7 ms·

The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door

41 points by fromedome 10y ago

baccheion 10y ago
Meh. If you're familiar with the internals of Google (or have ever worked there), then you wouldn't even be slightly surprised by the content of this article or the ever present stream of product failures from Google. In fact, if you're aware, then you know things are likely to remain this way until something is done about all the BS present internally. You see the "difficult to work-- FOR" and almost (or all out) sociopathic leaders being outed to some extent in the last year or so: commonplace. That is, Google likes to position itself as being above such stupidity, but if you listen to what they say more carefully, you see this is their default/go-to strategy. That is, they explicitly seek out such personalities (similar to many VCs), as they believe (based on "data") that it's what's more likely to lead to success. Also, while it would be easy to believe Google is all about the "moon shots" they like touting/hyping (especially given how much money they are dumping in that direction), if you look at who they are putting in key positions, and how everything is setup, you immediately realize that (regardless of what they are doing) it will all likely go nowhere. Something is very strange about that place. It's like they have no brain. It's like they are just outright stupid. Which I suppose is hard to say (and have believed), especially after years of hype (and supporting anecdotes) about its exceptionally talented pool of employees. Essentially, it often seems like a sea of INTJs who like to parade around as though they know what to do with data (and are above bias and feeding into their own BS, because they are "data-driven"), but that at the end of the day are just going based on whim/gut, one which is more self-centered and out of touch than "in tune with" and reflective of the world at large (or where it's going). I suppose if you spin around in your own shht enough, and surround yourself with more of-- yourself-- then eventually, you'll fall into line believing your own BS and that you must be right. I remember when I was at Google for a short time in 2010. The place was a source of endless annoyance and irritation. The field was wide open, and it was all there for the taking, but then they just consistently and continually kept making the dumbest decisions. And they'd defend those decisions as though they were God almighty and immune to being wrong. It was the greatest consistent stream of stupidity I had ever seen. And by the looks of it, nothing has really changed. It's just been shht, then more shht, then more BS trying to explain away the shht, as though shht isn't what it is. It's not that they "fail often due to releasing more and sooner" or "see something beyond the field of view of many;" it's that they just plain failed and it was most likely due to stupidity/credentials (you heard what I said) being heard over repeated statements of what made more sense (or of what would be more likely to go somewhere). Also, that failure that looks like a half-assed piece of crap likely was likely 2 years (or more) in the making, rather than the 6-8 weeks it seems went into it. It's just shht every time, and as soon as you step into realizing it, you'll see that it's always just more shht from them. Their only successes (even in their "main" business) have come from the competition "falling off" (F'ing themselves over), rather than from them releasing things that are worthwhile or better. The place was extremely infuriating to me, and I couldn't wait to leave. I was in silent shock the majority of the time I was there, and it seems that even though 6+ years have gone by, not much has changed! I'll say it outright and in plain English: the "almighty" Google-- the almighty enterprise of innovation-- the almighty force for pushing the web/world forward-- is completely full of shht! They couldn't put out an innovative (or even just quality) product to save their lives! If anything surfaces from them that's not more garbage, then it was likely from an acquisition. And even then, it seems they are F'ing even those avenues up more frequently as time goes by. Google Photos: acquisition! Google DeepMind: acquisition! Google ATAP: acquisition! Etc. They've got nothing.
bbctol 10y ago
This article frames it in part as due to the Alphabet reshuffle, but hasn't it always been this way? Has X been decreasing in effectiveness recently, or were they just always there to be Sergey's batcave?
advisedwang 10y ago
If Google is really aiming as high as it says it is, you would expect the rate of successes to be fairly low. A true "moonshot" success - one that creates a whole new industry - every decade would still be a phenomenal success. Maybe we just need patience?
- mathattack 10y ago
  Yes - this is the VC model. Hitting 100-1000x results every once in a while, as opposed to lots of 3-10x results.
  - freyr 10y ago
    Yes, but eventually the VC needs to hit that 100x result. GoogleX has not. Heck, nothing's even really made it out the gate. The self-driving car is the project that seems to have the biggest potential impact, but the string of high-profile departures over the last year or two is worrisome. Also, the leader wearing Rollerblades to meetings seems far too much like a parody of "quirky tech visionary" for my comfort. But maybe I'm more traditional/close-minded than most here.
    - mathattack 10y ago
      Yes. VCs who don't have the big return don't get to have a 2nd fund. :-) I'm bullish on self-driving cars. Even if their cars don't make it, I think the AI behind it will.
- mdorazio 10y ago
  Many people (myself included) would compare X in intent and setup to PARC from the 1970s. The latter managed the extraordinary feat of pushing out a major innovation on average about once every 2.5 years from 1970 to 2000. That's things like laser printing, OOP, Ethernet, etc. that went on to build industries or take existing ones in new directions. X, on the other hand, has been around for over 6 years now and as far as I know, its only marginal success to date has been Glass. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that X's success rate so far has been lower than many people expected.
jobu 10y ago
It seems obvious that it would be a struggle for them to ship products - they are "moonshots" after all. Reading this article makes me wonder if it was a good idea to put all of them into one division though. Even when you go in knowing a project is a long-shot it can be demoralizing when it fails. I can't imagine how hard it would be to work in a whole division of mostly failed projects.
- taprun 10y ago
  Isn't a venture capital firm (even a good one) a business investing in mostly failed projects?
  - stingraycharles 10y ago
    The difference is that those projects are spread out across different companies, as opposed to a single division in a single company.
danvoell 10y ago
The title feels like an oxymoron. I would assume the reason for spinning out a "moonshot" division is that if some projects fail, at least they are not part of the main division. Perhaps some of these projects are not the type that can ship an MVP?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
khnd 10y ago
why does it matter if the moonshot factory is getting products out the door or not?
- wonkaWonka 10y ago
  Because everyone always has to be shipping and disrupting! Big Business! Product! Sales! Who's to blame?! Attention, Decision, Interest, Action. AIDA. We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? (second prize is a set of steak knives.) Third prize is you're fired. These are The New Leads. These are the Glengarry leads. And to you they're gold. And you don't get them. Why? Because to give them to you would be throwing them away. They're for closers.
  - illicium 10y ago
    I realize that this comment is tongue-in-cheek, but the reality is that Alphabet is a corporation, not a research university. Corporations by definition need to ship and make money.
- karma_vaccum123 10y ago
  It doesn't, but if Google keeps feeding moonshot stories to the press, they should expect the press to circle back and see if there is any follow-through. If Google X is really just a nerd-PR exercise, let's call it that.
tkinom 10y ago
One of the problem might be the incentive/motivations are not match between Google and people who works in those moonshot projects. * Even if the projects get 10, 100 millions $ in revenue / profit, it is meaningless compare to billions in profit from search. The folks in those projects are not likely to benefit significantly from it. * The smart folks probably know it. If they join the project (self driving car), some of motives are to learn as much as possible using Google's resources, name, connections and set it up for their own next venture.
flexie 10y ago
I have been wondering if Google hasn't already lost the self driving race to Tesla. Google still drives a few test vehicles around and has totalled some 2.7 million km: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_self-driving_car https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_self-driving_car Tesla has more than 100,000 model S driving around and in just 7 months their auto pilots have already surpassed the km driven by Google for the past 7 years by almost a factor 100 (roughly 200M km). That is real use in many places, situations and weathers, not just test drives in California. I realise it's not apples to apples and that Google's cars may be more autonomous for now. But with the numbers stacked against it like that I doubt it will be long before Tesla's auto pilot is vastly superior. As I see it, given the lack of a Google car, they will have to team up with a major car company to get enough cars out there. And that requires a more elegant hardware solution than what they currently put on the rooftops. http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/231097-tesla-records-its-first-autopilot-fatal-crash-nhtsa-opens-investigation http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/231097-tesla-records-its-... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors
- kllrnohj 10y ago
  200M km of adaptive cruise control & lane assist on a highway is very different from 2.7M km of fully autonomous driving on city streets & highway.
  - jfoster 10y ago
    Think of the data collection aspect of it, though. Tesla's driving AI will know what happens in the real world better than Google's driving AI does.
    - in_cahoots 10y ago
      Does Tesla collect data when Autopilot is turned off? Otherwise I would be very curious to know how many miles of non-highway driving it has logged.
      - 10y ago
nathan_f77 10y ago
I think it would be so fun to work there, even with all this political stuff happening. I guess it's sort of like Google's internal "Y Combinator", where they try out a whole bunch of startup ideas and have practically unlimited funding.
- cardine 10y ago
  I think the fact that a project would receive unlimited funding is a negative, not a positive. Instead of getting lean startups that have to move quickly because of resource scarcity you have bloated startups that feel no pressure to move quickly because of the unlimited resources they are receiving.
jakozaur 10y ago
Is not as bad as article suggests: https://www.solveforx.com/graduated/ https://www.solveforx.com/graduated/ It just operates on hype curve. GoogleX takes projects from "technological trigger" to "peak of inflated expectations": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  "Graduation" doesn't mean success. It seems to just mean "it moved out of X", even though usually that's just to somewhere else in Google it makes no money and sells no products. - Verify/Life Sciences is failing pretty hard and has failed to develop any actual products. https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/28/google-life-sciences-exodus/ https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/28/google-life-sciences-exo... - Glass is an absolute failure. I own one, I loved mine. It's still a failure. - Gcam went to... Google Research? It went from moonshot R&D to normal R&D. That's not success. - Google Brain... went to Research as well. And really, it is likely just a rebranded version of whatever DeepMind was already doing when Google bought them. - Project Tango went from Google's moonshot R&D to Motorola's R&D (ATAP) which Google kept ownership of. That's also not success. Android Wear, Flux, and Project Insight (Indoor Maps) probably all count as actual successes for X, but that's about it.
karma_vaccum123 10y ago
This feels like the type of operation better suited for a tier-one educational institution like Stanford or MIT. In a academic context, there is no subtext of creating products. Yeah, churning out papers is as contrived...but I still feel like the timelines in academia are more generous. Google talks a good press event, highlighting their embrace of failure, their desire to take on crazy moonshots etc...but its all in the context of quarterly reports. Something has to give.
alecco 10y ago
> They say the issues at X aren't technical hurdles, but a combination of red tape and knotty internal politics Unsurprising. The valley (and tech in general) is forgetting it's power doesn't come from management and politics.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door Isn't the whole idea of a "moonshot", in this context, a project that has both a long window before any payoff, and a high risk of failure. So isn't this a very much "water is wet" story?

41 points by fromedome 10y ago

Meh. If you're familiar with the internals of Google (or have ever worked there), then you wouldn't even be slightly surprised by the content of this article or the ever present stream of product failures from Google. In fact, if you're aware, then you know things are likely to remain this way until something is done about all the BS present internally. You see the "difficult to work-- FOR" and almost (or all out) sociopathic leaders being outed to some extent in the last year or so: commonplace. That is, Google likes to position itself as being above such stupidity, but if you listen to what they say more carefully, you see this is their default/go-to strategy. That is, they explicitly seek out such personalities (similar to many VCs), as they believe (based on "data") that it's what's more likely to lead to success. Also, while it would be easy to believe Google is all about the "moon shots" they like touting/hyping (especially given how much money they are dumping in that direction), if you look at who they are putting in key positions, and how everything is setup, you immediately realize that (regardless of what they are doing) it will all likely go nowhere. Something is very strange about that place. It's like they have no brain. It's like they are just outright stupid. Which I suppose is hard to say (and have believed), especially after years of hype (and supporting anecdotes) about its exceptionally talented pool of employees. Essentially, it often seems like a sea of INTJs who like to parade around as though they know what to do with data (and are above bias and feeding into their own BS, because they are "data-driven"), but that at the end of the day are just going based on whim/gut, one which is more self-centered and out of touch than "in tune with" and reflective of the world at large (or where it's going). I suppose if you spin around in your own shht enough, and surround yourself with more of-- yourself-- then eventually, you'll fall into line believing your own BS and that you must be right. I remember when I was at Google for a short time in 2010. The place was a source of endless annoyance and irritation. The field was wide open, and it was all there for the taking, but then they just consistently and continually kept making the dumbest decisions. And they'd defend those decisions as though they were God almighty and immune to being wrong. It was the greatest consistent stream of stupidity I had ever seen. And by the looks of it, nothing has really changed. It's just been shht, then more shht, then more BS trying to explain away the shht, as though shht isn't what it is. It's not that they "fail often due to releasing more and sooner" or "see something beyond the field of view of many;" it's that they just plain failed and it was most likely due to stupidity/credentials (you heard what I said) being heard over repeated statements of what made more sense (or of what would be more likely to go somewhere). Also, that failure that looks like a half-assed piece of crap likely was likely 2 years (or more) in the making, rather than the 6-8 weeks it seems went into it. It's just shht every time, and as soon as you step into realizing it, you'll see that it's always just more shht from them. Their only successes (even in their "main" business) have come from the competition "falling off" (F'ing themselves over), rather than from them releasing things that are worthwhile or better. The place was extremely infuriating to me, and I couldn't wait to leave. I was in silent shock the majority of the time I was there, and it seems that even though 6+ years have gone by, not much has changed! I'll say it outright and in plain English: the "almighty" Google-- the almighty enterprise of innovation-- the almighty force for pushing the web/world forward-- is completely full of shht! They couldn't put out an innovative (or even just quality) product to save their lives! If anything surfaces from them that's not more garbage, then it was likely from an acquisition. And even then, it seems they are F'ing even those avenues up more frequently as time goes by. Google Photos: acquisition! Google DeepMind: acquisition! Google ATAP: acquisition! Etc. They've got nothing.

bbctol 10y ago

This article frames it in part as due to the Alphabet reshuffle, but hasn't it always been this way? Has X been decreasing in effectiveness recently, or were they just always there to be Sergey's batcave?

advisedwang 10y ago

If Google is really aiming as high as it says it is, you would expect the rate of successes to be fairly low. A true "moonshot" success - one that creates a whole new industry - every decade would still be a phenomenal success. Maybe we just need patience?

mathattack 10y ago
Yes - this is the VC model. Hitting 100-1000x results every once in a while, as opposed to lots of 3-10x results.
- freyr 10y ago
  Yes, but eventually the VC needs to hit that 100x result. GoogleX has not. Heck, nothing's even really made it out the gate. The self-driving car is the project that seems to have the biggest potential impact, but the string of high-profile departures over the last year or two is worrisome. Also, the leader wearing Rollerblades to meetings seems far too much like a parody of "quirky tech visionary" for my comfort. But maybe I'm more traditional/close-minded than most here.
  - mathattack 10y ago
    Yes. VCs who don't have the big return don't get to have a 2nd fund. :-) I'm bullish on self-driving cars. Even if their cars don't make it, I think the AI behind it will.
mdorazio 10y ago
Many people (myself included) would compare X in intent and setup to PARC from the 1970s. The latter managed the extraordinary feat of pushing out a major innovation on average about once every 2.5 years from 1970 to 2000. That's things like laser printing, OOP, Ethernet, etc. that went on to build industries or take existing ones in new directions. X, on the other hand, has been around for over 6 years now and as far as I know, its only marginal success to date has been Glass. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that X's success rate so far has been lower than many people expected.

jobu 10y ago

It seems obvious that it would be a struggle for them to ship products - they are "moonshots" after all. Reading this article makes me wonder if it was a good idea to put all of them into one division though. Even when you go in knowing a project is a long-shot it can be demoralizing when it fails. I can't imagine how hard it would be to work in a whole division of mostly failed projects.

taprun 10y ago
Isn't a venture capital firm (even a good one) a business investing in mostly failed projects?
- stingraycharles 10y ago
  The difference is that those projects are spread out across different companies, as opposed to a single division in a single company.

danvoell 10y ago

The title feels like an oxymoron. I would assume the reason for spinning out a "moonshot" division is that if some projects fail, at least they are not part of the main division. Perhaps some of these projects are not the type that can ship an MVP?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

khnd 10y ago

why does it matter if the moonshot factory is getting products out the door or not?

wonkaWonka 10y ago
Because everyone always has to be shipping and disrupting! Big Business! Product! Sales! Who's to blame?! Attention, Decision, Interest, Action. AIDA. We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? (second prize is a set of steak knives.) Third prize is you're fired. These are The New Leads. These are the Glengarry leads. And to you they're gold. And you don't get them. Why? Because to give them to you would be throwing them away. They're for closers.
- illicium 10y ago
  I realize that this comment is tongue-in-cheek, but the reality is that Alphabet is a corporation, not a research university. Corporations by definition need to ship and make money.
karma_vaccum123 10y ago
It doesn't, but if Google keeps feeding moonshot stories to the press, they should expect the press to circle back and see if there is any follow-through. If Google X is really just a nerd-PR exercise, let's call it that.

tkinom 10y ago

One of the problem might be the incentive/motivations are not match between Google and people who works in those moonshot projects. * Even if the projects get 10, 100 millions $ in revenue / profit, it is meaningless compare to billions in profit from search. The folks in those projects are not likely to benefit significantly from it. * The smart folks probably know it. If they join the project (self driving car), some of motives are to learn as much as possible using Google's resources, name, connections and set it up for their own next venture.

flexie 10y ago

I have been wondering if Google hasn't already lost the self driving race to Tesla. Google still drives a few test vehicles around and has totalled some 2.7 million km: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_self-driving_car https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_self-driving_car Tesla has more than 100,000 model S driving around and in just 7 months their auto pilots have already surpassed the km driven by Google for the past 7 years by almost a factor 100 (roughly 200M km). That is real use in many places, situations and weathers, not just test drives in California. I realise it's not apples to apples and that Google's cars may be more autonomous for now. But with the numbers stacked against it like that I doubt it will be long before Tesla's auto pilot is vastly superior. As I see it, given the lack of a Google car, they will have to team up with a major car company to get enough cars out there. And that requires a more elegant hardware solution than what they currently put on the rooftops. http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/231097-tesla-records-its-first-autopilot-fatal-crash-nhtsa-opens-investigation http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/231097-tesla-records-its-... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors

kllrnohj 10y ago
200M km of adaptive cruise control & lane assist on a highway is very different from 2.7M km of fully autonomous driving on city streets & highway.
- jfoster 10y ago
  Think of the data collection aspect of it, though. Tesla's driving AI will know what happens in the real world better than Google's driving AI does.
  - in_cahoots 10y ago
    Does Tesla collect data when Autopilot is turned off? Otherwise I would be very curious to know how many miles of non-highway driving it has logged.
    - 10y ago

nathan_f77 10y ago

I think it would be so fun to work there, even with all this political stuff happening. I guess it's sort of like Google's internal "Y Combinator", where they try out a whole bunch of startup ideas and have practically unlimited funding.

cardine 10y ago
I think the fact that a project would receive unlimited funding is a negative, not a positive. Instead of getting lean startups that have to move quickly because of resource scarcity you have bloated startups that feel no pressure to move quickly because of the unlimited resources they are receiving.

jakozaur 10y ago

Is not as bad as article suggests: https://www.solveforx.com/graduated/ https://www.solveforx.com/graduated/ It just operates on hype curve. GoogleX takes projects from "technological trigger" to "peak of inflated expectations": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
"Graduation" doesn't mean success. It seems to just mean "it moved out of X", even though usually that's just to somewhere else in Google it makes no money and sells no products. - Verify/Life Sciences is failing pretty hard and has failed to develop any actual products. https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/28/google-life-sciences-exodus/ https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/28/google-life-sciences-exo... - Glass is an absolute failure. I own one, I loved mine. It's still a failure. - Gcam went to... Google Research? It went from moonshot R&D to normal R&D. That's not success. - Google Brain... went to Research as well. And really, it is likely just a rebranded version of whatever DeepMind was already doing when Google bought them. - Project Tango went from Google's moonshot R&D to Motorola's R&D (ATAP) which Google kept ownership of. That's also not success. Android Wear, Flux, and Project Insight (Indoor Maps) probably all count as actual successes for X, but that's about it.

karma_vaccum123 10y ago

This feels like the type of operation better suited for a tier-one educational institution like Stanford or MIT. In a academic context, there is no subtext of creating products. Yeah, churning out papers is as contrived...but I still feel like the timelines in academia are more generous. Google talks a good press event, highlighting their embrace of failure, their desire to take on crazy moonshots etc...but its all in the context of quarterly reports. Something has to give.

alecco 10y ago

> They say the issues at X aren't technical hurdles, but a combination of red tape and knotty internal politics Unsurprising. The valley (and tech in general) is forgetting it's power doesn't come from management and politics.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door Isn't the whole idea of a "moonshot", in this context, a project that has both a long window before any payoff, and a high risk of failure. So isn't this a very much "water is wet" story?