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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 m

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.

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.