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When I talk to the 20 tech people who I respect most, what I notice is that everyone respects Google less now than 5 years ago. Is it a successful branding stra

When I talk to the 20 tech people who I respect most, what I notice is that everyone respects Google less now than 5 years ago. Is it a successful branding strategy that generates so much dislike? I'm especially curious because Google is famous for basing its decisions on "data". I have no idea how things work in Google, but I can say that every company I've worked at that supposedly valued "data" in meetings actually valued something darker. The use of "data" in meetings tends to be a passive aggressive negotiating tactic for a group of people who for cultural or emotional reasons don't think it is reasonable to express strong disagreement or actual anger. Instead of expressing strong emotion, people are taught to quote data -- they then cherry pick whatever statistics back up their beliefs. As far as I know, there has never been a company that said "We want the worst informed people to make the decisions" so in a sense all companies have always valued data. But they didn't make a fetish out of it. They simply expected people to be well informed, and to make intelligent arguments, based on what they know. That would have been true at General Motors in 1950. That much has probably been true at most companies for centuries. When management says that the company is going to be "data driven" they are implicitly asking for a particular type of interaction to happen in meetings, an elaborate dance where people hide their emotions and quote statistics. I can't cover all the nuances of company meetings in a comment on Hacker News, and of course I am not advocating that meetings should be abusive, but I do think it can be healthy to tell meeting participants that it is culturally acceptable to advocate strongly, and with emotion, for what they think the right policy is. Google seems like an example of how a "data driven" company can go off the rails. I'm not sure what their meetings are like, but I know that in interviews the management at Google talks about their focus on data, yet their brand image continues to decline. And of course, I'm on the record in believing there should be less group meetings and more one on one meetings, at every company that I've ever worked: http://simpleleadership.io/why-group-meetings-can-be-time-wasters-with-lawrence-krubner/ http://simpleleadership.io/why-group-meetings-can-be-time-wa...

appleflaxen 9y ago
Wow. That is a really apt critique of the culture you are describing. It sounds like you're basically saying that as with programming styles, wellness, activism, and everything else in the world: there is a basis of truth that underpins data-centric management, but you can easily make it into a cult. You put that idea together so succinctly - thank you.
pault 9y ago
I've migrated off Google services as much as possible over the last six months; I use Duck Duck Go for searches, and fastmail for email with my own domain. I also use the fastmail client's built in calendar. So far I've only had to fall back to a Google search a few times in six months, and the fastmail client is light years behind gmail inbox and gcal, but it's fine for my usage patterns. A year ago I was spending half of every day on a google service, now I barely touch them.
- j0hnml 9y ago
  This seems to be a common and popular trend these days, especially on HN. Is anyone doing the opposite and becoming more ingrained into the Google ecosystem? I'd love to dive more into the Android/Google side of things, but these sentiments are (unfortunately) making me think twice about doing so. I'd like to read different perspectives if they are out there.
  - arkades 9y ago
    Personally, kind of. I’ve moved further and further from google for my personal email and communications, for all the reasons elucidated above. However, for my commercial presence, I opened a gsuite account because it seamlessly brought together - and kept together - disparate components that I wanted to be able to use in a device-agnostic manner for myself and my team. I could have brought things together from a half dozen different, possibly better, services but gsuite was basically one-stop-shopping. I didn’t want to spend time getting the tools together, I wanted to spend it on the job at hand. The communications tools are good enough. That said, I may change my mind about that. For getting work done I still find Outlook kicks the shit out of gmail, and Microsoft Live or 365 or whatever they call it has a very very solid online office suite (and their offline tools remain best in class, IMO). Todoist integrates with both. I’m just lazy about non-mission-critical upgrades. I don’t have a good replacement for google hangouts, though. Skype is a festering tire-fire, and I don’t ever want to use a webex unless I’m being held at gunpoint by the Cisco CTO.
  - swah 9y ago
    Yes, kinda. I tried the iPhone 8 (this is Brazil..) after 8 years on Android and feel like Android is much more modern, integrated, free, and even has better designs on so many places (yes, its odd). Particularly the Play Store is beautiful compared to the App Store. Every app on iOS has a paywall, integrations are limited, apps can't process your SMS, stuff like this enrages me. Actually I couldn't even find a good way to transfer images/codes both ways, like I do with PushBullet on Chrome + Android all the time. For me iOS also misses taps and lags on some operations. If using Swiftkey, sometimes the wrong keyboard will pop-up. I feel like the image I had as an outsider that iOS was perfect and smooth kinda broke. So I guess I cannot compare to other people because they use their phones differently: I have to test everything...
joshuamorton 9y ago
What data are you basing the statement that Google's brand is in decline on? Granted I'm by no means saying Google's messaging strategy is optimal, but it's not totally bonkers. And the adage "you aren't the user" seems apt here. This applies both to the statement that Google's messaging tools are in decline, and to the statement that Google's brand is. HN has been decrying google for years now, but he isn't your average consumer. Much as my extended family can all use allo and duo with ease, but I doubt my grandparents know what irc is. I kind of think that it's difficult if not impossible to appeal to the broader set of people whole also appealing to the hn crowd. And, well, we're a lot smaller. To loop back to your post, thats part of why data is so important. If you don't base your decisions, at least in part, on data, you end up designing a tool that's useful for you and not for your users. That's not to say that emotion has no place, but I think you're being disingenuous towards data here. (Note:I work at Google, if that matters)

appleflaxen 9y ago

Wow. That is a really apt critique of the culture you are describing. It sounds like you're basically saying that as with programming styles, wellness, activism, and everything else in the world: there is a basis of truth that underpins data-centric management, but you can easily make it into a cult. You put that idea together so succinctly - thank you.

pault 9y ago

I've migrated off Google services as much as possible over the last six months; I use Duck Duck Go for searches, and fastmail for email with my own domain. I also use the fastmail client's built in calendar. So far I've only had to fall back to a Google search a few times in six months, and the fastmail client is light years behind gmail inbox and gcal, but it's fine for my usage patterns. A year ago I was spending half of every day on a google service, now I barely touch them.

j0hnml 9y ago
This seems to be a common and popular trend these days, especially on HN. Is anyone doing the opposite and becoming more ingrained into the Google ecosystem? I'd love to dive more into the Android/Google side of things, but these sentiments are (unfortunately) making me think twice about doing so. I'd like to read different perspectives if they are out there.
- arkades 9y ago
  Personally, kind of. I’ve moved further and further from google for my personal email and communications, for all the reasons elucidated above. However, for my commercial presence, I opened a gsuite account because it seamlessly brought together - and kept together - disparate components that I wanted to be able to use in a device-agnostic manner for myself and my team. I could have brought things together from a half dozen different, possibly better, services but gsuite was basically one-stop-shopping. I didn’t want to spend time getting the tools together, I wanted to spend it on the job at hand. The communications tools are good enough. That said, I may change my mind about that. For getting work done I still find Outlook kicks the shit out of gmail, and Microsoft Live or 365 or whatever they call it has a very very solid online office suite (and their offline tools remain best in class, IMO). Todoist integrates with both. I’m just lazy about non-mission-critical upgrades. I don’t have a good replacement for google hangouts, though. Skype is a festering tire-fire, and I don’t ever want to use a webex unless I’m being held at gunpoint by the Cisco CTO.
- swah 9y ago
  Yes, kinda. I tried the iPhone 8 (this is Brazil..) after 8 years on Android and feel like Android is much more modern, integrated, free, and even has better designs on so many places (yes, its odd). Particularly the Play Store is beautiful compared to the App Store. Every app on iOS has a paywall, integrations are limited, apps can't process your SMS, stuff like this enrages me. Actually I couldn't even find a good way to transfer images/codes both ways, like I do with PushBullet on Chrome + Android all the time. For me iOS also misses taps and lags on some operations. If using Swiftkey, sometimes the wrong keyboard will pop-up. I feel like the image I had as an outsider that iOS was perfect and smooth kinda broke. So I guess I cannot compare to other people because they use their phones differently: I have to test everything...

joshuamorton 9y ago

What data are you basing the statement that Google's brand is in decline on? Granted I'm by no means saying Google's messaging strategy is optimal, but it's not totally bonkers. And the adage "you aren't the user" seems apt here. This applies both to the statement that Google's messaging tools are in decline, and to the statement that Google's brand is. HN has been decrying google for years now, but he isn't your average consumer. Much as my extended family can all use allo and duo with ease, but I doubt my grandparents know what irc is. I kind of think that it's difficult if not impossible to appeal to the broader set of people whole also appealing to the hn crowd. And, well, we're a lot smaller. To loop back to your post, thats part of why data is so important. If you don't base your decisions, at least in part, on data, you end up designing a tool that's useful for you and not for your users. That's not to say that emotion has no place, but I think you're being disingenuous towards data here. (Note:I work at Google, if that matters)