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The author of this article backs up his argument with little substance. No decision-making process is perfect; pointing out the warts in Google's isn't much of

by kwantam 16y ago

The author of this article backs up his argument with little substance. No decision-making process is perfect; pointing out the warts in Google's isn't much of an indictment. Really, to my mind the whole thing comes across as a bit whiny.

nexneo 16y ago
The author of this article backs up his argument with little substance. Engineering mind need real facts :)
eitally 16y ago
Here's a personal beef describing how Google places too much emphasis on engineering and too little on the experience paying customers have with its services: Google Apps. Support is almost nonexistent for nearly anything that isn't already on their roadmap, the roadmap is set by engineering and not based on customer feedback, the deployment schedule is completely closed and updates frequently surprise domain admins & their users, billing for various services (GSAs, GAPE, Postini) is non consolidated, and various features break at regular intervals. It doesn't help that a lot of their engineering showcases in Gmail -- Labs features -- they pitch and great improvements to Gmail, but offer zero support for. This included Offline when it was in Labs. Google is a great engineering company, but it still doesn't "get" the enterprise.
- cglee 16y ago
  I paid for the Premium Google Apps for one of my domains. When it was about to expire, I got emails almost daily reminding me to renew. The day before it was to expire, someone from Google Apps actually called my cell about renewing. For a different domain that I was using regular Google Apps on, I couldn't get an email response to a support question I sent several months prior. Whatever their focus, it's not on customer service.
  - saturdayplace 16y ago
    > Whatever their focus, it's not on customer service. No, that's exactly their focus. You got a lot of attention regarding the product that you were a customer of, the premium paid apps. In the other instance, you were the product: a pair of eyeballs they could sell to advertisers. And the advertisers are the customers in that instance.
    - cglee 16y ago
      I should add that they were never so helpful when I inquired from my premium domain in the past. I only received a lot of attention when it was time to renew. For example, I couldn't figure out how to cancel the premium account, and I sent an email asking. No response ever came.
danh 16y ago
Sure, the author is a bit whiny, but I still think he has a point. One example: design. I still haven't seen a single page from Google that looked stunning, or even good (to my eyes, obviously). Their entire design philosophy seems to be infinite-amount-of-monkeys-hacking-css and A/B-testing. They even manage to make their main landing page, with only a handful of items, look quite messy. The method may be scientific and all, but it doesn't produce good looks.
- gnaritas 16y ago
  Because good looks don't necessarily equate to good performance. They optimize for conversion, not beauty, and make an ass-load more money because of it. That's how it should be done.
  - michaelbuckbee 16y ago
    I agree with you, but it is still possible the they are only optimizing within a local minimum (ala Jason Cohen's latest blog post - http://blog.asmartbear.com/local-minimum.html http://blog.asmartbear.com/local-minimum.html).
    - prospero 16y ago
      I think you're ignoring the fact that a product as familiar as the Google search page alters the search space you're trying to optimize. No matter how bad of an idea it was to add background images, the fuss that it caused was way out of proportion. Any change that deviates too much from the current state of things has a huge amount of friction working against it. Whatever you think of the current design, I defy anyone to come up with a major overhaul that makes up for the loss of warm fuzzies the average user associates with the current home page.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - danh 16y ago
    You can't really optimize, in the A/B-testing sense, an entire design. You can just tweak the details, in the turd-polishing sense. That being said, being ugly can of course be profitable. If you want to signal that you are cheap, for example, the ugliness helps. Just look at the difference between, say, Walmart and an Apple store. So maybe Google wants to look cheap - but I for one wish they didn't.
jackfoxy 16y ago
I submit to you as an example Chrome, which while technically sound has not exactly caught fire, despite Google's ability to promote it from the Google page.
- falien 16y ago
  by what metric do you argue that it has not caught fire in ways that are remotely possible based on past experience with browser market share?
  - jackfoxy 16y ago
    By the metric of Chrome zooming up to about 4% share and then staying there, despite Google's frequently promoting it from the most popular page on the web, promotion no other browser could ever have. On our web sites Chrome has gained no share in the last six months, while Safari (due to iPhone's increased share) has surpassed FireFox. This recent report, http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20001546-264.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20001546-264.html, actually gives Chrome 6.1%. I'm just saying given the engineering resources dedicated to it, and the unparalleled promotion resource available, it could do much better. Personally, I use Chrome, but I object to the product management decision not to offer a dedicated multi search box like FF and IE. I think this was an engineering driven decision because the omnibox is so [fill in your favorite positive adjective].

by kwantam 16y ago

nexneo 16y ago

The author of this article backs up his argument with little substance. Engineering mind need real facts :)

eitally 16y ago

Here's a personal beef describing how Google places too much emphasis on engineering and too little on the experience paying customers have with its services: Google Apps. Support is almost nonexistent for nearly anything that isn't already on their roadmap, the roadmap is set by engineering and not based on customer feedback, the deployment schedule is completely closed and updates frequently surprise domain admins & their users, billing for various services (GSAs, GAPE, Postini) is non consolidated, and various features break at regular intervals. It doesn't help that a lot of their engineering showcases in Gmail -- Labs features -- they pitch and great improvements to Gmail, but offer zero support for. This included Offline when it was in Labs. Google is a great engineering company, but it still doesn't "get" the enterprise.

cglee 16y ago
I paid for the Premium Google Apps for one of my domains. When it was about to expire, I got emails almost daily reminding me to renew. The day before it was to expire, someone from Google Apps actually called my cell about renewing. For a different domain that I was using regular Google Apps on, I couldn't get an email response to a support question I sent several months prior. Whatever their focus, it's not on customer service.
- saturdayplace 16y ago
  > Whatever their focus, it's not on customer service. No, that's exactly their focus. You got a lot of attention regarding the product that you were a customer of, the premium paid apps. In the other instance, you were the product: a pair of eyeballs they could sell to advertisers. And the advertisers are the customers in that instance.
  - cglee 16y ago
    I should add that they were never so helpful when I inquired from my premium domain in the past. I only received a lot of attention when it was time to renew. For example, I couldn't figure out how to cancel the premium account, and I sent an email asking. No response ever came.

danh 16y ago

Sure, the author is a bit whiny, but I still think he has a point. One example: design. I still haven't seen a single page from Google that looked stunning, or even good (to my eyes, obviously). Their entire design philosophy seems to be infinite-amount-of-monkeys-hacking-css and A/B-testing. They even manage to make their main landing page, with only a handful of items, look quite messy. The method may be scientific and all, but it doesn't produce good looks.

gnaritas 16y ago
Because good looks don't necessarily equate to good performance. They optimize for conversion, not beauty, and make an ass-load more money because of it. That's how it should be done.
- michaelbuckbee 16y ago
  I agree with you, but it is still possible the they are only optimizing within a local minimum (ala Jason Cohen's latest blog post - http://blog.asmartbear.com/local-minimum.html http://blog.asmartbear.com/local-minimum.html).
  - prospero 16y ago
    I think you're ignoring the fact that a product as familiar as the Google search page alters the search space you're trying to optimize. No matter how bad of an idea it was to add background images, the fuss that it caused was way out of proportion. Any change that deviates too much from the current state of things has a huge amount of friction working against it. Whatever you think of the current design, I defy anyone to come up with a major overhaul that makes up for the loss of warm fuzzies the average user associates with the current home page.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- danh 16y ago
  You can't really optimize, in the A/B-testing sense, an entire design. You can just tweak the details, in the turd-polishing sense. That being said, being ugly can of course be profitable. If you want to signal that you are cheap, for example, the ugliness helps. Just look at the difference between, say, Walmart and an Apple store. So maybe Google wants to look cheap - but I for one wish they didn't.

jackfoxy 16y ago

I submit to you as an example Chrome, which while technically sound has not exactly caught fire, despite Google's ability to promote it from the Google page.

falien 16y ago
by what metric do you argue that it has not caught fire in ways that are remotely possible based on past experience with browser market share?
- jackfoxy 16y ago
  By the metric of Chrome zooming up to about 4% share and then staying there, despite Google's frequently promoting it from the most popular page on the web, promotion no other browser could ever have. On our web sites Chrome has gained no share in the last six months, while Safari (due to iPhone's increased share) has surpassed FireFox. This recent report, http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20001546-264.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20001546-264.html, actually gives Chrome 6.1%. I'm just saying given the engineering resources dedicated to it, and the unparalleled promotion resource available, it could do much better. Personally, I use Chrome, but I object to the product management decision not to offer a dedicated multi search box like FF and IE. I think this was an engineering driven decision because the omnibox is so [fill in your favorite positive adjective].