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At any large company like Google (where I worked for 4 years), if you find a way to leverage a vast existing business (i.e. ads) in what you are offering, then

At any large company like Google (where I worked for 4 years), if you find a way to leverage a vast existing business (i.e. ads) in what you are offering, then that's naturally an advantage for you. Doing so isn't required to survive as a project within Google and many projects don't fit that mold.

lovich 9y ago
The existence of technically focused projects within google doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of their efforts are made with advertising revenue as the overriding concern. I mean fuck, the projects you're describing used to just be called R&D at companies. Xerox invented the PC, the mouse, the GUI and others in their R&D but that didn't change them into a computer company, they were still focused on printers
- fizzledbits 9y ago
  The ad business funds the majority of what they do, but that doesn't mean everything or even most of what Googlers are doing day to day is tied to ads in some meaningful additional way or that every product can be viewed through that lens. The projects I'm describing aren't all R&D. For example the GCP products aren't dependent upon or strongly connected the their ads businesses. There are many "technically focused projects" that have users but don't relate to ads, as a byproduct of their bottom-up culture (a very real thing there which is sometimes great and other times a massive PITA, especially when trying to accomplish anything cross-PA), or as a response to innovation at other companies. In my experience Google is, for better and worse, not the manifestation of the vision of one or a small number of people, so when I hear intentions ascribed to Google writ large (such as OP's "let's not pretend that they are driven by..."), I laugh. Does that make sense? I don't think we completely disagree.
  - lovich 9y ago
    Google might do all those things but ads still win. Another poster put up a thought experiment about whether google would take a 50% hit to advertising revenue for an improvement in search results. The answer to that would show what Google actually is, and I believe that Google would not take the hit Additionally google is not flat management. As much as it might feel at the moment that it's driven from the ground up, if someone higher up the chain can put the kibosh on something below them on the chain, then it is manager driven
    - fizzledbits 9y ago
      edit: In the contrived scenario you referenced, I agree that the internal analysis wouldn't begin and end at simply "put the users first!" :P But since the vast majority of activity at Google isn't in that critical path, I'm not sure how useful the thought experiment is. >> if someone higher up the chain can ... then it is manager driven Again, it's not this simple. Things have gradations in the real world. I've seen the "business case" be ignored because a VP doesn't think they could get their engineering team excited about it because (a) it's uninteresting or uncomplicated to implement and their perf-focused workers will transfer to other, shinier teams or (b) it's counter to the project's culture or philosophy and they will similarly lose people. Google is "management driven" in some scenarios and "engineering driven" in others. It's part of the gallows humor in Google that some mucky muck or PM is unable get their team to do something we think makes business sense. edit #2: This is what is really meant by "bottom-up" in the case of Google. The specific incentives from their performance review system, the size of and breadth of projects at the company, and the degree of mobility of its engineers combine to give engineers concrete leverage over their management. I've worked at 4 very large companies and Google is an outlier in this regard. A number of success stories at Google can be traced to that structure, and at other times it's criticized as leading to inefficiency or redundancy, lack of focus or long term commitment, etc. I'm not even sure what we're arguing about. Of course ads dominate the company, it's what drives the most revenue. If you're trying to have an informed view of the place that would allow you to predict or interpret some specific thing they do with some level of certainty, you can't just look at the mean statistic.
- opo 9y ago
  >...Xerox invented the PC, the mouse, the GUI and others While Xerox invented the GUI and other technologies, Douglass Englebart at SRI invented the mouse and Henry Edward Roberts designed the first PC, the Altair 8800 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_mouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_mouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Roberts_(computer_engineer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Roberts_(computer_engineer)
  - lovich 9y ago
    It appears I was incorrect about the specific list of items My point still stands that they developed technologies outside of their core business focus but it didn't mean that their core business focus changed
jdietrich 9y ago
Thought experiment: A Google team develops a search algorithm improvement that increases the quality of results by an order of magnitude, but reduces Adwords revenue by 50%. Would management allow that improvement to be deployed to production? Wherever you make your money, that's your business. Google's customers are advertisers rather than users, a fact that becomes readily apparent if you ever need customer support. The PR department can spin it however they like, but the accounts department see the truth in red and black.
- rock_hard 9y ago
  You are not gonna like this, but Google as any other healthy company would ship the improvement and take the short term revenue hit...they do so all the time! The incentives are well aligned here because it’s proven that if you improve the product people will use it more in the long term! Facebook just announced such thing a couple days ago...they are taking a huge hit in time spend (and therefore ad revenue) to increase meaningful interactions between friends and family’s.
  - lovich 9y ago
    What you are suggesting is against so much of the current american business culture that I am going to have to request some evidence here. A consistent complaint about any publicly traded company is that they are incredibly short sighted and focused on quarterly results as that is all shareholders care about. What you have stated is that none of that is true and that everyone else is incorrect about corporate culture
    - rock_hard 9y ago
      Take it from the man himself then: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571 I personally think there is a huge difference between the old economy and how the new players play the game...it’s really what gives the later a competitive edge in the first place, being more people focused instead of money. It just happens to be that when you do that as an outcome you end up building the most valuable companies in the world!

lovich 9y ago

The existence of technically focused projects within google doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of their efforts are made with advertising revenue as the overriding concern. I mean fuck, the projects you're describing used to just be called R&D at companies. Xerox invented the PC, the mouse, the GUI and others in their R&D but that didn't change them into a computer company, they were still focused on printers

fizzledbits 9y ago
The ad business funds the majority of what they do, but that doesn't mean everything or even most of what Googlers are doing day to day is tied to ads in some meaningful additional way or that every product can be viewed through that lens. The projects I'm describing aren't all R&D. For example the GCP products aren't dependent upon or strongly connected the their ads businesses. There are many "technically focused projects" that have users but don't relate to ads, as a byproduct of their bottom-up culture (a very real thing there which is sometimes great and other times a massive PITA, especially when trying to accomplish anything cross-PA), or as a response to innovation at other companies. In my experience Google is, for better and worse, not the manifestation of the vision of one or a small number of people, so when I hear intentions ascribed to Google writ large (such as OP's "let's not pretend that they are driven by..."), I laugh. Does that make sense? I don't think we completely disagree.
- lovich 9y ago
  Google might do all those things but ads still win. Another poster put up a thought experiment about whether google would take a 50% hit to advertising revenue for an improvement in search results. The answer to that would show what Google actually is, and I believe that Google would not take the hit Additionally google is not flat management. As much as it might feel at the moment that it's driven from the ground up, if someone higher up the chain can put the kibosh on something below them on the chain, then it is manager driven
  - fizzledbits 9y ago
    edit: In the contrived scenario you referenced, I agree that the internal analysis wouldn't begin and end at simply "put the users first!" :P But since the vast majority of activity at Google isn't in that critical path, I'm not sure how useful the thought experiment is. >> if someone higher up the chain can ... then it is manager driven Again, it's not this simple. Things have gradations in the real world. I've seen the "business case" be ignored because a VP doesn't think they could get their engineering team excited about it because (a) it's uninteresting or uncomplicated to implement and their perf-focused workers will transfer to other, shinier teams or (b) it's counter to the project's culture or philosophy and they will similarly lose people. Google is "management driven" in some scenarios and "engineering driven" in others. It's part of the gallows humor in Google that some mucky muck or PM is unable get their team to do something we think makes business sense. edit #2: This is what is really meant by "bottom-up" in the case of Google. The specific incentives from their performance review system, the size of and breadth of projects at the company, and the degree of mobility of its engineers combine to give engineers concrete leverage over their management. I've worked at 4 very large companies and Google is an outlier in this regard. A number of success stories at Google can be traced to that structure, and at other times it's criticized as leading to inefficiency or redundancy, lack of focus or long term commitment, etc. I'm not even sure what we're arguing about. Of course ads dominate the company, it's what drives the most revenue. If you're trying to have an informed view of the place that would allow you to predict or interpret some specific thing they do with some level of certainty, you can't just look at the mean statistic.
opo 9y ago
>...Xerox invented the PC, the mouse, the GUI and others While Xerox invented the GUI and other technologies, Douglass Englebart at SRI invented the mouse and Henry Edward Roberts designed the first PC, the Altair 8800 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_mouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_mouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Roberts_(computer_engineer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Roberts_(computer_engineer)
- lovich 9y ago
  It appears I was incorrect about the specific list of items My point still stands that they developed technologies outside of their core business focus but it didn't mean that their core business focus changed

jdietrich 9y ago

Thought experiment: A Google team develops a search algorithm improvement that increases the quality of results by an order of magnitude, but reduces Adwords revenue by 50%. Would management allow that improvement to be deployed to production? Wherever you make your money, that's your business. Google's customers are advertisers rather than users, a fact that becomes readily apparent if you ever need customer support. The PR department can spin it however they like, but the accounts department see the truth in red and black.

rock_hard 9y ago
You are not gonna like this, but Google as any other healthy company would ship the improvement and take the short term revenue hit...they do so all the time! The incentives are well aligned here because it’s proven that if you improve the product people will use it more in the long term! Facebook just announced such thing a couple days ago...they are taking a huge hit in time spend (and therefore ad revenue) to increase meaningful interactions between friends and family’s.
- lovich 9y ago
  What you are suggesting is against so much of the current american business culture that I am going to have to request some evidence here. A consistent complaint about any publicly traded company is that they are incredibly short sighted and focused on quarterly results as that is all shareholders care about. What you have stated is that none of that is true and that everyone else is incorrect about corporate culture
  - rock_hard 9y ago
    Take it from the man himself then: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571 I personally think there is a huge difference between the old economy and how the new players play the game...it’s really what gives the later a competitive edge in the first place, being more people focused instead of money. It just happens to be that when you do that as an outcome you end up building the most valuable companies in the world!