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Uber Hires Former Google Search Chief Amit Singhal as SVP of Engineering
- tyingq 10y agoThere's a number of things that have happened in the organic search area of Google that seem to suggest a declining interest in quality organic results. There's Matt Cutts' long leave of absence, his departure, and the announcement that he's not really being replaced. A much lower volume of communication from Google on initiatives in the space (they used to talk endlessly about Panda, Penguin, etc). Amit's original reason for departure was "his next journey will involve philanthropy"..that seems to have changed. My guess is that two things are driving the declining interest... a) The marketshare battle is done. Google won. No competition. b) Their various initiatives to push organic results down the fold (more ads, knowledge graph, various widgets, and so forth) has made the quality of the organic results not as important. Good enough is the target.
- lacker 10y agoA much lower volume of communication from Google on initiatives in the space (they used to talk endlessly about Panda, Penguin, etc). I hear that Google search has largely moved to machine learning techniques. When I was there in 2005-2009 there was a bunch of hand-tuned stuff, and hand-tuning was definitely Amit's preferred strategy at the time. One side effect might be that a machine learning black box has fewer big, externally-perceptible shifts. It also just might require less ongoing interesting engineering work. Hard to say, though.
- tyingq 10y agoBoth Panda and Penguin were machine learning, and definitely had externally perceptible shifts. But, you're right, perhaps they've figured out how to do that with less disruption. Edit: I wonder if Amit changed his tune regarding machine learning, at least for his new space.
- rryan 10y ago> There's a number of things that have happened in the organic search area of Google that seem to suggest a declining interest in quality organic results. I think you may be falling for the SV cult of personality fallacy. There are still literally thousands of individuals you've never heard of working on organic search quality at Google who care very much about quality organic results. :)
- nolok 10y agoNo no no, the two person whose name he knew left after years in the same job, it must mean Google doesn't care anymore about their main product that makes roughly 90% of their revenue ! So yeah I totally agree, be it Google, Apple, Microsoft, ... A large amount of people around here are so used to small team startup represented by their founder that they always feel the need in similar stories to make a cult of personality for / against someone as if he was the product he worked for.
- tyingq 10y agoI mentioned more than just two personalities. Edit: And, I did mention more focus on ads and widgets versus the actual organic results. If those weren't more important, why are they at the top, crowding organics down? The revenue isn't really coming from the organics themselves.
- dkfmn 10y agoWell, to be fair the stuff that generates 90% of their revenue IS what's pushing organic results further down the page.
- revelation 10y agoYou would think so, but then Apple has thousands of engineers yet can't be bothered to regularly update its products, lazily copies parts and construction and even discontinued a bunch of stuff. (And while Google keeps adding heuristics I wish some of those many developers and researchers would simply occasionally try the product and ban, purge the very obvious content farm and spam sites)
- 8166284 10y agoIf I had a nickel for every time I heard "market share war is over, X won" and then that marked X's high water point in the industry, I mean I'd be doing ok. Guess this is the point where we short Alphabet?
- tyingq 10y agoMy comment was a bit more nuanced than that. They appear to be shifting more effort into widgets and ads. And less into the actual organic results. It's not that odd the the lead runner slows down when they've lapped the field.
- forgetsusername 10y ago>The marketshare battle is done. Google won. No competition Is there an analog to this? Is there another market where marketshare has "been decided"? My instinct tells me that companies who fall for this are in trouble.
- wsh91 10y agoAs a Googler, I can tell you that no one I know here is under that impression. (Your instincts are absolutely correct.)
- tyingq 10y agoDesktop and server processors, and desktop operating systems.... Microsoft and Intel. Somewhat similar in that the platform itself is not growing as it once was, though still large...and that innovation has slowed. Edit: Yes, mobile is hitting desktop, but that's the market itself changing...not the market share for desktop. Comparable in the search space is more people using Amazon directly for product searches versus starting with Google. Related markets and effects, but Amazon isn't a general search competitor.
- GauntletWizard 10y agoMicrosoft is rapidly losing the entire market of "Desktop" to Android and iOS apps. Intel has a serious competitor in ARM; most $bigcos haven't switched yet, but are definitely looking into it, as a way of applying pressure and keeping Intel's costs down.
- ariwilson 10y agoThe career decisions of two people do not a policy make. Both people had been at Google for over 15 years and presumably wanted a change.
- raverbashing 10y agoI'd add another item c) "Search" is changing towards giving information rather than to websites. Think Siri/Cortana/Alexa. Even Google tries to give you an answer rather than a website. Also information is moving from "spread thin" websites to social graphs and more centralised locations
- dajohnson89 10y agoIndeed. Information concentrates, just like capital.
- wslh 10y agoI wonder how many real search engine queries only need to return a Wikipedia page.
- nostrademons 10y agoThat was Amit's doing, actually. Around 2012, with the success of Knowledge Panels and the acquisition of Metaweb (FreeBase), he decreed that search would become a "conversational answer engine", devoted toward getting you the answer to your question as quickly as possible. The Hummingbird ranking update was part of that - it made it much more effective to phrase your query as a question rather than a bunch of keywords. Also renewed integration of Google Now into search, expanded Knowledge Panels, cards on mobile search, bigger investments in voice search, etc.
- shostack 10y agoWhich makes me wonder what search network ads look like in a hypothetical world in not so distant future if audio interfaces were primary search tool and output for the results. Personally, at this point I'd rather pay Google a monthly subscription and get everything ad-free. That would align their interests with their users who would then be the customers vs the product and free up Google to do what is best for them in cases where ads may not make sense.
- congerous 10y agoThere's some baseless speculation in this thread about what's Singhal's departure meant for Google search. It's important to remember that Singhal was committed Google's knowledge graph, a painstaking, manually constructed graph of entities and relationships that surfaces the occasional answer (ask Google what the capital of Azerbaijan is and you will see a knowledge graph answer). Knowledge graphs are brittle, hard to extend, and hard to modify in the face of changing data. Google has tilted towards machine learning and neural nets for a lot of functions, and Singhal was not part of that tilt. But you could argue that machine learning and neural nets are producing better results, which counters the argument that Singhal leaving means that Google doesn't care about organic results any more. That's BS, frankly.
- tyingq 10y ago>Google doesn't care about organic results any more. That's BS, frankly. Do they care less than they used to, though? Their placement on the screen as opposed to KG, widgets, and ads..and how that's progressed over time, seems to imply it.
- congerous 10y ago> Do they care less than they used to, though? That's impossible to measure, but the arguments you have employed regarding personnel changes do not demonstrate your point.
- tyingq 10y agoOkay...the top two publicly visible leaders in the space leaving in the same timeframe could mean something. Perhaps in this case it does not. I don't think either of us knows for sure. It does, however, pique my interest in what the group direction is now. What of the decision to not replace Matt with a specific role or person? Is that not interesting? And, again, I mentioned many other observations, not just Amit and Matt. Edit: If the primary driver was lack of expertise in the ML direction, Uber seems an odd place to land, doesn't it?
- gukov 10y agoYou are getting attacked for simply stating your opinion. Do we really want another echo chamber of opinions here? Google might be still all in on search, but what's important here is the outside perception. They won the search war and desperately tried to recreate the success with other products. So far they haven't had another hit (some big misses, though).
- kajecounterhack 10y ago> tried to recreate the success with other products. So far they haven't had another hit (some big misses, though) If you're asking for non-ads products that have done pretty well -- Android, Youtube, Cloud doing pretty well. Next possible moneymaker is Waymo.
- tyingq 10y ago>You are getting attacked for simply stating your opinion The replies mostly seem to be saying that I'm equating just the two departures with a declining interest at Google in organic result quality. Of course, I mentioned more than that, but it's an easy way to dismiss me versus educating me on how I've got it wrong.
- jayjay71 10y agoI've noticed the more nuanced of a statement I make on HN, the more likely I am to be attacked for it. It's getting worse as the site becomes more popular as well.
- r_sreeram 10y agoAmit joining Uber after a year's break coincides with the common "1 year no-solicitation" clause in employment contracts. I wonder if we are about to see some top people in Google get poached. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
- geodel 10y agoHope so. I guess last exodus was in 2012 when top people like Marissa Mayer and her reports got poached.
- kchoudhu 10y ago> Marissa Mayer and her reports got poached Looks like Google dodged a bullet there.
- snovv_crash 10y agoDunno, I think Yahoo! was basically unfixable. I mean, what would you have done differently? They just had too much dead wood, including the brand name.
- bduerst 10y agoYahoo! became a holding company for Alibaba and Yahoo! Japan. The search and online services are just window dressing.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nontrivialkk88 10y agoTechnically, the GP said Google's top talent in the context of a possible 2017 exodus. That has nothing to do with Marissa Mayer.
- snarf 10y ago
- oculusthrift 10y agoI'm really confused on what to think about Uber. My personal thinking/logic is really bearish on them, similar to the post on the front page yesterday [1]. However, I keep seeing extremely smart/accomplished people joining it which makes me second guess my intuition. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13437414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13437414
- SixSigma 10y agoBig $$ talk loud
- oculusthrift 10y agonot sure how they treat people like him but for the average engineer they don't pay great and want to force you take take equity instead of $$. really hope Amit is getting pure cash out of this deal. edit: also, im pretty sure google pay him big money.
- CalChris 10y agoIf Singhal is motivated by money at this point then he's a straight up fool. I'm going to give this all the due regard of a Mayer going to Yahoo.
- bduerst 10y agoI think Matt Levine nailed it earlier this month [1], on how Uber lost $2.2 Billion in 9 months [2]: >Eventually there will be self-driving cars, and there's no special reason to think that Uber will be the best at building them, or that its dominant position in the ride-hailing-app space will protect it from better self-driving-car businesses. Which also needs to factor in Uber's biggest liability: their attitude towards flouting laws and regulations. It worked okay for the ride-sharing markets, as municipal regulations are varied and slow to catch up, but they were forced to stop their self-driving car project after just a week because they didn't even get the necessary permits. [3] [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-10/bank-blockchains-and-an-alibaba-box https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-10/bank-bloc... [2] http://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/1/9/14194202/uber-lost-22-billion-9-months http://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/1/9/14194202/uber-lost-22-... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/technology/san-francisco-california-uber-driverless-car-.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/technology/san-francisco-...
- ChuckMcM 10y agoThis statement -- “Those computer science challenges for a computer science geek are just intriguing – you give a geek a puzzle, they can’t drop it; they need to solve the puzzle. That’s how it felt to me.” When I've been asked what keeps me going this is it, I really like interesting puzzles and I'm sitting there stuck trying to solve it. It also says a bit about what Uber thinks their big problems are (or where their value add will be). I was expecting them to go with someone more operations focused like Urs Hoezle.
- carussell 10y agoA good example of the engineer's puzzle-solving mindset is ice-nine in Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. Hoenikker didn't particularly care about the Marines, mud, or the general's problem with it. He just thought it made for a good puzzle.
- 1qaz2wsx 10y agohave people considered this may eventually lead to Google acquiring Uber? There is the advising CEO Travis Kalanick bit in there.
- pcl 10y agoRelatedly, I booked an Uber last night from within the Google Maps app on my phone, and the entire experience was in-app -- route selection, driver pick-up tracking, in-ride tracking, and drop-off confirmation. That's a whole lot tighter integration than I've seen in the past. The rumor-monger in me wants to read all sorts of acquisition talks into that level of product integration. (Which is great for another reason -- I don't give Uber access to my location when I'm not using the app, and the Uber team has apparently decided to basically brick their own app for users like me. But hooray, Google Maps is now a functional replacement for the Uber client!)
- s3r3nity 10y agoYou can book Lyft as well - both are pretty solid experiences.
- ISV_Damocles 10y agoNo? That just links out to the Lyft app. Booking an Uber in Google Maps no longer leaves the app at all.
- samhoggnz 10y agoApple Maps has the same functionality (with Lyft as well), so I wouldn't read into it too much.
- oh_sigh 10y agoWhy would a person worth billions work for someone else?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- newsat13 10y agoIs he worth billions?
- khazhou 10y agoHe's clearly worth enough to not have to work for anyone, many times over.
- zump 10y agoYeah, joining Google before IPO would be pretty lucrative. What I don't understand is the multitude of students who STILL want to join Google, even though they will likely be munging data from one format to another, for years.
- sumedh 10y agoRunning a company and owning a company is different. Some people like the challenges which are involved in running the company day to day. Lot of wealthy people work for Buffett because they like their jobs running companies and they like Buffett.
- inverse_pi 10y agoKevin Thompson, another VP from Google also joined Uber very recently https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinthompsontech https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinthompsontech
- carussell 10y agoI'd like to see Uber get into mapping. Besides Uber's core business that everyone focuses on, they've got a self-driving cars program that's halfway off the ground and they do food deliver through UberEATS. In either case, they've got a vested interest in making sure high-quality mapping data is available—higher quality than what Google provides. Given their deals with tons of local businesses through UberEATS, they've got operating hours and location data that's fresher than what anyone else can provide on the scale that they're operating on. Would be nice to see them improving the OSM dataset and partner with e.g. Maps.me.
- clamprecht 10y agoYou must live in Riata? Edit: my comment no longer makes sense, parent was edited
- carussell 10y agoNo, but I know the area. What's special about it, though? There are lots of places around Austin that match what I described, and it should be the same in other cities.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- groby_b 10y ago"they've got a self-driving cars program that's halfway off the ground" In the sense that a working model airplane gives me a space program that's halfway off the ground. And why would they improve OSM at all? Actually collecting and cleaning mapping data is not cheap. There's no incentive in contributing to OSM, it doesn't build a moat, it doesn't further their access to markets,...
- carussell 10y ago> And why would they improve OSM at all? It's in their business interests to make sure their fleet and their delivery drivers have accurate mapping info. Is there something unclear about the way I worded this in the comment you responded to?
- killbrad 10y agoUber is a middle man that takes money from existing and potential cab drivers' pockets, puts it into their own, and artificially reduces consumer costs. Cab companies aren't innocent bystanders, but the drivers generally are. But All Hail Uber anyways, I guess.
- cornchips 10y ago"The destiny of search is to become that 'Star Trek' computer and that's what we are building..." -Amit Singhal Laugh.
- sAbakumoff 10y agoBtw - What are the responsibilities of SVP of engineering?
- epynonymous 10y agosenior vice president usually is a people management type person, in charge of people, processes, and product (3 p's as they say in management lingo), in other words, hire and retain the best people, introduce proper workflows to make things more efficient, and make sure they're generating kick ass products on time, with high quality. this is often times can be confused with a cto's role, but i believe a cto's role is more independent, has less organizational obligations, in other words, manages much less people, at least at large companies. a cto's main role is to work more with customers, partners, evangelize products, and think about the longer term vision of the technology, this could be internal technology, like datacenters, to things like the next 5 year's software products. at small companies, i think you'll find cto's also doing the job of a svp along with marketing, sales, support, etc.
- eva1984 10y agoI don't think this is going to change anything though. He is just one person.
- hueving 10y agoA single person in a high role in the company can completely change the culture, the product focus, the attitude towards customer support, etc. The CEO is just one person, the President is just one person, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is just one person, etc.
- general_ai 10y agoThat's a pattern among very senior googlers. When they get bored of working, they go to other companies to semi-retire. I'm almost certain this is not going to be any different.
- snarf 10y agoNot sure Uber is the semi-retire kind of place for this sort of thing. They have a reputation for working people hard.
- general_ai 10y agoPeople, sure. But he's not "people".
- faragon 10y agoThe no-driver Uber arguments as profitable future it is crazy stuff, in my opinion. Could be as simple as Uber being a bubble? How much will take until that bubble bursts?
- LaFolle 10y agoHere is Singhal declaring this on his personal website: http://singhal.info/home/ http://singhal.info/home/