I'm using the premise they were 'successful' and economics / leadership decisions / market forces notwithstanding). My thought is that you're touching greatly that a company's culture may have critical importance to being able to do such things. It very much rings true to me after having a lot of low-level retail & some Fortune XXX gigs, and one of the ways I was able to understand it better was to write up a TV pilot / show idea about an R&D department in a toy company during the go-go 1980s. Exploring a culture of development, albeit with significant stakes & external competition, was actually really pleasant because I could (can still?) see Pros & Cons that, um, well define an overall culture. Pardon if I'm convoluted explaining it but I just really enjoyed exploring the concept as a wannabe inventor.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  > tried and failed to make social networks (Orkut/Plus/...) Google once had the entire Brazilian social network share... And then, they just abandoned it. What I guess just reinforces your story at the last paragraph.
- comex 10y ago
  > Google has tried and failed to make phones (Motorola/Android) But Google tried and succeeded in making a phone operating system that ended up becoming dominant, that gives the rest of their services top billing. Imagine if Apple had kept a near-monopoly on the high end, and/or if the company that leveraged the gap they left at the low end had been Microsoft or BlackBerry.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    By breaking the law to do it, yeah. And now they're under investigation for antitrust in almost every major market worldwide. And the product isn't even that good. It's a security-ridden mess[0] where common sense things like security updates aren't a thing because of the compromises they made to get the widespread vendor support. [0]Source: I carried an Android (or several) as my primary device for seven years.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

What gives me pause is that if "the smartest engineers on the planet"[1] are working at Google, why aren't we reading about Alphabet Space Ventures, or The Alphabet Social Network, or the Alphabet Smartphone company, or the Alphabet Casual Hotel company, or the Alphabet Movies and TV on Demand company, or the Alphabet Electric Car Company. It goes on of course. And the pat answer is that innovation can happen anywhere. But I don't accept that. Google has tried and failed to make phones (Motorola/Android), tried and failed to make social networks (Orkut/Plus/...), tried to make a video business (Youtube Red), Etc and they have been miserable at it. It hasn't been for lack of spending money, and it hasn't been for lack of "brand reach" or customer acquisition. It reminds me Sun's inability to make anything other than a Workstation when it needed to fight Microsoft on the engineering desktop. Sun was organizationally incapable of winning that fight, and Scott McNealy was unwilling or unable to see the changes that needed to be made to empower the company to do that. How? I think you have to look to companies that have been able to make profitable businesses out of new technologies or products that were distinctly different than their initial success. I don't see Google doing that effectively, and the people who I think were on track to make the changes that would have done that, people like Chris Urmson, leave the company (as the article points out). How is it the organization expells the very people it needs to retain in order to survive? There is an apocryphal story of the #1 traveling circus that the author saw as a child, and when he finds it again as an adult it is bankrupt. He asks how that could be and the ringmaster tells him that the star of the show would never let any acts exist that would steal any part of the limelight or glory from his act, and then when the star died and there were no other acts and no reason for people to attend the circus. [1] From some recruiting hyperbole that they spammed out a while ago on LinkedIn.

6stringmerc 10y ago
Helpful to get more details and I can definitely defer to your description; I just have surface-level observations overall. This part though: >How? I think you have to look to companies that have been able to make profitable businesses out of new technologies or products that were distinctly different than their initial success. That's a great concept to keep in mind. I've been a big gear head for most of my life, and only later on did I learn that a company like Mitsubishi or Volvo had additional heavy machinery lines, not just automobiles (I'm using the premise they were 'successful' and economics / leadership decisions / market forces notwithstanding). My thought is that you're touching greatly that a company's culture may have critical importance to being able to do such things. It very much rings true to me after having a lot of low-level retail & some Fortune XXX gigs, and one of the ways I was able to understand it better was to write up a TV pilot / show idea about an R&D department in a toy company during the go-go 1980s. Exploring a culture of development, albeit with significant stakes & external competition, was actually really pleasant because I could (can still?) see Pros & Cons that, um, well define an overall culture. Pardon if I'm convoluted explaining it but I just really enjoyed exploring the concept as a wannabe inventor.
marcosdumay 10y ago
> tried and failed to make social networks (Orkut/Plus/...) Google once had the entire Brazilian social network share... And then, they just abandoned it. What I guess just reinforces your story at the last paragraph.
comex 10y ago
> Google has tried and failed to make phones (Motorola/Android) But Google tried and succeeded in making a phone operating system that ended up becoming dominant, that gives the rest of their services top billing. Imagine if Apple had kept a near-monopoly on the high end, and/or if the company that leveraged the gap they left at the low end had been Microsoft or BlackBerry.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  By breaking the law to do it, yeah. And now they're under investigation for antitrust in almost every major market worldwide. And the product isn't even that good. It's a security-ridden mess[0] where common sense things like security updates aren't a thing because of the compromises they made to get the widespread vendor support. [0]Source: I carried an Android (or several) as my primary device for seven years.